Ladytron - Dynamic synth-pop

DYNAMIC SYNTH-POP

by Stefano Bartolotta

To mark the release of their first Best Of, with a fifth album already announced for September, we sent Ladytron a series of questions by email. The answers, courtesy of Reuben Wu, make it clear just how alien the idea of resting on their laurels still is to the band, and how they simply can't help reinventing themselves every time.

Do you see this compilation as a way of stating what the best part of your work has been so far? Or do you think its purpose is more to entice people who don't know you yet to listen to your music?

It's definitely a combination of these two aspects. We wanted to make clear which songs, for us, best represent who we are and how we've grown over this period in which we've made five albums; we didn't want this to just be a simple playlist of the singles we've released over the years. You can find that kind of playlist on Wikipedia too. I think if you consider the best songs to simply be the singles, you've lost sight of how broad the spectrum of music a band is capable of writing can be. We like the highs and lows that characterize every album, and I don't think this one is an exception to that rule.

We wanted the first song to be "Destroy Everything You Touch" because it's the best known and probably has the biggest impact. In general we decided the album should open with a run of the more immediate tracks, rather than leaving them for the end. I think that when you're dealing with a retrospective collection, time becomes more of a variable than a rule. Again, it comes back to creating an album's dynamism through highs and lows.

It's also one of my favorite songs. We played it live when we did our first tour of the US and Europe, but we soon dropped it in favor of newer songs from the second album. Personally, it's a song I like to listen to but not to play live. I think it lacks a certain dynamism that's needed for a song to work in our live performance. It is actually included on the deluxe version of the compilation though, on the second disc, alongside tracks like "Another Breakfast With You", "Evil" and "High Rise".

Initially it was very hard to put together a tracklist of 17 songs, which is already not short. In the end we decided to also have a second disc, included only in the deluxe version, with the songs we prefer among the lesser-known ones, like "Mu-tron" or "Versus". That second disc more or less sorted things out in the end, and the deluxe edition also has much nicer packaging, thanks in part to a booklet containing photos of us that no one has ever seen before.

Some moments are definitely more important than others. Going to the US for our first tour during a snowstorm was a real baptism of fire, back in 2002. Shooting the video for "Ghosts" in the salt-flat house in El Mirage in the Mojave Desert was an incredible experience. Playing at the Sydney Opera House with Brian Eno in 2008, and in general playing very big shows in places where we'd never have expected to have such a huge following, like Russia, China, Mexico and Colombia.

One thing we avoid while making music is drawing too much from the past in general. We love a ton of old music, but those are just influences. From the very start we wanted to make new, original music without creating a pastiche. As a result, every record sounds slightly different from the others. There's actually no deliberate intention to make a record sound a certain way, it seems to happen instinctively. I think you can hear a clearly defined musical evolution if you listen to all five of our albums.

"Gravity the Seducer" has a calmer pace than "Velocifero", but it too has its own dark side. To me it sounds more spacious and reflective, whereas "Velocifero" was quite dynamic and frantic. "Gravity the Seducer" has a more airy atmosphere.

We recorded it last year in Kent at Barney Barnicott's studio, the producer who already worked with us on "Witching Hour". The difference this time is that we had a lot of space and time to write and produce the songs, whereas before we used to write songs during breaks in touring and then go into the studio to record them at the end of a world tour. We also worked with Alessandro Contini, who was with us on the last record too.

We'll be playing a lot of interesting places this year, I can't wait.

It hasn't really changed us much, to be honest, but it does give us the feeling that we've earned the position we're in now after twelve years of hard work. When we started making music, it wasn't just frustrating having to deal with outdated analogue gear, but also with software that kept crashing and slow computers. Nowadays it's taken for granted that you can make music easily the moment you buy a computer. Plus, making music with synths is now widely seen as completely normal, whereas back then I remember we always had to defend ourselves when people asked why on earth we were using those old keyboards.

Both. I think it all comes down to the music - a synthesizer is nothing without a song.

