Duologue are a British band who are out on September 8th with their new track Drag and Drop, which coincides with the release of their second album, Never Get Lost
YA Mag: For those of us who aren’t Duologue aficionados, get us started with the most important thing we need to know about your band!
Duologue: There’s five of us, from London, and we make electronic band music – guitars, violins, vocals, and plenty of computer stuff – blended all together and put into an album, the most recent of which – Never Get Lost – is out early September.
YA: How did you guys all meet?
D: We met at University in Scotland. Two of us were playing folk music up there and were pretty depressed about it so we decided to start making beats, swapping programming tips and production ideas. Eventually the ideas we grew up with about songwriting and vocal-led music, began to combine with all the possibilities of electronics until we found something we were really excited by – and we still are now.
YA: What inspires you to write? Some of your songs sound pretty hopeless… is it the British weather?!
D: Thanks (I think!). I’m quite a naturally melancholy person so it’s probably my fault. I guess each song comes from its own place – some are born out of emotional experience, some are born out of a sound, a production idea or even just a beat. For most of our songs there’s a long gestation process, and a number of different phases each goes through – from being worked on in a music program, to playing it acoustically with the band, to doing a fully live electronic rehearsal on it.
YA: Your vocals and some of your instrumentals sound a little like Active Child or Lindstrøm; who do you guys count as contemporaries and influences?
D: All artists in whatever form should be magpies and you should constantly collect things you hear or see to use in your own work. What I hope our music shows is a pretty broad range of influences, a large spectrum of electronic music, everything from the Warp back catalogues, to Hyperdub to the legendary Detroit techno labels – all the way up to our favourtie singer-songwriters and guitar-based bands. Anything and everything really, the more music you allow in to your work the more depth it will have.
YA: You’re a London based group; how have people on the other side of the Atlantic responded to you?
D: When we first came out we were releasing some pretty heavy stuff and that seemed to go down really well in the US. We had an early song on the FIFA soundtrack and that was really well received. I think everyone thought we were going to be a heavy electronic rock band from then on but we’re always growing and hopefully everyone will follow us with where we’ve headed on this new record. It’s not such a big leap but it’s important to constantly challenge yourself and move forward creatively, we’ve always tried to do that with our music.
YA: “Drag and Drop” has a really individual sound, like you’ve mashed together a few different genres in a new way. Was this in the writing, production, or both?
D: This one came about, as a lot of my demos do, with a sample, and the rest grew from there. I wanted a groovy beat that felt kind of lumbering and a bit broken, then I found the vocals and the rest came about pretty quick. We went to town on the synths fro this one, we love that detuned AFX kind of vibe, mixing it with the violins and a distorted bass gave it an interesting feel. You play this as a band and it feels like a pretty straight rock song so the production and execution of this one was key.
YA: What can we expect as differences between your last album and Never Get Lost?
D: Typically a first album is a collection of all the songs you have to date. We drew from years of making music and there are songs on there that are pretty old, all mixed in with material that came about during the recording process. With Never Get Lost it was written start to finish in about 10 months so it feels, to me at least, as if it’s all come from the same place. It feels a lot more coherent as a record, everything seems to fit together and I think everything from our song writing, playing and production has improved so I’m hoping other people agree.
YA: The outtakes from the album artwork on your Facebook page look really excellent; what’s the story there?
D: A lot of our music feels quite cinematic and it seems to lend itself to imagery and videos so we just decided to share all the offcuts. We had a long and really interesting process working with our designer on various images and ideas before settling on Martin Vlach’s image for the cover. It seemed to sum up everything we were trying to do with the record and Martin was kind enough to let us use it. We then went on a developed the artwork fro the CD which includes a book of maps – one for each song – that listeners can explore and discover more about the music.
YA: For all of our American readers who may be planning a visit to London in the future … top London thing to do from each of you. Go!
D: Go and see some theatre for sure. If the weather’s nice go for a walk round one of the parks or have a look in the Serpentine. I’d go for a pint in the Lamb and Flag where Dickens used to write, have a meal in le Garrick restaurant and maybe bar hopping out east?
YA: This one is for any of you: give us a favorite quote or saying that you live by.
D: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
YA: Who is your favorite British icon?
D: Shakespeare.
YA: Which five songs are you listening to on your iPods right now?
D: New material by FKA Twigs is awesome but ahead of that ‘How’s That’ on her first EP is fantastic. Enjoyed the new Sun Kil Moon record, check out the opener Carissa. I’ve been revisiting Martyn – Megadrive Generation. The new Flying Lotus and Herbie Hancock collab on You’re Dead – I’m so excited by this record. Also the whole of the Drucqs album in anticipation of Syco – the return of the master at last.