Celestial Rebirth: Django Django

Something of a rebirth, Django Django’s second full length offering 'Born in Saturn' trips the celestial light fantastic and lands on rejuvenated musical pastures. Exploring rather more dance-infused terrain than their critically lauded debut, it loses none of their trademark eclecticism, wit, verve and invention.

From finding inspiration in charity shops, to one-fingered piano playing and pandering to the notion of ‘fanbrain’, Dave Maclean talks us through the process of that (not so) difficult second album.

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We’re here to talk about 'Born Under Saturn'. The self-titled debut came out in 2012, so it’s been a while since we’ve heard from you. What did you want from the album the second time around?
It’s been really hard to tell. Everything that I originally wanted ended up being quite unattainable. It just went out of the window when we got together. It’s easy to have plans, but it’s kind of hard to be fully in charge of the music when that’s happening. You just have to follow it.

I went through phases – thinking, let’s have no guitars, to let’s have all guitars. But it just kind of ended up being a Django record, where we used what fit where it fit. That seemed, early on, to be the right thing to do. We almost wanted to not deviate from the way we made the first record, but to build on things and make it better. It didn’t seem like a time to make massive changes and sacrifices for the sake of it.

We just wanted to make a 2.0, you know? Just better songs and better songwriting. That was enough to deal with, really.

It’s been mentioned before that the last album was written at leisure – pottering around the house. But with this second album, there was some expectation. Is that something that you felt?
Certainly for myself. In the band, I’m probably my own biggest critic and quite hard to please. That’s my main objective. It’s difficult to know what people want out there – this kind of unified ‘fanbrain’ that you think exists. Like this kind of being that’s waiting for something. But in actual fact, there isn’t. People like all different things. The feedback on this album is people really loving the electronic stuff, people really hating the electronic stuff. There’s no point in worrying about it.

Was there quite a contrast between the songwriting/recording process for this one, as you recorded this as a ‘famous’ band?
Not really. We had Tommy and Jim, which made a big difference. It made life easier and better as there were four brains on the record. It really helped when you hit a chorus, and you didn’t know what to do. The way we recorded the first one, it took two years. With this one, we wanted to not spend two years on it. We kind of used the studio, a co-producer and engineer guys to help us.

Even simple things that some bands would take for granted, like setting up a drumkit and recording it. All those things were new to us and exciting. A little bit intimidating at times, but it felt like a step forward and a step up.

It’s a Django record, so there’s a healthy amount of experimentation. There’s even a piano on the new record – is it important for you to continue to experiment with what you do?
I think so. We’re gluttons for eclectic instruments. We’re always looking for new things. The piano was one of the backbones of the studio, and we’d never been able to have one. We brought a piano into it, and our own little studio, and it just became a great tool for writing.

We spent a lot of time writing the score for the Royal Shakespeare Company on the piano and that just kind of spilled over onto the record. Tommy’s really good at the piano, but I’m absolutely terrible.

A lot of the piano riffs are just me, with one finger, bashing at the keys. That’s fun too.

There’s a lot of celestial imagery on the album, on songs like 'First Light'. Did you intend it that way, or did it just evolve like that?
It just rolled out like that. The title, it’s the name of a book. I wasn’t aware of the book until I found it in a charity shop in Stratford. I collect a lot of books to do with the occult and things like that, and I thought this probably was something along those lines. It’s actually about fine art and a discussion of the artistic temperament.

So not shit sci-fi, then?
No, it’s actually a pretty heavy art theory book. I haven’t read it all yet. It was more the title that grabbed me. We already had the cover, this sculpture called Sluggard, which is a guy waking up and yawning. There was this thing in the book about having this temperament of ‘born under saturn’ which artists have, which cause you to daydream a lot and sit around trying to have ideas.

It connected in with that, and the cover, and all these things seemed to work with each other. I’ve read that you were beginning to get tired of touring and looking to create new songs.

Did you see this album as a sort of rebirth?
Definitely, yeah. It’s obviously quite a cliché, this idea of starting afresh, 'First Light', we recorded it in spring…it is a bit of a cliché, but it’s true.

All these ideas of a new beginning, are floating around on a blank canvas. It’s the excitement and buzz.

You’ve worked on the score for RSC’s White Devil. Is it important for you, as musicians and creative people, to things outside of your expected remit?
I don’t know if it’s expected, it just sort of happens. Obviously, we all met at art school and Tommy and I ran an art gallery together in Edinburgh. We’ve done club nights. Curating shows and doing soundtracks and things. There were all these things going on that we did because they were fun, and Django Django was another one of those things.

We were asked to do the score, out of the blue and jumped at the chance. The other thing is you enjoy a few challenges. We’re up for having a go, and don’t get worried because we’ve never done a theatrical score before.

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The video for 'Reflections' is amazing. Did you collaborate with Natalia and Eva on that?
There’s a couple of music videos that we did in the past, and we’d like to do more ourselves. But it always becomes more like a collaboration. You give your song to someone, and they see what they can do with it. It’s a fun thing way to do things, and it gives the song another angle.

What they did with the song, I’d never have thought of that. It’s someone else’s vision.

Is it interesting to have another mind in the room?
You get the video back and you think, I’d have pictured it this way. I think we like to do videos that are a bit different and a bit weird. Videos that push things a bit.

How are the new songs going down live?
We’ve only really done two gigs and we’ve only got two or three songs ready. We’re just going to keep adding, keep changing them. We played 'Shake And Tremble' last night. It’s funny watching people’s faces, when they don’t recognise the song and you see them trying to get to grips with it.

Is that something that you look for, for songs to evolve when you’re playing them live?
The way that we record the records is through layering it up. It’s not a band playing in a room. So when you’re playing them live, you kind of have to reverse engineer them. When you go on stage, you strip it back to the elements that four people can manage. We’re always tampering with them.

But when we’re recording them, we never think they’re quite perfect. And playing live is a way that we can get around that and add to them as we see fit.

Words: Marianne Gallagher

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'Born Under Saturn' is out now.

Django Django have confirmed the following shows:

December
2 Derry Nerve Centre
3 Glasgow Barrowlands
6 Manchester Albert Hall
7 Birmingham Institute

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