An interview with Jimmy Dixon, from Django Django.
It’s mid december. Chrismas Trees glint out of the tiny houses of Amsterdam. The city is packed with people and in front of a concert venue people push their ways through a little Christmas market. It’s holiday season! And my cheeks glow as I’m in this eddy, too, seeking my way to the concert hall to meet Jimmy Dixon for an interview. He plays the bass in Django Django, one of UK’s most famous contemporary bands. In the evening they will perform the last concert of their European Tour in Amsterdam’s Melkweg, in front of about 1000 people. The show is sold out. And I am a bit nervous for the interview.
Since I first met Django Django in 2012 the four-headed band now look back to a great trajectory of success. No one of the young men had expected any response to the first record, but this presumption twisted right around. They received a nomination for the great British Mercury Prize and turned out to be one of Karl Lagerfeld‘s favourite bands (and played for him!). The music press went crazy for their sound, which is regarded as post-psychedelic, blues influenced, new wavy psych-surf-pop. Music without comparison and praised in all music magazines and online blogs. Their sound is drums and rhythm driven – coconuts, triangles and all kind of synths are not to be missed – all surrounded by hymnal lyrics. The second album “Born Under Saturn” was published this year and as loved as the first one. I want to find out about the development the band made; and of cause about the sculpture on the front of the new cover, the mythical songs and this earwig creating sound… And so I am here again, feeling bit of an inexplicable pressure, but, as to find out in the interview, I am not the only one who knows that feeling …
ilCartello: Since your first Album “Django Django” appeared in 2012 a lot happened. You became incredibly loved by the music scene, travelled the world playing and got a great prize nomination. How do you feel about this time, how has it effected you?
DD: It doesn’t feel like that we have changed that much as people since we first met and started making music, to be honest. I guess, in terms of making the second record, we didn’t really think that much about the pressure – Regarding the first record, there were no expectations and nobody knew what it is going to be like, who we were … There wasn’t any pressure.. I guess the second record is slightly different. We didn’t feel that much pressure until a week before the album came out and then it was like: “Oh Shit. People are going to listen to this and people going to judge it.” It changed, it has become a fulltime job, where there are expectations. Now you are locked in a cycle where you write an album, you tour the album and then your write another album.
ilC: But that is what you always wanted to do, right? Or do you think that now … it could become … boring? Or that there may be a lack of inspirations?
DD: One just tries to keep doing other things, you know? Dave and Thommy* wrote the music for a play of the Royal Shakespeare Company last year … I never actually heard the music, because I never managed to see it, but … I think that kind of things influenced the tracks of the new album. I guess it is kind of… it quite a dark play. So a lot of the music we made was quite sinister sounding and dark, which blend into the new album. And we did a track for a film called “Slow West” as well, who Dave’s brother directed. It is very good, you should see it, is about the early settlers …
* Dave Maclean plays the drums & Thommy Grace is the synthesizer operator of the band
ilC: …the last time I met you, you told me, “You know, one of our songs is in the new FIFA Game…”, and now you tell me, “Oh, you know, one of our songs is in this movie…” It is a nice jump and development, isn’t it?
DD: Yeah, totally (laughs) That’s how you keep things fresh rather then … I think, it is quite important to have this little side projects that run parallel to the band music. Otherwise you just end up in the cycle making a Django record and then playing live, making another Django record… It is nice to have other things, that aren’t as pressured… The nice thing about doing the song for the film was, that it didn’t have to sound like ours … It wasn’t limited by the band. So you could just do anything….Sometimes I find it really difficult to sit down and write a song. You always got it in the back of the head the feeling, that it needs to sound like a Django song … But, I guess, in the end it’s always gonna go back to something that sounds like Django, you know?
ilC: Yeah, I understand. You have your identity and no one is ever able to take of all of it. So your second album do sound different, although it has this Django vibe… Due to the lyrics and the artwork of the new album, I got the feeling, that it has a some, ancient Greece touch … How did the artwork came up and in which ways is it related to the album?
