Scottish art-school oddities Django Django found themselves in a whirlwind of rave reviews back in 2012 on the release of their self-titled debut album. Now, they've returned with an equally adventurous and thrilling LP Born Under Saturn.
Gigwise meet drummer/producer Dave Maclean and bassist Jimmy Dixon in a West London warehouse and quickly establish they are as entertaining and irreverent as they are on record. To mark the release of their second LP, we discuss illegal Scottish raves, meeting a porn star and why Kanye West is the right choice for Glastonbury.
Gigwise: The new album certainly feels dancier - could you tell us about your early clubbing experiences?
Dave Maclean: I was really into techno, hardcore and breakbeat growing up. Gabba was getting played at illegal raves in Scotland around 1993/1994 when I started to get into it. I was 13 or 14, and going off to try and find these illegal raves in forests with my friends...and mostly not finding them. The Prodigy's first album was probably the biggest thing at the time, it shifted a lot of people away from the Sixties guitar mod scene which formed in Scotland in the early Nineties and into dance music,which solidified my love for the genre.
I was DJing from about 14 years old, I managed to get to know a few people who ran nights in Dundee so they could sneak me in to play. I remember the first DJ I saw was DJ Cam who was this French hip-hop guy. A lot of people played in Dundee, I remember Gilles Peterson played there quite a lot. Grooverider, there was a big club scene up there - good times!
What small festival do you really rate?
Dave: It’s hard to know what festivals are still going, there’s probably a lot of small ones we played when we were starting out which might not have survived. The Wickerman in Scotland was really good, we played there a few years ago, it was really chilled out and not trying to make itself a bigger thing than it was - it was literally just a field, cider and a huge burning Wicker Man.
Jimmy Dixon: We also played a good one in Wales called The Trip which was just this guy on a farm who decided to have a festival and invited all his mates. It was just like a massive house party basically.
Where do you stand on the Kanye playing Glastonbury debate?
Dave: It seems people don’t like black music or something, they don’t like hip-hop. It’s ridiculous. I’m not a massive fan of him personally, but I appreciate what he does having been into hip-hop since the late Eighties. As a guy he’s a bit of a dubious character but I think he’s the right choice to headline Glastonbury regardless.
I said in an interview at Glastonbury last year that he should headline 2015, and I got some stick for that. I don’t understand this "Hip-Hop doesn’t belong at Glastonbury bollocks". Public Enemy should have headlined by now - I saw Beastie Boys headline T in the Park back in the day and it was one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen! For people to say that hip-hop doesn’t belong at festivals is another smokescreen for racism.
You post a lot of strange and brilliant records on your Facebook, are there any surprising albums you think you've put up recently?
Dave: People that know us are aware we listen to absolutely anything from avant-garde classical music to techno, but the surprises would be the straighter stuff I put up I guess - like Spandau Ballet! I like a lot of straight pop music, not necessarily the modern stuff.
What's your lasting memory of the Mercury Awards ceremony back in 2012?
Jimmy: There was a band called Roller Trio who played their live song last. Every band had already got up and played a song then Roller Trio got up really nonchalantly and blew everyone out the water. The whole thing was a bit of a whirlwind - it was an amazing experience. We were on tour travelling round the UK in a van when we found out we were nominated so it didn't really sink in until we were there playing in front of all those people.
Were there many non-musical influences on your album?
Dave: Tonnes, the title of the album is named after a book called ‘Born Under Saturn’ - that wasn’t really an influence, we just nicked the title. But heaps, we’ve seen so many films and read a lot of books that we’re able to just draw from different things. The Story of Faust was an influence on one of the songs, another is influenced by spaghetti Westerns like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Loads of different things creep in there.
Where’s the strangest place that you’ve heard your own music?
Dave: It gets used on a lot of really weird TV programmes which just seem quite unrelated: there has obviously been a bored guy working in the music department on Countryfile or something! We were the answer on a quiz show called Pointless and Vic Reeves name-dropped us on House of Fools once - that was pretty funny.
Jimmy: After we did a performance on Jay Leno we went to this bar and was stood watching ourselves, then the porn star Ron Jeremy walked in and was like: "Is that you guys?” We ended up hanging out with him for a whole night in LA, which was bonkers.
Do you have a favourite lyric on the new album?
Jimmy: It’s tough, we all wrote the lyrics as a foursome. Someone would write a draft of lyrics then we’d all take them apart so they’re not really that personal. We wrote '4,000 Years' quite late, me and Tommy were trying to write it from the perspective of Las Vegas, if it could talk to the people who were running around in the streets.
Dave: There’s one I really like: “Lie down in the sun and get something for nothing.”
Which band would you like to see reform?
Dave: Showaddywaddy! There's a group called the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band who performed 'Monster Mash', they were in The Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour and they’ve got a song called 'Death Cab for Cutie' which is where I presume the band got their name from.
Does the success of your last album, which was Mercury nominated and got to number 33 in the charts, affect the way you wrote the new LP?
Dave: If we could get to number 32 this time we’d be pretty chuffed! [Laughs]. Na, you can’t really bother about that stuff - reviews, chart positions, awards - they’re good if they come, but the most important things to us is working hard and being happy that we’ve done something good. Taking risks is important also, making the perfect album which scores perfect marks and wins all the awards sometimes don’t take the risks that are needed, so you’ve just got to do what you do and not worry.
Have you ever been starstruck?
Dave: I met Sean Connery once when I was working in a cinema and he asked me to recommend a good place to buy a sandwich. I stumbled: he’s a huge guy physically and his stature as an actor - he’s quite a presence.
Jimmy: I remember not being starstruck but surprised when I saw Louis Theroux at the front row of one of our gigs in LA smiling and dancing away.
Your debut album was mostly recorded at home in your bedroom. Did the setting of a professional studio affect your work?
Dave: Probably, it took a while to get used to, it’s quite intimidating. The co-producer was recording files on to the computer and I felt a bit cut-off and distant until I got my hands on the files myself. I’m a bit of a control freak as a producer but it was a learning curve really. We had a lot of fun it’s fair to say. We were in a studio called Angelic for bits which were these professional residential studios on this farm where you can go and live. We played a lot of table tennis.
Whats the purchase on tour you’ve regretted the most?
Dave: I never really regret purchases - life’s too short.
Jimmy: I bought four or five pairs of wellies when I had forgotten to take mine to festivals.
Dave: Yeah, but did you regret it? You could make a welly centipede in your garden.
Django Django's second album Born Under Saturn is out 4 May on Because Music. The group will be playing at a number of festivals over the summer and are embarking on a UK tour from the 2 May - 23 May. For more information and tickets, click here.
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