Brighton's DITZ return to Control Club as one of the sharper British guitar bands to emerge from the post-punk and noise-rock circuit of the last decade, carrying serrated rhythms, constant movement, and a writing style that pushes ordinary unease toward body horror and deadpan absurdity. Since The Great Regression (Alcopop!, 2022) and Never Exhale (self-released, 2025), the group has built its reputation through shows that feel volatile and songs that keep changing once they hit the stage.
Ahead of their next Bucharest date as part of Stray Lights Festival (Jul 31 - Aug 2, 2026), we spoke with the band's singer Cal Francis and guitarist Jack Looker in a conversation that touched on their previous Control experience, the pressures that shaped Never Exhale, and the way Brighton's dense music culture sits beside London's pull. But the conversation also opened into neiric territory, from David Lynch and Xiu Xiu to Cronenberg and Burroughs.
The last time DITZ played Control Club was April 2025. I remember Cal climbing up onto the balcony at one point, though the venue has been redesigned since then, so unfortunately there is no balcony anymore. What do you remember about that show, the energy there, and your time in Romania?
Jack Looker: I remember nothing because I wasn't there, unfortunately. I was having my wrist operated on that week, so a friend of ours, Ed, was covering for me. But I had been to Romania in 2018 with another band I was working for. I think it was Summer Well Festival. We went to some bar afterwards, which was really cool. I remember the taxi drivers treated red lights as advisory rather than law, which I found quite funny. I think we crammed five people into probably a four-person taxi.
Cal Francis: I remember we got there the night before, and it was snowing in April, which was surprising. We asked at the hotel if there was anywhere open to get a drink, and the only place open was Control. We went there and said, "Oh, we're playing here tomorrow," and they were like, "Just have the beer." I don't think we even paid for it.
The show was good. It's a really cool venue. It actually reminded me of British venues quite a lot. The architecture and layout of Bucharest are so unique, but then you step into a venue, and you could be in Manchester or Istanbul. It's kind of the same the world over. That's comforting.
You were saying earlier that Bucharest felt very different from other cities you've visited.
Cal: I don't think it compares to other old ex-communist capitals. Warsaw isn't like that. Vilnius wasn't like that. Budapest isn't really like that either. Bucharest feels really unique. Some parts try to be romantic cities, like Paris or Rome; others feel more Soviet; still others try to be downtown London; and others happen to have been there for a very long time. It's a really interesting city to walk around.
One thing that often comes up around DITZ is "relentless touring". Does that feel accurate? Do you feel like you're always on the road?
Jack: Yeah, I think we are perpetually on tour, even though we're at home at the moment. We've got two weeks off, which is probably the first in a while.
Cal: This is probably the first time I've been home for more than five or six days in a month or two. Especially during festival season, you end up doing three or four days of work, then going away at the weekend to play one or two festivals, then starting the next week again. It feels like it doesn't stop. You don't get much time to catch your breath.
But it is nice to be on the road. I feel like I've seen a lot more of the world than most people ever get to. Because we play so many shows, we run out of the easy places to get to. We've done the UK so many times, and France and Germany as well, so we need to go slightly further afield.
Do you enjoy the travelling itself? Do you have ways of staying sane while moving that much?
Jack: You definitely get conditioned to it. You have to develop some kind of mindfulness and embrace it. I think we do better when we're not flying. There's a huge difference between flying and driving. Even if the travel is longer, it's a bit more comfortable.
Cal: I'm generally okay with it, and I enjoy seeing new things. I get excited to go back to the same places again. But I hate borders, and I hate people who work at borders. I think they're the worst people in the world.
Are there any gigs or places from the last couple of years that really stick out? Not necessarily the biggest, but the ones that felt meaningful, strange, or unique?
Cal: Vilnius. The whole situation was bizarre, and we had such a good time with it. We were booked to play this festival and didn't know much about it. It was mostly Lithuanian bands, maybe one German DJ, and us. It turned out it was curated by the two headline bands, both from Vilnius, and 10,000 people showed up. We had never heard of them before.
Jack: The setting was in a forest park outside the city.
Cal: Absolutely beautiful. We had never been there, no idea what to expect, and I don't think we could have had a better introduction to a country.
Jack: Istanbul stands out for me. It's such a historically important place, and to go somewhere for the first time and have a good amount of people show up, and have them be so hospitable, that never gets boring.
Bulgaria was like that as well. One of the few shows where I've had people singing every word to almost every song. It just blew my mind.
And Greece is great. The Balkans are incredible. We've never had a bad time there.
Cal: Athens always blows my mind. We've done it twice now. And Thessaloniki.
You're based in Brighton, but have you ever felt pressure to move to London? There's still this idea that bands need proximity to the capital, but maybe actual opportunity and industry opportunity are two different things...
Jack: Brighton is London by the sea, and the music scene, or the industry involvement, is a watered-down version of London in some respects. You have The Great Escape here every year, which is a multi-lane festival, but it's basically a dick-swinging contest for industry. And you're an hour or an hour and a half on the train from London.
It's almost as expensive to live here as well. Rent and bills aren't quite as bad, but not far behind. But there is still a difference. It's not as cliquey or industry-oriented. There's still space for more DIY bands, or bands that aren't just trying to make it big, to thrive here a little bit. There's a good balance, even if it sometimes gets weighted the wrong way. I don't think it's necessary to live in a huge city.
Cal: To me, Brighton is a big city. I grew up in a village in the middle of nowhere. Brighton has 250,000 people. That seems like a lot to me. If we're on the road for 100 days a year, I don't want to spend the other 260 surrounded by tall buildings and loads of people. I don't think it's necessary. The internet exists. You don't need to stand around in London waiting to meet people. Seems pointless to me.
Jack: There is a privilege in living in the southeast of the UK, though. Less London specifically now, but being in the southeast and having access, whether by public transport or driving, means you're more involved, more seen, all those bullshit clichés, than if you lived somewhere like Bolton or Durham. Even little things add up. If you're in Glasgow and you have a U.S. visa appointment, you might have to go to Belfast. That turns into a two-day thing. Here, Gatwick is half an hour away. We can get to Heathrow, Stansted, Luton. That makes a difference.
What is Brighton like as a scene now? Everywhere is changing, often not for the better for artists. Where does Brighton sit in terms of venues, infrastructure, and the health of the scene?
Jack: It's a microcosm of the rest of the UK. I don't think the scene is likely to peter off because you've got two music colleges, two standard universities, one specifically an arts university. Being this close to London, venues do close down, but within 12 months, another one will pop up, bigger or smaller.
Cal: Realistically, it could hardly be better here. About 250,000 people live in Brighton, and there are probably 30 or 40 venues, or things that could be venues, around the size of Control.
I feel like a lot of people don't appreciate it here, and maybe that's why the scene doesn't develop in the same way. People can move on to whatever. They don't realise they have to look after things.
In other cities, you show up and immediately feel like you know everybody. The owner of the venue is best friends with the support band, and everybody knows everybody. Brighton is more spread out. I see a local band on a poster I've never heard of, and it turns out they've been around for five years. I'm pretty involved; I'm at gigs several times a week, and that still happens. People don't know how spoiled for choice they are. It also makes it harder if you're a band, because it's saturated. That's maybe why we do better abroad; there's less of that saturation.
Jack: I'd love to know what percentage of people who live here are actually in a fucking band. It must be stupidly high compared to almost anywhere outside London.
After so much touring in support of Never Exhale, how has your relationship with that album changed? How do you hear it now?
Jack: It's a reminder never to do an album the way we did that one again.
In what sense?
Jack: Spend more time. Rehearse it more. Almost everything, really. It was rushed.
Cal: It's a product of where we were, what we were doing, and how much we were on the road. It has its own charm, which I'm coming to accept now, but much of it sounds better live. If we have a few weeks off and I need to go back and listen to it to rehearse, I'm always surprised at how much better the songs sound live. Little things: the tempo, the power of it. I listen and think, "Wow, we really missed a trick when we were recording it."
Jack: We play it live and think, "If only we'd played it like that on the album." That was our relationship with being on the road and being a band. We recorded it, went on tour, came back for a few days, went on tour again, and were getting revisions while we were away.
It actually got mixed over the Great Escape weekend, which we were all working. I remember working at a venue, trying to stage-manage, and sending audio files to (Engineer) Seth in the States — Pro Tools sessions over the venue Wi-Fi — in time for him to mix them within the allocated time we'd paid for. The whole thing was the biggest load of stress I've ever gone through.
Cal: Within two and a half months of recording it, we went on tour for about two months and played 40 shows. We played a lot of those songs. If we had recorded it at the end of those two months instead of before, it would have been a totally different album. In retrospect, it's like: why did we rush? What was that for?
Has that changed the way you're approaching the next album?
Jack: We're going on tour before we record it instead of afterwards. We're doing the exact opposite.
Cal: And we're recording it in the space it's supposed to be recorded in, not the backup space. I think that's going to make a big difference.
One thing I've always liked about DITZ is that there's humor in the music, even when it sounds bleak. Do people sometimes miss that?
Cal: Yes. I think they do miss it. But I'm also fine with that. I'll make a brutal edit to things if something feels too on-the-nose. There will be more obvious stuff, and it doesn't make it. There's a nag in the back of my head that says, "No, that's too obvious." So I cut a lot of that out and leave things I think are too subtle for most people, or for people who aren't looking for that kind of thing.
I like stuff like that in all forms of media. I like really dry comedy. I like things that take a few goes. Things that reveal themselves the second or third time you consume them.
Your music has also been described as "Lynchian", and you've talked about admiring David Lynch. What's your favorite Lynch musical moment?
Cal: The Lost Highway soundtrack is great. And I recently saw what Xiu Xiu have been doing with the revised Eraserhead soundtrack. They don't have the rights to the film, so they have their own visuals in the background. I thought that was really good. It's so far removed from the actual soundtrack until it gets to the "In Heaven" bit, and then you're like, "Oh yeah, the whole thing's a David Lynch thing."
Jack: I'd say that's my favorite.
Cal: Lost Highway is a classic soundtrack. It has some really great needle drops. There's a guy who lives in Brighton, Barry Adamson, who had something to do with that soundtrack. I think he used to be in the Bad Seeds as well. He did some of the jazzier stuff.
I hear some Lynch in DITZ, but I think more of Cronenberg. There's such a bodily element to the music.
Cal: I've done all the Cronenberg films at some point.
Jack: I need to watch some of these films. I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
Cal: One of my favorite books ever is Naked Lunch. It's probably my favorite Cronenberg. There's so much about it. (Wliiam) Burroughs feels almost like a rock-and-roll cliché now, but genuinely, reading those books and trying to wrap your head around his mind and the way he is with words can transform the way you write. It takes you away from straight narrative into something that feels more like how a brain actually works. It's not just stream of consciousness. It's more imaginative. I feel like that kind of thing became out of vogue, but I still think it's good. You couldn't write it now, and it couldn't be anybody else but him. He has such a unique style.
If you are ever stopped in New York City on a tour, you can go to Burroughs' apartment at Giorno Poetry Systems on the Bowery. It's a very DIY art space and community center but they've kept his whole apartment from his New York days there intact.
Cal:I think I've got some of his diaries from that era.
There's an interesting new documentary out called Nova 78 about a conference Burroughs organized in 1978 with Frank Zappa, Philip Glass, Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Cage, Laurie Anderson, etc.