DD: Yeah I think it is a … Greek statue. A girl that we know, that is studying at St. Martins Art School in London, I think….She found a picture of the statue in a book in a library, and put a sweet on the image of the sculpture; took a picture of it for Instagram. We saw it and thought that is really nice. – So we asked her if we could use it … Whilst Dave was doing the Shakespeare thing he found a book called Born Under Saturn in a second-hand book shop. It is this really heavy kind of thesis of … it is an art history kind of book. The frase Born Under Saturn basically means that you have an artistic temperament …
ilC: I thought … You know, Saturn is the God of fighting in the ancient Latin culture as well – I had that in mind…
DD: The name of the sculpture as well is The Sluggard … A lot of Grecian sculpture where quite …were depicting quite strong male characters. The sculpture that we used is like a guy who looks like he is just waking up and … Sluggard means: Quite lazy … So it kind of had this weird… I guess – just putting that title with the image seemed to make sense. There where a lot of things that tied the two together and then things that repelled them as well, which was quite nice. And I guess, the first record had a busy front cover. It was quite full on sleeve. So we just wanted something that is a bit simple and clean … And the book title: I think Dave thought it was gonna be like an esoteric book or something, but it was just that heavy art theory book….
ilC: As I understand and somehow interpret the album, I felt that there was a great emphasis laid on astrological symbols and effects. The lyrics orbit around … a sky clouding over, sun coming out … Yeh, it is always about dissolving something old or then dissolving the night and then … feeling good with the new. I think this dissolving is a recurring motif. There is some song where it says …“What does it matter, the world will still spin. Another day ends, and the end will begin again.” .. I think Break the Glass ?
DD: Oh yeah, yeah, I think so .. I guess it was kind of weird because there was not any point where we sat down and kind of agreed on this idea of regeneration or start a refresh or … struggles between light and shade but I think when we got the album together and we picked the songs for the album, it became obvious that these themes kept on recurring. So it was quite nice to see that, that there was a common threat that rand through most of the songs about … yeah starting again, which kind of makes sense, because we kind of were like this . We had all that success of the first album and we were like ..Ok we need to start again, and do something different, I guess …
ilC: Yeah I thought… maybe this big, unexpected success was amazing but .. as it was so unexpected and stuff, maybe also a bit … kind of … heavy ?
DD: Yeah yeah, I think the album all in all is quite heavy. I think it got much saying about … It got a darker on ground. We used a lot a minor chords …
ilC: Yeah you totally hear it, the music gives you this melancholic mood, but it in a… very subtle way.
DD: A mood for Melancholy … (loughs) Yeah, no but I know what you mean. By the time you release the record, you just want to move on and start new stuff, but I find it quite difficult to listen to the set. I have not listened to the second album for quite a while – Maybe because it feels like a full on record. I guess we just threw everything at it. It feels quite … heavy, or something….
ilC: Doing and album you may get rid about a lot of things, feelings… You may put everything in an artwork, a writing, a play or in a record and if you listened to it again everything would come back to you.
DD: Yeah, maybe. I guess that is the thing. Making an album is … like making a piece of art or something. – It says something about where you are at that particular time. I think when you’ve finished it and you move on … it is maybe, you know, more difficult to go back to it and look at it. I think it is the same with making music. When you have done something you want to go on from it. I always thought that this is a nice thing about making art work, it is not this progression, not this upward trajectory …. it is this peaks and troughs, it is almost like a mapping out of your life … In twenty years we will be probably still making music, but it will be completely different and it will be … completely different to the music we have been making in the twenties or whatever, but I think it is a nice thing.
ilC: Yeah and in the music you are able to fix, to capture a certain kind of feeling which one might be unable to transform into words or a painting, I mean … With music you are able to create a really certain kind of mood …
DD: I totally agree, I guess the reason people make music is to effect people’s emotions in a way that other things maybe can’t. That is why you listen to music, and why you make music. It allows you to upon up emotionally, I guess. Whereas other things wouldn’t help to do that, like reading a book, sitting in front of a painting or … riding a bike, or whatever.
ilC: I always struggle a bit when I find something that effects me, I am curious about the story, the people behind a record, a painting or whatever. I ask myself: Do I really want to know everything, or would it destroy my feelings about it..?! It is the same way around with your music: I thought “Should I really talk about, do an interview, make up my mind or should I just listen to it and enjoy it as it is , without any …. further information…
DD: I mean like… It was funny, after we released the second record and we were doing interviews, people picked up upon certain things in the lyrics, they were repeating questions about thing that we never thought about and it is like … Well, once you make something like a painting or a song and it is out there, people have their own relationship to it, and they take their own little story from it, it may be even something that you have not intended to happen. Again, I think that it is a nice thing. You can pin your own experiences and emotions to something – Which is again, amazing about music, and art, and writing, …
In the new year after their Austrialian Tour, the Djangos will get back together and frame the scretches and music ideas to a new album. I can’t wait to listen to what were on their minds … So Merry Christmas and a happy, exhilarating and creative 2016!
