Django In The Night

Django Django’s psychedlic art pop is avant-garde yet retro, pure yet hybrid, infuriatingly indefinable yet confoundingly catchy and familiar. Many a scribe has struggled with this Sphinx-like riddle, wrestling to encapsulate that which eludes neat description… In short: we is flummoxed!

Vincent Neff chuckles at our predicament.
“We do laugh and think it’s weird. We read all these ‘crazy leftfield’ tags and for us it’s just… POP! We quite like experimentation as well so it is just melding those two things together, the catchy and the stranger elements,” he says of their label-defying sonic cocktails.
The Derry singer/guitarist is between rehearsals at the band’s London studio basking in the glow of the plaudits being heaped on the freshly unleashed self-titled longplayer. Nearly three years have passed since debut double A-side single ‘Storm’/’Love’s Dart’ brought the Edinburgh Art School graduates to our attention. Was it a difficult birth?
“We recorded the album ourselves in David’s (Maclean – drummer/producer) bedroom so obviously that is different to going into a professional studio where people know what they’re doing,” explains Vinny. “We had to learn on the job but we were happy doing that.”
One comparison which does rear its head in reviews is that of The Beta Band, not surprising when you realise David is the younger brother of John Maclean.
“I knew of them but was never really that aware of them. I knew one of two of their tracks,” says Neff. “I suppose Dave being John’s brother, you grow up listening to similar things. The Beta Band left a great musical legacy. They weren’t easily definable. That might be a similarity. It’s also an easy thing for people to say, I wonder if they weren’t related would they have come to the same conclusion?”
Impressively the combo are signed to respected French label Because, home to Daft Punk, Moby and Metronomy.
“We began negotiations and then we met up with the director who has a serious music history, he signed Daft Punk and Air,” says Vinny. “They were happy to let us keep doing what we had been doing. We were really pleased to keep that level of control.”
The French label director did intervene when on one occasion the band’s choice of stage costume provoked a tense response.
“We wore medieval smocks once. The French label weren’t too fussed about that,” he sighs. “The director was like (affects French accent) ‘Do not do zat again.’ I suppose it is about having fun, the idea of blending a bit of aesthetic and not just wearing your jeans and shirts has always been important to us. We like Devo and bands that create a concept not just musically but visually.”
The group are renowned for their impressive stage sets which regularly incorporate a variety of different elements such as projections, Venetian blinds and giant lightbulbs. What do they have planned for their impending Dublin visit?
“Unfortunately the girl who does our lighting and stage sets, her sister is having a kid in the middle of all this and she is her birthing partner!” laughs Vinny. “So I think for the initial show in Dublin we’ll focus on getting our music across and then do something more exciting next time.”
The forthcoming date will be the band’s second Irish performance, having already impressed the throngs at Castlepalooza last summer.
“That was a great festival,” he smiles. “My family came down from Derry and my girlfriend’s family from Cork came up too. We rented a little cottage and stayed there all weekend, there was lots of interesting stuff going on.”
Vinny makes regular visits back to Derry and keeps a close eye on musical happenings on these shores.
“There’s a guy from Derry called Figure Of Eight, he used to be in Red Organ Serpent Sound. He’s quite an eccentric sort of character, he uses a mass of analogue synths and is really good,” he enthuses. “We played with Jape at Castlepalooza and we really liked him too.”
In addition to carefully chosen sets and costumes, the combo also go the extra yard when it comes to percussion utilising an array of items. But it’s the coconuts that are always a problem.
“I get them stolen every few weeks,” sighs Vinny. “It’s okay if you’re in a town where you know you can get coconuts, like Birmingham or Dublin or Glasgow. But if you’re going to Chelmsford you have to be careful!

Django Django is out now on Because. The band play Crawdaddy on
February 23.