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Django Django: It’s Hard To Push Boundaries In Pop

Django Django is not the gypsy legend known as Reinhardt but a one-year-old London-based quartet.

Posted 20th January 2010, 4:27pm in Interviews, by Jasmine Phull
Django Django Django Django is not the gypsy legend known as Reinhardt but a one-year-old London-based quartet who indulge in sampling and writing eclectic yet clever lyrics. They’re an indie pop group that is DIY but with all frills, (cow) bells and snake rattlers. Their songs reference dub, acid house, glam rock and rap and they may just remind you of compatriots Hot Chip but don’t be fooled, they’re nothing like them. Django Django make exciting and infectious music; like a fever it takes control of your innards, commanding head bopping at the very minimum. Their primeval 'Skies Over Cairo' reminisces back to ancient Egypt, to the time of Tutankhamun when pharaohs reined the earth while 'ZummZumm' plays like the Super Mario Brothers’ soundboard. As of yet the boys have only released one single – the double A-side 'Love's Dart' / 'Storm' – but their heavy on the gig circuit and it’s only a matter of time before a label releases all their rhythmic gems under one titular album. That’s if the band doesn’t decide to ‘do it themselves’, says co-founder and member Dave Maclean.

There’s four of you in the band but I’m guessing you and member Vince were the main two protagonists of Django Django?
Originally I moved here to do a post-grad in painting but when I came to London I met Vinnie and he’d been writing songs so yeah we collaborated.

Your genre of music is quite varied.
It is. With DJing comes record collecting and I never had one style of record. I collected all kinds of different music and was making acid house to hip hop to juggle music. Me and my friends had a reggae sound system in Edinburgh and I was really into 80s and 90s dance hall so I was making these weird dance hall records but they kept turning into these sort of poppy tunes.

Inadvertently?
Yeah. The acid house and dance hall stuff would all merge into this sort of thing..

Tell us about the art gallery in Edinburgh.
In 2002, me and Tommy, who plays synths, set up this art gallery but we had it written into the constitution that you could only be a director for two years... and then you had to leave.

You had to leave the gallery or just that particular role?
Just leave the gallery. So we did all this work building up its reputation and then we got chucked out.

Well who made that rule?
We made it because part of our frustration was that in Scotland the same people were hanging around at galleries too much. At an artist run gallery you don’t want one vision or a dominant group or clique.

How long did the gallery run for?
It’s still going strong.

Django Django’s genre of music is very experimental; you use samples and you layer. I also read you record a lot of your material at home, does that encourage you to involve everyday house-hold items in your music?
Funny you should say that. There’s a group of musicians called ‘Music Concrete’ who had a hand in a lot of the BBC Recording Sessions. The Radiophonic workshops were based on the ideology that you could use everyday objects to make sounds and a rhythm. So if you go back and listen to all the old BBC shows like Doctor Who, they all have crazy theme songs which were created by these guys. I guess when you’re recording at home you do just grab something that makes a sound that you’re looking for. It’s not about being kooky.

It’s about being frugal?
(Laughs) It is. That’s one of the influences of our sound; that we have very little money. There will be a track where all the drum parts are done on a phone book. I started the experimentation side of it at Art College when I had a sampler so I’m pretty in tune with what objects make what noises.

I guess that’s got a lot to do with technology and how much it has advanced over the years.
The first music program I got was Q-Base Vol 1 on the Atari, which was for computer games. A lot of electronic and Hip Hop producers were using it; just a very straight forward black and white sequencer. I also had an Emu sampler but it was really hard to make anything other than hip hop; anything other than very basic loops. Structures were difficult but now I use PCs and now you can push it as far as you want.

You’ve been described as lo-fi. What exactly is lo-fi?
The lo-fi scene means hiss and buzz and crackle; not polishing up what you’re doing.

What new bands are you a fan of?
A band I like at the moment is Egyptian Hip Hop. You have to see them live to appreciate their shambolic genius. I also like Welsh band Race Horses, they sort of sound like Gorky's Zygotic Mynci. They’re a bit raw; got a lot of sixties garage going on.

You’ve cited producer Joe Meek as an influence on the band. He certainly did some strange things; from setting up tape machines in graveyards in an attempt to record the voices of spirits to capturing meows of a cat he claimed was speaking in human tones. Do you think it’s advantageous to be ‘a little strange’ when creating certain music?
All my favourite producers are either mad or in jail. Joe Meek: not even in jail - dead. Phil Spector: in jail. Brian Wilson: pretty mad.

Do you think you’ve got enough crazy in you to be as successful as Meek?
I don’t think so. I think I need to shoot my landlord with a pump action shot-gun before I can get there. I mean these people were really living on the edge and really pushing boundaries. It’s hard now to push boundaries in Pop because it’s all been done. Back then art and music and pop didn’t sit as well as they do now because we have the hindsight of The Beatles and Joe Meek and the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. Maybe you do need to have a bit of crazy?

Well there are enough crazy people in London that will hopefully rub off on you.
Yeah, a guy rubbed off on me on the bus the other day. I had to clean it up...

In terms of writing, is it mainly you and Vince?
Vinny will come to me with some songs or riffs he’s written and we’ll sit down and see how it turns out. But since we’ve become more of a band Tommy, the synth player, started coming up with more and more synth and riff parts.

You’ve also got your club night Bad to the Bone. How often is that on?
We do it about four or five times a year. It’s me and my brother and another friend that run it. It’s very party orientated; we’re not trying to break boundaries, we just turn up with all our favourite records from Biggie Smalls to the Beetles.

Does the venue change every time?
No, we’ve got a venue which we can’t really talk about too much. It’s a bit illegal so we can’t advertise.

So how do people find out about it?
It’s sort of word-of-mouth..makes us seem cooler than we actually are.

Are you releasing your debut in 2010?
Yeah but we don’t really want to go into the studio with a producer and re-record it; make it unhonest.

Will you release it independently?
If the right label comes along maybe not. I’ve also just started my own label which the first single will be coming out on. Hopefully it’ll be releasing other people’s music as well as our own.

In terms of touring, you’re off to Austin’s SXSW in March 2010!
It’s great because we applied in 2008 but we didn’t really have a proper band then. We’ve also got Manchester, (probably) Liverpool and Leeds on the horizon and we’ll be playing at Fence Record’s Home Game Festival in Scotland.

Do you have a preference between small and large venues?
I like sweaty backroom gigs where everyone’s crammed in. It freaks me out when you’re on stage and really far away from the other band members. By the time the sound travels from the drum or the guitar it sounds like everything’s out of synch; like a total dog’s dinner.

Where’d the name Django Django come from?
I always loved the name Django, mainly from the series of spaghetti Western’s, so the name always stuck in my mind.

How do you pronounce it?
Just don’t pronounce the ‘D’. We’ve also been called DJ Ango DJ Ango..

And your DJ name is Hugo Paris? You don’t look like a ‘Hugo Paris’.
I don’t. That was the joke. It was this kind of slick name of this foreign dance producer but really I’m just this Scottish bearded tramp. There were lots of pseudo names but Hugo Paris stuck. I might kill it off soon. I’m thinking Drippy Bridges..

You can catch Django Django at the following dates: 21st Jan - DJ Set at Club Nika; 30st Jan – Barfly; 6th Feb – The Wheel.

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