When you’re a band whose ethic is do-it-yourself from top to bottom, being asked to pull up a chair and discourse about DIY is something like heading to Judgment Day at the pearly gates and being able to decide your own fate. Or perhaps scoring a Velvet Underground test press in a dollar bin. Either way. Because when you eat, sleep, breathe and live DIY, open communication about your method is precious.

The four members of Daniel Striped Tiger - vocalist/bassist John Bogan, guitarists Sean Yeaton and Jay St. Clair and drummer Dan Madden - beam bright-eyed when asked to spill their guts on the topic. Huddled over cups of coffee in a Harvard Square bookstore, Bogan’s aqua irises focus sharply with intent as he leads the discussion.

“I just always thought that the notion that you needed to get signed so you could release music was bullshit,” Bogan says. “Why should other people dictate whether you’re going to get your music out there? The general idea that’s fed to you by the radio or MTV is that you need this like, break or opportunity to be in a band. You don’t need that. Just do it yourself.”

Engrained since their early 2004 inception, DIY ethics have always been the cornerstone of DST’s foundation; from silkscreening show posters to self-booking entire tours, the community and challenge are as much a part of the goal as reaping the reward. All of the band’s tours, including their upcoming Spring 2008 jaunt into Europe with Sinaloa, have been booked in true Black Flag fashion. And while DST has always been in tune to the North Shore hardcore community in which they were raised, their most shining example probably manifests itself in their discography.

Capital Cities, the band’s second full-length, is DST’s organic symphony: a resonant bastion of force that dances with the darkest fates and temps lascivious yearnings. Besides sprawling, intricate instrumentals that braid their rhythms methodically to the fated discretion of vocal canvases, embedded in the bred-for-vinyl LP is the story of their progression.

This album, like the rest of their recording career, began at Dead Air Studios. Nestled in Amherst back roads, the creaky old colonial is a fixture of Western Mass. DIY, whose backwoodsy roots continue to permeate through New England hardcore. St. Clair’s eyes widen as he recounts the visual: “There are just fields out there and you’re like, ‘This is where this shit is coming from?’

Run by Will Killingsworth - former guitarist for revered hardcore band Orchid and current member of Ampere - Dead Air has been the origin of efforts from Killingsworth’s own bands, as well as acts such as Death To Tyrants, Transistor Transistor and the Cancer Kids. From their first demo to Capital Cities, DST has joined the ranks of Dead Air’s DIY artillery.

“Will was someone you always knew was there,” St. Clair says. “I mean, he played in Orchid, let’s get down to it. People knew he had the studio so we were like, ‘Let’s record with that guy. We look up to his band and it’s the best possible option.’

“We were extremely influenced by Wolves and Orchid, obviously,” Yeaton continues. “It was really fun because for us it was an opportunity to record with an idol. I feel weird saying it, but it’s kind of true.” By the time they recorded their first full-length, Summer 2005’s Condition, they were living on Killingsworth’s couches and have since started up a few sideprojects with him.

“It changes how you feel when you record, too,” Bogan asserts. “When you’re more comfortable, you’re way more loose. I feel like a lot of the things we do come together at the last second when we’re in the studio. We’d want to do things and he’d be like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ and we’d be like, ‘Let’s just make it a spaceship noise out of a bass drum!’ and he’ll go on the internet and look it up.”

Capital Cities dropped on Killingsworth’s own imprint, Clean Plate. “My favorite part was knowing that he cared about it as much as we did,” Bogan notes. “It became as much his project as it was for us. Production, post-production, artwork. I didn’t expect it. I was in Ireland doing the artwork and I was sending him emails everyday and he’d get back to me and be like ‘This isn’t perfect yet.’”

“It’s all about vision and environment,” Madden says about the DIY subculture as a whole. “The non-DIY places seem to be a little bit colder.” With that in mind, DST has kept their life on the road as self-sufficient and grassroots as possible.

“As far as DIY, it’s about playing with your friends and stuff, but the actual spaces are so intimate,” St. Clair says.

Bogan continues, “I get more excited when I play on the floor of a basement or a living room than, like, if I were to play up on a stage because you’re so far away from the people you’re trying to play to.”

It was that sentiment that brought them face to face with the man who is considered to be DIY’s figurehead: Dischord Records’ Ian MacKaye.

Through a connection in La Mi Vida Violenta, DST stayed over with Black Eyes’ Hugh McElroy and Q And Not U’s Chris Richards in D.C. on their first tour. McElroy invited the band over to the Dischord House where they ran into MacKaye.

Bogan, admitting to being totally star-struck, tells the story: “Ian was like, ‘Maybe I’ll come to the show.’ We were like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’”

“Later that night we were playing [in] this small little theatre space and he came in ... and then sat in the audience. After the show he came up to us and we were going to give him a demo and he was like, ‘How much is it?’ and we said to just take it. He said, ‘No,’ and gave us five bucks.”

For DST, MacKaye’s simple decline was gospel: a living, breathing declaration of ethical outreach. It’s what continues to take them down the same path MacKaye paved with Minor Threat and Fugazi.

“I think it’s important that your music should be accessible to everyone,” Bogan says. “I’ll play South By Southwest or I’ll play a basement show in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t matter. I think the general idea of it is that you’re in it to play and that people will like it and that’s the good thing about it.”

Yeaton continues the thought on a larger scale. “I love nothing more than feeling like people actually came out to a show rather than going to be seen at a show.”

“DIY and hardcore has that appeal to it because people go for that reason,” Bogan picks up. “They go to go to shows that they’re really excited about. That’s the difference. They go to a show because they want to see this band and they want to see it in front of them. They want to be in it.”

Even with the file sharing resistance that’s paralyzing certain sectors of the music industry, DST simply sees another vehicle for spreading music.

“I get so much satisfaction looking on file sharing boards and seeing someone who has an entire Daniel Striped Tiger record and is sharing the files with someone,” Yeaton says. “I support that because it’s interesting to see where those people are from and who those records are getting to. To see your band exist in a different universe is kind of fun to watch it unfold.

“There are things about it that seem kind of creepy and Orwellian, where all people have to do is listen to it online and all we need to do is exist in mp3 format, but people are still coming to shows, crowding into basements and hanging out. Nothing’s changed.”

It is possible, though, to sustain oneself on a DIY-only basis? Bogan says “yes.”

“I think the biggest factor about it would be like, ‘Can we still do what we want?’ Look at a band like Sonic Youth — the perfect example because they can be as famous as they want but it doesn’t matter because they’re still just the way they started and on their own accord.”

Mixing ethical roots of past and agencies of present — after all, Rites of Spring didn’t exactly have message boards for posting shows — Daniel Striped Tiger seems to have the format down.

“I think the misconception is that there’s a limitation to doing things yourself,” Yeaton says. “I think it’s been proven time and time again that there are no limitations to it.”

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