AFTER meeting at art school in Edinburgh, drummer and producer David Maclean, singer and guitarist Vincent Neff, bassist Jimmy Dixon and synth operator Tommy Grace took three years to make Django Django’s debut album.
The results of “being busy doing great things in the East London bedroom slept in by de-facto band leader Maclean” can be heard on their self-titled record, released in January on Because Records, and in person in York on Monday.
“Time gives you options, and we had plenty of that,” says singer Neff.
“There was no pressure on us from anyone to go away with a producer and come back two weeks later with an album,” says Maclean. “Maybe next time there’ll be some Svengali figure banging his fists on a desk demanding hits, but we’ve had the luxury to figure out what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it.”
The album’s adventurous, psychedelic strain of art rock is best summed up by a lyric from the track Silver Rays: “We venture out into the great uncharted, go far away from any beaten track… Enjoy it now before it’s far departed, you know that once it’s gone that there’ll be no way back,” sings Neff.
“Music’s so mad and widespread and varied, that eclecticism’s the only way to be for us,” says Maclean. “That said, I think you can draw a line through all the music we’re into. It’s about creativity and experimentation and the quest to find a new sound.”
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