INTERVIEW: Django Django

One of the most in demand bands at the moment is the British quartet DJANGO DJANGO and there are plenty of reasons why. Their unique sound has quickly spread across the globe through their self-titled debut album and now, the band who recorded their album in a bedroom, are playing shows all over Europe, Japan and of course Australia.

DJANGO DJANGO played a stellar show at Splendour In The Grass, and now the boys are coming back for Falls Festival, Field Day and Southbound over the New Year. I had a chat with bassist Jimmy Dixon before their show in Paris to see how pumped he was to return to the land down under.

Have you always been into music?

Yeah, yeah. I think, all of us, we’ve kind of grown up with music you know, from an early age listening to their mum or their dad’s records and having older brothers and sisters and kind of listen to their records a lot. I think we have always, certainly I’ve always been into music and kind of loved discovering new music.

It’s always good to discover new music isn’t it?

Yeah you know there’s so much music that you kind of discover and it’s kind of constant you know it’s kind of like being a kid all the time, just discovering new music.

Especially with friends, like when you discover it all together

Yeah, I think that’s what we all enjoy doing is sharing music. It’s kind of nice you know, just being in the studio and seeing what Dave and everyone are all listening to and we’ll swap a lot of music between us before that so, yeah it’s good.

So you recorded your album in a bedroom. If you had the choice, would you do that again?

I don’t think we’d go into a huge studio you know, and pay thousands of pounds to be in a huge studio, but I think the bedroom thing was basically a necessity because we didn’t have a studio, so we didn’t have rehearsal space, and we didn’t have a full drum kit and stuff like that, so it was just out of necessity. Dave had a computer in his flat, so we ended up going around to his house individually and recording and stuff. But now since finishing the album, we’ve got a rehearsal space that we’ve soundproofed and we’ve just basically moved all of the computer and stuff down to the studio so when we start recording, we’ll probably start doing it in the studio. But I still think it’s still essentially the same process, I don’t think we’d want to go into a big studio and pay a thousand or hundred pounds to start recording. I think we’ll still just probably keep it kind of lo-fi.

Lo-fi is always good, and as long as you enjoy what you’re doing it doesn’t really matter where you do it

Yeah! I think that’s the way we all enjoy working by just having fun. It lets us you know, be creative and not have time restrictions and stuff like that, so it’s the way we all kind of all prefer working so we’ll probably keep it that way.

You guys have a very unique sound, would you say a lot of experimentation with different sounds helped create your album?

I think we just didn’t really question what we were doing, I don’t think. We’re all in to many different parts of music and we have so many different ideas that we didn’t really rule anything out., we just kind of went with stuff. Like, Vinny will have a guitar riff that sound kind of surf, and we just went with it, even if it was totally different to the last thing we were working on. We didn’t really question what we were doing or what the album was going to sound like, we just did it and luckily it all kind of made sense when we put all of the songs together. We all went to art school and kind of enjoy experimenting and I think that’s what we were doing when we were making the album. It’s kind of exciting as well, it’s exciting not knowing what you’re going to be doing next and stuff.

Did you expect the album to be as successful as it is?

No not at all! We were really happy just to get it finished and we were just happy to put the album out. As soon as we were getting reviews, like the first few reviews, it was great people were really into it, but we never expected to be popular in Australia and in Japan and America, and going into Europe as much as we have been. It’s been a pretty amazing year and totally unexpected as well. I’ve got some friends over in Australia and when the album first came out over there, I was getting quite a lot of texts off people I know saying it was getting played on Triple J, and a lot of local stations and stuff. So it was really unexpected but, when we came over to play Splendour In The Grass, that was the first time I’d ever been to Australia and [I] just totally loved it. It was great and we’re really excited about coming back again and playing some more shows.

Is there a track on the album that stands out for you?

I think either ‘Zumm Zumm’ or ‘WOR’. I think ‘WOR’ was really fun to make. It was probably the first song we recorded where we sat down in a group and recorded and came up with ideas, rather than individually going into Dave’s bedroom and recording and stuff. It was good fun I think. Dave kind of threw loads of ideas into it, and it was kind of like physical listening.  Listening back to it, it was kind of difficult to get your head around ‘War’ at first, but the more I listened to it, the more it started making sense. It was a really fun and energetic track I think.

What’s the best thing you’ve heard someone say about the album?

[thinks] Hmm.. I don’t know. I think a Japanese journalist described it as “polyphonic rockabilly” which was pretty good. I don’t really know what it means [laughs] but it was nice way of putting it. I think a lot of the earlier reviews that we were getting in the UK were great. We were getting like four or five stars by NME and the Guardian and like magazines we’d grown up reading. So it was pretty amazing to get those first few reviews and just see that the people really liked us, you know, it was great.

And soon you’re back in Australia to play some of the most hyped festivals of the summer, are you excited to come back?

Totally, I mean we did Splendour In The Grass and that was the first time I’d been to Australia and it was great I really, really loved it. Everybody that we met over there was just unbelievably nice, and the shows we did were really great. We sold out shows in Sydney and a show in Melbourne as well, so I think coming back, especially in the summer as well, it’s gonna be great. We’ve managed to negotiate five days off in Byron Bay, so we’ll have just five days off which will be good.

Do you enjoy playing to large, festival crowds?

This summer we’ve been playing so many festivals, it’s probably the first time we’ll be playing to crowds as big as festival crowds. Like, we’ve played festivals but they’ve [the crowds] all been quite small or we’ve been on quite early. I think in japan we were playing to probably the biggest crowd we’d played to, like 20 thousand people. We didn’t know you know, you go to these festivals and we have no idea how many people have heard of us and how many people have come to see us so when you walk out on stage, and there’s ten or fifteen thousand people there to see you, it’s pretty amazing. And it’s all new to us, it’s all really exciting especially when you go to places like Australia and see a full tent of people waiting for you, it’s pretty astonishing.

What’s been your best touring experience to date?

I’d probably say going to Japan and Australia. It was really surreal, we flew over to Japan and had a day off and we flew overnight to Australia, and we literally landed in Australia and drove up to Splendour In The Gras, and we hadn’t eaten or had a shower and then suddenly we got out of the car and then we were on stage in front of fifteen thousand people, it was pretty surreal. I think that was, for me anyway, the highlight of the whole summer was getting onto Japan and Australia, it was really great.

So can we expect a follow up any time soon?

I think in January we’re gonna go back in the studio and do recordings for new ideas. We’re really keen to start recording again. Depending on how quickly it happens, we’d like to get an album out next year but it just depends on a lot of things that come with recording like mastering and the whole campaign build-up and stuff like that. We’ve been really keen to get an album out next year, but it depends on how quickly we move. But we’ve really been keen to work on new stuff and them into live sets in summer and that so, we’ll have new songs by summer.

Words by Lauren Payne

CHECK OUT MORE INTERVIEWS HERE