Commercial success as an “art rock” band is tricky, store but so far Django Django have been pulling it off. The four-piece, thumb formed at Edinburgh College of Art before relocating to London, have been cultivating a following since 2009, but were genuinely taken aback by the success of their debut record in 2012. The self-titled album, recorded on a shoestring budget in producer/drummer David Maclean’s bedroom, caught the attention of the NME crowd, providing a fresh take on psychedelic music that was rooted in a breezy surf-rock vibe with familiar elements of 60s pop. The album went UK Platinum and even earned the lads a coveted Mercury nomination. The band has been touring since, gaining plenty of international attention (with an opening slot on Tame Impala’s tour certainly not hurting).
Earlier this year, Django Django released their second album, Born Under Saturn. Where the debut often felt stripped-down by necessity, the band have clearly made the most of the their improved equipment here, producing a much denser, heavily layered sound. While there are still touches of the first album’s surfy vibe, the band dive far deeper into psychedelia with experimental electronics and divergent rhythm elements. Things still stay centered on their trademark harmonized vocals though, with the band focusing on a more literary approach to their lyrics, particularly on the standout gangster epic “Shot Down”. While divisive amongst fans, Born is the work of a band refusing to repeat themselves, exploring new sounds to often-spectacular result.
Django Django will be playing Middle East Downstairs this Sunday, 11/8, and we talked to Maclean ahead of the show. He told us about the band’s live set, organic sampling and his ideas for a third album.
Allston Pudding: The first album was recorded very affordably (I believe the thing people mentioned most was that you used a £50 pound mic). Was it, in some ways, liberating to have some money behind you and access to more equipment on the second?
David Maclean: Yes and no. I guess it was a little bit daunting to have to do the follow-up and figure out how to push things forward. It was kind of tentatively moved from the bedroom into a studio space, but actually the process and sensibilities didn’t change too much. Although we had drums set up and did things “properly,” it was still recorded and treated in the same way, really. It had its up and downs, the whole process.
AP: So you’d say the critical anticipation of the album didn’t affect the writing and recording process?
DM: No, because I guess you can’t second guess what people want or what they’ll think of something. With the second album there’s always going to be those types of people; if you change it too much you’ve changed it too much, if you stick to the same thing you’re being boring. I guess we just didn’t bother worrying too much about what people were going to think or what people wanted or what the right thing to do was. We just kind of set out to make the album we wanted to make and hoped the fans would enjoy it.
AP: There are a lot of very different styles of music being balanced on the album- some 60s pop, some Caribbean influence, some more experimental electronic. When you’re putting a song together are you ever conscious about not letting any particular sound overpower the others?
DM: No, I’m okay with that. It’s kind of whatever suits the song. Yes, I don’t want something to be genre specific, so I would never make a track that sounded like a punk song or sounded like an acid house record. To me that’s just following genre rules; it’s been done before. I don’t want to just stick on an 808 drum and make something that sounds like a 1988 Chicago house record. I don’t want to blast out guitar to sound like punk music. It’s about shifting these ideas around and deconstructing them and trying to use bits and bobs. I guess it’s a bit of a magpie approach of taking what I like from surf music and rockabilly and what I like from hip-hop production; borrowing these things to give the song the best chance it has. I don’t mind if something is pushed more towards electronic or dance or more towards the rockabilly side, it’s about what the song is shouting out for and what needs to be done in that respect.
AP: I read that the lyrics are the last thing you guys write and everyone in the band contributes. With four people writing, how do you decide which lyrics get used and which don’t?
DM: Usually there’s just a general kind of consensus over what’s sounding a bit gammy and what’s sounding a bit cliche. If one person likes it and three people don’t then it goes out the window; it’s kind of democratic like that. If someone’s really passionate about something and everyone else hates it then it might skate through but I guess it’s generally just kind of a democracy. I tend to get final say just because I’m the producer and it comes to down me recording what I want to record. If I really want a line I’ll just make them sing it and then cut it in later! If one of them is the main songwriter I’ll try to stick to what they want, but it all comes out in the wash because the democracy thing kind of works for us.
AP: Given how intricate a lot of the arrangements are on the new record, was there any difficulty transitioning them to a live show?
DM: Yeah, a million difficulties! (chuckles) It’s an ongoing problem. I remember seeing an interview with Ringo Starr talking about how they could never play the later Beatles albums live because they’d need a hundred people on the stage. I guess back then they didn’t have samplers; they were using tape decks or primitive sampling technology.
It’s a similar problem, though. If you layer up ten string sounds, then how do you get ten string sounds live? You’ve gotta kind of strip it back. I guess what we do is go back to the hip-hop sensibility of sampling and drum machines. That works for us. We’d never play anything off of a laptop; we use old-school samplers that have quite a beefy organic sound and we trigger the loops live to keep them fresh-sounding. It’s about stripping it back and making it a bit more simple and bombastic and pushing everything up. Pushing the tempo up, making it a bit more bassey, making everything a bit more instant and a bit more gratifying for the audience.
AP: I know you have a pretty notable background in electronic music. Do you have any ambitions to put out a solo producer-centric project?
DM: Yeah, definitely. I’m producing things for other people all week and last week. Maybe not an album of me producing but I definitely have a lot of things in the pipeline. Remixes too. I’d also love to work with Africa Express again, Damon Albarn and that gang, and do something with them in Africa again, maybe. I’d love to produce a whole soundtrack. I get a lot of offers and requests to do these things, but it’s a matter of fitting them in around Django Django, since that’s always the priority.
AP: What artists have you been listening to lately?
DM: I’m listening to Jimmy Edgar’s new EP a lot. He’s got a label called Ultramajic and I’ve got some friends on it. The EP is fantastic and really up my street. It’s kind of experimental with roots in Chicago. Unknown Mortal Orchestra– I’m really enjoying their new album and seeing them live. I’ve seen them a lot this summer. There’s a Scottish band called Man of Moon that I’m really into at the moment, a Welsh band called Gulp, L-VIS 1990. Loads of bits and bobs. A lot of unsigned stuff and demos people are sending me that I’m listening to a lot. There’s a rapper in London called Barney Artist who I’ve been working with. I’m listening to music constantly in a work context, so I’ve been discovering new music through that and hearing a lot of good stuff at the moment.
AP: What’s next for Django Django after the US tour?
DM: We have a big UK tour and then some dates in Europe and then a big Australian tour. On boxing day we fly to Australia for a quite extensive tour of festivals and side shows. Then I’m producing KT Tunstall’s album in LA so I’ll go there to do that while the band start writing the third Django Django album. So that’s us planned out ‘til almost this time next year!
AP: In regards to the third album, was there anything you learned while making the Born Under Saturn that you think inform the next one?
DM: Yeah. I think for me, what I want to do with the third album is make it very live-sounding. Rely less on loops and samples and rely more on playing. We’ve got some ideas; listening to a lot of early funk rock and people like Dr. John and The Politicians and The James Gang. I want to get into making a slumpy kind of rock record with live playing and live sounds on it.
Django Django will be playing Middle East Downstairs (relocated from Royale) this Sunday, 11/8, with Wild Belle. Tickets are still available here.