We're working more with other artists these days, both in songwriting and production. There will probably be some decent side-project material coming out in the future. As for me, beyond music, I've been getting more and more into photography - I see it as something to work on without the constraints that come with music.

***

by Marco Bercella

You can tell there was real substance behind this project just by looking at Ladytron's artistic trajectory. Born amid the first stirrings of the electro sound that marked the end of the millennium, ready to ride the disco-leaning mood stirred up by Air's “Sexy Boy” with “Playgirl”, Ladytron have gradually managed to shake off the label of a band born out of a passing trend, an image that helped bury many similar bands that emerged in those years. Their move away from easy listening in favour of increasingly elaborate sounds, coupled with an intense live schedule, has earned them the respect - won entirely on the field - of major names on the world rock scene. It's a work of both image and substance that today places the Liverpool band in that enviable limbo between underground culture and the big stages. Waiting, perhaps, for the final leap. In our conversation with Daniel Hunt, we can pick up on many of these elements, underlined by an uncommon clarity and sharpness. And by a good dose of irony too, which certainly doesn't hurt. 

You put your latest album “Velocifero“ up for streaming on “Myspace”. What's your take on this new promotional system?

I think the good thing is that it lets people hear the record in the right order. I think that matters: songs amplify each other when they're in a particular sequence, and nowadays that aspect gets undervalued far too often. Downloading random mp3s and listening to them in whatever order is a bit like taking a great film and only watching a few clips of it on “YouTube”. These days, anything that helps preserve the integrity of your work matters.

 Nine Inch Nails, who you also toured with, sold their new album online, and Radiohead did more or less the same thing, and the results were, I believe, good. Do you think that's the future of the music industry? Just musicians and listeners, I mean, with no record labels involved…

It's actually a bit different. Radiohead sold their record first and then released it. That's not quite the same thing!

For bands of their stature it's easy enough, but when it comes to labels… well, for example, we wouldn't even have the chance to do this interview if we didn't have a label. That shows that bands still need people working alongside them. There's so much work going on behind the scenes that the average listener can't even imagine, and that bands simply can't handle on their own. The solution is for the deal to be fair for everyone and for there to be trust on both sides: I'd call it "independent ethics".

Let's talk about your origins. Even though you all come from different places, you ended up together in Liverpool - how did you start playing music?

We started in 1999 when we made an EP for a Japanese label, which later became the basis for our first album. But we really understood our lives were changing only once we started properly touring. Helen was studying in Liverpool, where both Reuben and I lived. The Liverpool scene is small, everyone knows each other. I was DJing in lots of little clubs and used to see Helen around a lot. Mira, on the other hand, was introduced to me by a friend. That's when we really became a band.

Let's move on to the choice of name… I've always found it adorable, especially since I love Roxy Music… Was it a tribute to that band, or did you simply like the sound of that phrase for the band's name?

It's just a name, no tribute intended: that would sound a bit ridiculous. Yes, we like Roxy Music, but that's not why we called ourselves that. It's a cool name, whether it's funny or whatever else…

Liverpool is the city of major new wave bands, like Teardrop Explodes, Echo & The Bunnymen, OMD (the latter used synthesizers a lot, like you do). Do you feel indebted in some way to that movement, or are your musical references different?

Sure, that scene influenced me enormously. I used to read Julian Cope's autobiography “Head On” over and over when I was a kid. Looking back, I'd say Echo and the Bunnymen were the most important band for me, for my growth. And today it's a really strange feeling to have Ian and Will as friends!

Your sound has changed a lot since the days of “Playgirl”. Can you tell me how it's evolved over the years?

Well, nobody wants to sit still for nine years sticking to the same idea. It's simple: you either evolve or you die. There's always a part of the audience that wants a band to stay the same forever, which spells creative death for people with eclectic tastes. Anyone who wants to can always go back and listen to the first album - there's no need to make it all over again.

