Bristol Rough Trade – 19th June
Django Django today announce the release of ‘Off Planet’, an album in four parts, set for a full release on 16th June 2023 via Because Music.
LISTEN TO “COMPLETE ME” (FT. SELF ESTEEM) HERE
PRE-ORDER ‘OFF PLANET’ HERE
The fifth full-length studio album from the UK four-piece was conceptualised by Django Django co-founder and powerhouse Dave Maclean, buzzing on ufology as “a way to go beyond”, to bring new voices, new rhythms, new experimentation into play, and effectively to deconstruct the band’s identity.
Released in four parts, each as a separate “planet”, ‘Off Planet’ is the biggest, boldest, and most varied statement the band have made, with a cavalcade of mainstream and underground stars – Self Esteem, Jack Peñate, StealingSheep, Toya Delazy and many more, all of them either friends of the band or personally sought out by Dave – bringing entirely new creative angles into play. From bluesy pop and Middle Eastern cabaret goth to Afro acid and piano rave, to call it kaleidoscopic is putting it mildly. Despite at times not sounding like anything on their previous releases, ‘Off Planet’ is very much still recognisably Django Django.
‘Off Planet’ Part 1, which features the first five tracks from the full length-album, is available to stream today, here.
“Complete Me” ft. Self Esteem, the first single to be shared from the album’s Part 1, is an explosion of 90’s inspired breakbeat. Packed with organs, pianos and synth strings, the track makes Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s hooks completely irresistible, as if echoing from some familiar memory. A long associate of the band, Self Esteem released her first EP on Dave’s Kick + Clap label, appearing on 2018’s Marble Skies and supporting the Djangos on tour.
Of the song, Maclean says, “The instrumental for Complete Me was made sometime in 2020 or 21 when the world was in lockdown and I was making music in my garden shed studio. It was a dance track that I didn’t really know what to do with. I sent it to Rebecca and she loved the vibe of it and really quickly came up with some vocal ideas that kind of stuck straight away and locked well with the track. The production was inspired by a lot of 90s breakbeat house and hip-house records that I’ve always been really into and loved Djing with over the years.”
DJANGO DJANGO – ‘OFF PLANET’
NEW ALBUM – OUT 16 JUNE, VIA BECAUSE MUSICPRE-SAVE/PRE-ORDER HERELISTEN TO ‘OFF PLANET’ PART 1 NOW HERE
******
Full album tracklist:
1. Wishbone
2. Complete Me ft. Self Esteem
3. Osaka
4. Hands High ft Refound*
5. Lunar Vibrations ft Isabelle Woodhouse
6. Don’t Touch That Dial ft. Yuuko
7. Back to Back ft. Patience
8. Squid Inc
9. Come Down
10. Golden Cross
11. No Time ft. Jack Penate
12. A New Way Through
13. Galaxy Mood ft. Toya Delazy
14. The Oh Zone
15. Dead Machine ft. Stealing Sheep
16. Dumb Drum
17. Fluxus
18. Slipstream
19. Who You Know ft. Bernardo
20. Black Cadillac
21. Gazelle
Django Django began with, and remain driven by, the core of Dundee-born Dave and Vincent Neff from Derry, Northern Ireland, who met at Edinburgh school of art. Dave was, and is, an obsessive music collector who started DJing spacey jungle / drum’n’bass and then played and produced all kinds of electronic and experimental grooves from dancehall to krautrock and library music, but with a solid heart of raw American house and techno. Vinny meanwhile had grown up on rave and indie from his older sisters and was finding his own voice as a singer-songwriter. On moving to London they began making tracks together – Vinny’s songs and Dave’s arrangements – but it quickly blurred with both writing and structuring songs. Vinny’s natural facility with writing harmonies became a key part of the sound, and with the addition of keyboardist Tommy Grace and Yorkshire-born bassist Jimmy Dixon, they became the fully-fledged band that has carried on to today.
‘Off Planet’, the band’s fifth album, began with Dave’s beats. Throughout lockdown and the surrounding period he had been super prolific, returning to his DJ roots and making standalone dance tracks – and at the start of the album process they went back to the original core pattern of Vinny writing over these beats (“fast and furious because he was making them faster than I could process them!”). Initially Dave was also making a lot of instrumental electronic tracks “very specifically to be not Django Django”, but as the writing process went on and tunes were passed to Tommy and Jimmy to write parts for, the idea of having a whole load of guests crystallised, and in fact Dave’s more ravey or hip-hop beats suddenly made sense when they imagined different voices on them and reaching out to friends or, in one case, just googling “Japanese rapper” (Yuuko). Just as the Django sound had evolved in the first instance from Dave’s immersion in club culture and Vinny’s songwriting, to become fully formed as they became a band, so the process was repeated on this album, albeit with grander ambition and a whole lot more participants.
From some 50 initial sketches on Dave’s original beats, the shape of the four “planets” began to become clear, and so did the songs, and during a week playing and recording together in the Scottish countryside at Dave’s family home in Polbain in the far northwest, it all became “Djangofied”. Off Planet remains fully functional as four separate “planets”, but the full rocket ride around them all is, incredibly, an even more coherent and enjoyable experience.
Flowing through all of this, too, is the emergent sense of cosmic wonder: as Dave puts it, “just about everything we love, whether that’s old psychedelia or Detroit techno, has that futuristic or outer space feel, and I think we can’t help putting that into what we do.” The term ‘Off Planet‘ comes from Dave’s obsession with ufology: it’s a term for hyper-advanced technologies kept secret from the populace. And perhaps that natural sense of the scale and potential of music and art as a technology itself is what has allowed them to very naturally align all their planets, to make sense and coherence from the ludicrous palette of colours they presented themselves with. Whatever it was, it worked, and whether you take ‘Off Planet’ one part at a time or all at once, you’re immediately taken into the Djangos’ universe.
*****
UK LIVE DATES
JUNE
16 – LONDON, Rough Trade East
19 – BRISTOL Rough Trade
21 – NOTTINGHAM Rough Trade
JULY
20 BLUEDOT FESTIVAL, Jodrell Bank
@thebristolnomad / @bristolnomad_gigphotography
Role: Photographer / Reviewer / Interviewer
Chief, the one that bugs the team for team for their reviews and images. Creator and founder of The Bristol Gig Guide. Can usually be found swamped in admin or getting cramp kneeling at the front of a gig.
Available for: Gig Shoots, Gig Reviews, Photo Shoots, Album and Single cover shoots, Videography work, Interviews and Touring
First attended gig: Republica, circa 1996.
First gig shot: Hands Off Gretel, at The Louisiana!
Dream gig: Huge metalhead and my ultimate dream gig would be shooting my heroes Slipknot at a huge stadium gig, or as festival headliners. And to experience shooting a headline tour outside the UK
