Django Django
Born Under Saturn
(Because Music)
Speaking to the Sunday Herald in 2012, the year his band's self-titled debut album was nominated for the Mercury Prize, Django Django drummer Dave Maclean said he expected work on the group's second album to commence in early 2013 and for it to take place in a remote part of their native Scotland. He wanted, he said, to instil a sense of "cabin fever" in his bandmates and foresaw an album either recorded "as live" or built on pared-back beats and minimal instrumentation.
In the end none of this came to pass. The acclaim which followed the Mercury nomination resulted in extended touring commitments - Django Django closed 2013 playing to 60,000 people at Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations - and that in turn pushed back the start of recording, which eventually took place not in Scotland but at two venues in southern England: in Hackney, the epicentre of British hipsterdom and close to the band members' East London homes, and a state-of-the-art residential studio in Oxfordshire.
And Born Under Saturn is very definitely a studio album: deeper, broader and glossier than its predecessor, there's a richness to it that could never see it described as minimal or pared-back. There's nothing as insanely catchy as Default, the stand-out song on the band's debut album, but that just adds to the cohesive feel. The spirit of early Pink Floyd is still evident and the songs are powered by the band's trademark close vocal harmonies and sinewy tunes but there's less of the mixtape mentality which previously threw rockabilly, surf guitar, 1960s psychedelia and techno into the mix too. Sure, the guitar parts on Shake And Tremble blend the glam stomp of Suzi Quatro with the twangy garage rock of The Ventures and there are electro-style phrasings throughout as well as the odd wobbly drum break and B-Movie sound effect. But these now feel less like nods to something else and more like parts of a bigger collage.
As for the lyrics, there are interesting new flavours creeping in, inspired perhaps by the band's extra-curricular activities. In the last couple of years Maclean has visited Mali with Damon Albarn's Africa Express project; recorded the soundtrack for Slow West, the directorial debut of his elder brother (and former Beta Band mainstay) John Maclean; and collaborated with bandmate Tommy Grace on music for an RSC production of John Webster's bloody Jacobean tragedy, The White Devil. So perhaps it's no co-incidence that First Light, which tells of seeing beaches lying buried under cement and travelling through hailstones to reach "new shores", relates some kind of voyage of discovery. Compass in hand, Django Django are still travelling hopefully, it seems, and on this evidence are increasingly confident that their direction is true.
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