“IT’S KIND OF WEIRD TO THINK PEOPLE ACROSS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD ARE LISTENING TO STUFF WE MADE WHILST IN OUR PYJAMAS.”
DJANGO DJANGO D
jango Django are down with 70’s Zambian psychaedelia, recording songs in their dressing gowns and a cheese
toastie now and then. Teir debut album was nominated for the Mercury prize three years ago and now they’re back with a brand new swit swoo album full of amazing synths and rhythms that they’ve gathered together. I spoke to the delightful Vince, singer and guitarist with the band, and he gave me the lowdown on their recoding process and how they got their name.
We haven’t heard much from you for the last couple years; what have you all been up to? We finished up touring in summer 2013 and pretty much went into the studio as soon as we finished. We took all our old recordings and started working on them. Jim, Tommy and I were part of Africa Express; we went to Marseille and collaborated with loads of African and Middle Eastern artists. We had two Lebanese rappers working with us! We all have mates who are artists and did collaborations with them so we kept our hand in, but first and foremost we were just in the studio writing songs. It‘s been reported that your name has nothing to do with Django Reinhardt. Why are you called Django Django? We had a record called Sort of Django; it was a kind of dancehall record. It wasn’t a word on everyone’s lips at the time and we thought it would sound good doubled up, quite fun. So yeah, no relation to Django Reinhardt at all! Your debut album came out in 2012, was nominated for the Mercury and the Guardian gave it 5 out of 5. Why do you think it did so well for you?
20 / May 2015/
outlineonline.co.uk
We definitely didn’t see it coming; it was all bedroom recordings…me playing guitar and us sitting around eating cheese toasties in our housecoats. It’s kind of weird to think people across the other side of the world are listening to stuff we made whilst in our pyjamas. It’s quite a positive record and at the time there wasn’t much positivity going around. We tried to touch on some of the aspects of what was happening in the world but not to let it get us down. You used what’s known as
African polyrhythms (an interweaving of at least two contrasting rhythm patterns at the same time) on your first album. Where did you discover this style and how do you think you’ve developed your sound since that album came out? I suppose we all collect a lot of percussion and a lot of African psych-rock. We also like Turkish and Iranian psychedaelia from the 70’s and we’re conscious of all those rhythms from those bands who tried to emulate Led Zeppelin but got it completely wrong It’s also a cheap thing to do; you can use shakers and things like that that you can record on a crap mic and get a good result, whereas floor drums and kick drums are quite difficult when you don’t
have the right equipment If we thought that we needed a certain sound we’d go to the market and we’d buy coconuts or go to Ridley Road Market in Dalston and buy a few bits from some African stores Your new album Born Under Saturn’s out on 4th May. It’s a bit synthier and features fewer ‘60’s guitar harmonies. How do you think your two albums differ? On the first album I wrote most of the melodies and took them to Dave. Jim and Tommy came in at the end of the process. Tis time it was more of a shared thing, more holistic. On the first album we didn’t know how to write a chorus, really, but we learned how to do it on this one. It’s a few years on so we’re a bit more mature, hopefully! We were listening more to good songwriters from the 70’s who could write a really well structured song and we tried to work out how they’d done it. We still like that mixtape vibe where there’s loads of variety and change of direction in the sound. How was it recoding in a studio this time around for you, rather than your bedroom? It was quite overwhelming at the beginning; we were in this huge room with all this equipment. We recorded all of the songs in that format, and we left and went back to London and realised it didn’t sound like us. So we cut up a lot of the drums and layered the vocals how we did before and went back to our old way of doing things.
INFORMATION
Django Django play the Waterfront on 18th of May. Tickets from
www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk. Read this interview in full at outline
online.co.uk
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