DJANGO DJANGO | INTERVIEW
John-Paul Davies talks to this London band’s drummer and producer David Maclean about Spotify sell-offs, loving lockdown and collaborating with Charlotte Gainsbourg on latest album Glowing In The Dark.
What’s it like being the producer of your own band, guiding the sound and producing the albums?
It was something I was doing a long time before the band: I was making hip-hop beats, and then I was making dance music, house and techno. It goes back to the 90s when I had a four-track. I was a producer and a DJ first and a reluctant drummer second.
So, where would you rather be, behind the decks or behind the kit?
I think behind the decks. I love drumming but it’s a real workout. Sometimes it feels like a 12-round boxing match, you know. It depends how tour-ready and fit you are but sometimes it’s a real battle – you versus the kit! I enjoy both for different reasons, I guess.
If you were going to ask someone else to produce a Django Django album, who would it be?
I’ve always wanted to do something with Erol Alkan – he’s been around a long time but he produced the last Ride album. We had a remix from Andy Weatherall, which was great. It’s difficult as it’s always been part of our sound – I’d be nervous handing the reins over to someone else.
Have you had any of the inevitable lockdown delays?
It’s been finished, and in the can, for a year. They pushed it back, not dramatically but enough to make it a 2021 album. Other than that, we would be in the middle of a big tour in America and Europe right now. So that’s weird, kinda surreal – having an album out without touring.
What about the online gig a phenomenon that’s gaining pace?
We did a couple of things – we’re doing one at the moment for Rough Trade, instead of an instore. It’s kinda difficult because we’re not all in London. It’s difficult for us because everyone has family. But I’m happiest in the studio on my own, in the home studio or the main studio, noodling away. I’m perfectly happy and content, it’s not like I’m really bothered or missing anything. It’s shit for the fans and people who love live music. You want to get out there and do things for them.
Django Django are often presented as ever-changing. Do you see the band’s development from album to album as radical or just natural?
I feel each song on the album can be quite different. On this one we’ve got the title track [above], and then something like The World Will Turn, which is acoustic. I guess we just listen to so much different music, from folk, jazz, house, techno – everything in between. It’s difficult to pin it down.
So what defines the Django Django sound?
Vocal harmonies, quite floating melodies. Sometimes we try and push those out but they wiggle their way back in. You can play with the rhythms, the sounds, the textures but then, I guess, when Vinnie [Neff, vocals/guitar] sings on top it’s like, “Oh, that’s Django Django”.
Going back to Andy Weatherall’s production, I grew up obsessed with Screamadelica. You know, some of that record is just like slowed down breakbeat, rave or acid house; but then they’ll [Primal Scream] come out with a track like Rocks next – that’s funk rock. I guess we just have fun with all that.
Can bands make those sorts of wide-ranging albums in these days of mass marketing, with all the pressure to conform to audience expectations?
I think so. Maybe the press find it hard to pin us down, get frustrated and make up new genres and stuff. I’d say things are going the other way a little bit because of Spotify: everybody’s in a playlist. On a playlist, younger people might have Kings of Leon and Billie Eilish. I think it’s quite an eclectic time and young people are just sticking stuff on playlists.
There was that Fleetwood Mac track that got huge again because of a meme and now it’s sitting in playlists alongside Nicki Minaj. That harks back to radio as well. Good radio is eclectic, so maybe that’s what that’s all about. Maybe it’s just a different time for albums; albums are sort of a throwback now. Young people don’t listen to whole albums.
But what about Bob Dylan and Mick Fleetwood selling all their rights, because Spotify and other streaming services just aren’t rewarding them enough?
It’s incredible, something has to be done about it. It’s grassroots music that suffers. The big record labels are hoovering up all the money – Spotify goes to the label not the bands. Some of that money might not even trickle down to their smaller artists. Artists are just getting pushed, more and more, out of being able to make an income. I’m not even sure how some artists even manage.
It’s incredible – when you look at 20 years ago with underground rave music, 12” records were going double platinum off the back of a bloody white label. Now you’re lucky if you sell a few thousand albums. I don’t know, something should change. But maybe these are the last days of the empire, and the last days of the big record labels. Someone is making money somewhere along the line – someone is raking it in. Something has to change or it’s the audience that will suffer; it’s music that will suffer.
More and more mainstream music sounds like it’s been made by a computer algorithm, you know, chuck in a load of fast trap snares and a crap vocal that can spew out a very throwaway track that’s never going to get pressed on vinyl, never going to be appreciated in 10 years; it’s just fast food.
And what’s the future for Django Django? I loved the inclusion of Charlotte Gainsbourg on Free From Gravity. Can you see the band becoming more collaborative and more of a collective?
I’d love to do a whole album of collaborations, a bit like Gorillaz do. I think that’s something we’ll definitely do. Working a couple of times with Damon Albarn opened our eyes to how easy collaborating is and how fun it is. I’ve got a list of people I want to approach – sometimes they won’t even get back to you and then sometimes, like Charlotte, they’ll be like, “yeah, come to Paris!” You just never know until you ask.
Glowing In The Dark is released on Fri 12 Feb. Info: www.djangodjango.co.uk
words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES