Django Django

This gaggle of musical creatives are down with 70’s Zambian psychaedelia, recording songs in their dressing gowns and a cheese toastie now and then. Their debut album was nominated for the Mercury prize three years ago and everyone loved them, but since then the Django Django camp has been rather quiet. 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

So you guys met at Edinburgh College of Art? What do think you’d be doing if you hadn’t taken this musical route?

I was an architect, like an urban designer working in problematic cities throughout the UK for eight years. Tommy was doing really well as an artist and had his own company with his wife. They were graphic designers and they did lots of maps and flyers for galleries. Jim was working in the medical section in the basement of Foyle’s Bookshop, but he still made art. Dave was hanging art for rich tycoons and doing a bedroom art project. I suppose we would have kept going with those things. In some ways, having day jobs as we did for so many years gave us a chance to get bored by them, so we produced songs to get ourselves out of that mundane world.

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?

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 in terms of the world finances and it was a bit of a gloomy time for everyone. We tried to touch on some of the aspects of what was happening in the world but not to let it get us down. It was written when we were playing a lot of late night nightclubs after DJ’s. We knew it was difficult to follow a DJ so we tried to keep it upbeat and positive…like a party at a warehouse at 2 in the morning.

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. They got so engrossed in their own rhythms and it made it so much interesting than a straight take on a Western rock band. 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. We used to sample a kick drum and use the shakers ourselves. 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. If you’ve got a good song to start with you can skin it in different ways, so the pressure’s off when you get a good song together.

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. This time it was more of a shared thing. We were in the studio together hammering away; someone would have a little idea and we’d all try it together in different ways. It was 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! This album didn’t come from the club setting so much. 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. Within the album we still have kept our urban flow; there are some frantic guitar tracks, and then softer ones, then maybe a folk track in the middle. We still like that mixtape vibe where there’s loads of variety and change of direction in the sound.

Do you all have similar musical tastes?

I think we’re all on the same page. If someone brings a track that they love, we all normally agree. We all kind of steal each other’s music and share vinyl, so that makes it easier. It makes the song writing a lot easier as we’re all striving for the same sounds.

Your first single First Light from the new album has lovely harmonies and it reminds me of something else but can’t quite put my finger on it, in some ways a little bit early 90’s, maybe like She’s so High by Blur.

This was a track that nearly didn’t happen. It was a little line that Tommy came up with; we added chords and first played it on the guitar. Nothing really worked, though, but then the synth worked with it and it started to gel. Once the harmonies and vocals were layered it became melodic and we honed in on that. Sometimes it’ not clear what you’ve got til the last minute and then it drops in place. You just have to spend hours on it really, although sometimes things work within 5 minutes.

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. It was the first time we’d had all the drums mic’d up. It was a bit too much and we didn’t know where to begin with it. 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. We used our old crappy mic and Dave’s old PC so we kind of went full circle in the end. Dave’s our producer so it makes it easier to control what we’ve got. If we have an outside producer we could have used up all our money and ended up not sounding like ourselves.

You’re touring this year through Europe and also doing a few dates in the States. Are you excited to head back out on tour?

Yeah! We’ve played a few shows and it’s exciting to have new songs to work with. At the moment we’re doing promos and cover art as well as rehearsing. We can’t wait to get out there!

Django Django play the Waterfront on 18th of May. Tickets from www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk.