At first, HONNE feel like something you've heard somewhere before. There's this nagging feeling of reminiscence, that their gossamer synths, the shuddering drum tracks, the sheer ache of those vocals must have come from somewhere. But after searching through countless iTunes lists, Spotify playlists and piles of vinyl the following conclusion becomes rapidly apparent: HONNE sound absolutely, resolutely like themselves.
“No one's ever said to us, oh, you sound just like this person… and that's what we always set out to achieve,” explains James, one half of the East London duo. “A sound where you can hear a few influences maybe, but not directly like something. We didn't want it to be too derivative of anything else.”
His cohort Andy nods in agreement: “For sure. Yeah, because you've got to stand out, don't you, from everyone else, in order to have your own little place. Because you don't want to slip away into insignificance, to a place where everyone is doing the same thing. And I think we do that. You can draw some sort of comparisons, but at the same time I don't think there's a direct comparison.”
There's a sense of soul within HONNE's songwriting, which comes matched to a commitment to melody, to something the postie could sing on his rounds, that comes wrapped in that gorgeous, digitally-drenched production. “Those are the elements,” says James. “But it's not only that, it's the harmonics – some of the chords that we use, it is a little bit soulful, some of the chord progressions. I think at the heart of all our songs there is a 'song', song. A traditional song. If you take everything away and I just say on a piano and Andy sang it then it would sound like a proper, fully formed song.”
Andy clearly agrees. “You could take everything away,” he states, “and it would still have something nice there to play.”
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In the space of just two EPs HONNE have stamped out one of the clearest identities in British pop music. Splitting their time between two home studios, the duo have delivered a plethora of breezy, hazily addictive tracks that veer between lust, love and all out romanticism. What's remarkable, though, is how easy it all seems to be – in conversation, the duo have an easy-going, lackadaisical charm that seems to have been exported straight from the studio.
“When we first started, it was about 18 months ago and we just wrote a whole load of songs,” states James. “Some were slightly different to where we've ended up, but I think as we went along we looked back at those older songs and then updated them, so we could still use them. And it's kind of like that. That's kind of why we wanted to do a couple of Eps, just so we could do some material that wouldn't end up on the album. But it's still good enough for people to hear.”
“It's like trial and error, I guess,” adds Andy. “But it wasn't long before we stumbled across the HONNE sound that we thought was a little bit special. So, y'know, it was good.”
As the project's profile has blossomed the pair have been offered all manner of expensive studio set ups, but have thus far shunned these in favour of their mutual bases in the East London manor of Bow. “I guess you have to find somewhere you're comfortable in,” muses James. “Although having said that it might be interesting to, at some point, get out of your comfort zone and see if that makes any changes. But I think now, leading up to the first album, we'll just stick to what we know at the moment.”
“It's nice playing somewhere where there's no time or financial constraint, he adds. “Knowing you're not spending £500 on a studio means you can just spend hours trying to find one sound that's going to be perfect for the song.”
And it seems that the pair do indeed spend hours upon hours sifting through their equipment just to find that certain sound they hear in their heads. “For me,” sighs Andy, “I'll just listen over and over again to the song, just making little changes here and there, and then I'll go back to it again a couple of days later and do the same thing again.”
James smiles: “I am a tweaker, yeah. But not a twerker! Sometimes you'll spend hours doing it and then you'll realise that actually the sound you had at the very start was way better than what you've ended up with.”
With two EPs already in circulation, it seems that the prospect of an album is what is currently firing the duo's imagination. “The album is the pinnacle, isn't it?” James muses. “You want to release an album and for it to be great.”
“So, on the album, there'll be maybe three, four songs that people will have heard already,” his band-mate adds. “But the rest will be new material, which is already written. In fact the album is, from our side of things, pretty much done.”
The whole project seems to tick along without any friction, with the two chatting amiably, bantering continuously between one another. “I think that's how we manage to write so many songs, because we tend to agree on most things and don't really argue a lot,” James says simply. “We've known each other for, I guess, six or seven years and been working together loosely on songwriting for that whole time. It's like being in a relationship!”
Andy grins: “You want the juicy goss… but there is none!”
Asked about their listening habits, HONNE admit to being enormously diverse. Living in East London, the pair are surrounded by electronic music, with pirate airwaves criss-crossing the skies of Bow. Alongside this, though, the pair admit a lot for pop and R&B – name-checking Usher's 'Climax' and those classic N.E.R.D. singles as real touchstones. So, how big do they want to take this?
“It seems a shame to spend a long time on something and then make it so niche that it's only heard at 1am on specialist radio,” James argues. “But, I don't know, I do love that kind of music as well, and I'm sure there are elements of it that will be like that, but as the same time we're quite happy for it to just get out there, as far as possible.”
And with that, they're off: to tweak (but not to twerk), to pen unimaginably catchy, soft focus digital soul, and marvel at the wonders of Usher's 'Climax'. In their own impossibly nice, incredibly charming way HONNE are completely unstoppable.
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'Over Lover' EP is out now.