Let's talk about your latest album. It seems to me that “Velocifero” has pushed your rock approach even further… a kind of electronic "wall of sound". It doesn't seem designed for clubs, the way your early work perhaps was… 

I wouldn't say our early work was designed for clubs - we did remixes that were, and still are. “Playgirl” is perhaps the only track that was really originally aimed at dancefloors.

Why did you choose to record the album between Paris and Los Angeles? Were you perhaps trying to get a production that was as "un-English" as possible?

I hate England. Seriously, I hate working there. Paris made sense because Vicarious Bliss was based there, and Los Angeles because that's where Michael Patterson was. Recording abroad is a good exercise, it gives you a fresh perspective.

On this album too, it seems to me, there are parts sung in Bulgarian, so much so that it's become something of a trademark of yours by now. How does the English audience take it? I ask because over there people have never been especially open to languages other than English…

I've always loved music sung in other languages. I learned a lot of French listening to Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy. Now I'm learning Italian from Righeira (laughs, ed.). As for the Bulgarian, that's Mira's mother tongue, and the first track she recorded was Commodore Rock, improvised in my little studio. It was spontaneous and it worked. Mira kept developing the idea, and the lyrics are more developed now too; it's a very rhythmic language that works brilliantly with this kind of track. The funny thing is that in England some people think we just grabbed some random Bulgarian, and sometimes they're so clueless they can't even work out what nationality Mira is. A review recently said she sings in French.

You're a band that loves playing live a lot: what kind of gear do you use? Nowadays a lot of bands rely heavily on laptops even in live shows, but you seem to prefer a more immediate sound, or am I wrong?

We like the “power” that a live show can unleash. Personally I find laptops limiting, it's a bit like playing to playback: you see all these people kitted out with midi devices but they're rarely actually doing anything, they're just standing there tweaking filters and other gadgets. They're basically acting as DJs. I understand it's an easy and cheap way to tour, and that it's also cool, but when you watch shows like that on big stages you get a feeling of coldness. I'm not saying our way is the only right one, but it's what we like, and that's why we keep playing live. If we didn't enjoy it, we wouldn't do it.

What kind of music do you listen to, and how much does it influence your sound?

It's impossible to answer that question, and you know it! Seriously, whenever I hear this question my mind goes completely blank! Last track I listened to: Akt –Prince, “No Deserto Vermelho”.

What do Ladytron get up to away from the studio and the stage? Any other interests besides music? Liverpool has two major football clubs, for instance…

Sure! I follow Liverpool FC with all my heart, and at the same time I try to keep up my friendships in Italy… (we believe the references to Italian clubs recently put to the sword by the Reds are entirely intentional, ed.)

How much does friendship among you matter in a band like yours? I mean, is it more important for you to be a tight-knit group of musicians, or true friends?

It's hugely important. We're not real musicians, we're not your typical band, and I think that's actually a strength. We've been together for a long time and we've become like a family.

What's your relationship with other art forms?

Art is food for the soul, and I should get more of it. I have friends who run art galleries and always invite me along, but I'm too lazy. Art matters, and supporting it is a responsibility. 

My girlfriend is a great artist, and so are many of my friends. I feel it's an area I'd like to explore more. The others are maybe more into it, I'm always so distracted. We all love the artists of AVAF (Assume Vivid Astro Focus, a collective of artists based in New York, as well as the alias of Brazilian artist Eli Sudbrack, ed.), they're the ones who created the artwork for the new album. We'd already worked together before, performing at one of their installations at the Tate Gallery in 2005.

What future do you picture for Ladytron?

When we started out, we'd planned to release a single, play a couple of shows, put out an EP. We never imagined we'd tour the United States with sold-out shows every night, with so many people showing up just to meet us, including people who had been role models for us. We've never planned further than six months ahead, and it's more or less the same now. We'll tour behind this album and see how it goes. We already have demos ready for a new album, something more downbeat and abstract that we wrote while working on “Velocifero”.

Thanks to Laura Lucia Rossi for the translation

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