One of the most exciting voices of 2013, London Grammar , sat down for a chat in the midst of the build up to the release of their debut album ‘ If You Wait’ , which was released Friday night (September 6) in Australia. Dot Major , who plays piano and percussion, gave us a little insight into how they got together, the recording process, covering ‘ Nightcall ’ from the Drive soundtrack, how the Disclosure collaboration happened, a brief interaction with Alt-J in a luggage terminal and their plans to tour down under.
London Grammar
***
Marcus Rimondini: Hey, how are we doing?
London Grammar: Yeah good, yourself?
MR: Yeah good, is it 8am for you, are you currently in the UK?
LG: Yeah!
MR: Have you had a coffee?
LG: Yeah I actually have literally just got up, made a coffee, sat back in bed.
MR: Has this become common practice these early mornings?
LG: Yeah, so apologies for my voice.
MR: Where exactly are you right now?
LG: I’m just at my flat in Camden in London.
MR: Have you all moved down together to London, is that now your base?
LG: Yeah, but lucky I was already sort of living here and the other two are from London – I’m not from London, I’m from Southampton. So yeah, we’re all living here now.
MR: Just a little side question, but is Dot Major your real name?
LG: Major is my real surname, my Christian name is Dominic. It originally started when I was in Southampton, they used to call me Dot as a kid and it kind of stuck. I never really liked Dom.
MR: London Grammar started at Nottingham University. How did that happen? How did you all get together?
LG: They were in the year above me at University and were all in the same hall actually. The year before I met them they kind of became friends and then they started just playing covers and then they started writing together just before I joined the band really, and when I joined they had already written some songs together. Originally I just had a jam with Dan and then once we started getting more interested we just developed a sort of sound and I started playing piano.
MR: How’s the build up for the album release going?
LG: We’re just getting into it now, we have a lot of fresh things planned for radio, which I guess is the main thing in terms of promoting the album. Got a few live sessions for Radio 1.
MR: The album took 18 months to record. Did the tracks come out one by one or bulk recording sessions?
LG: The album wasn’t a clean album making process, in terms of we never really had two weeks writing then two weeks recording and that was it. It was more of a drawn out process and there are songs on there that were written right at the beginning period of the band and there are songs that were written very recently, so there’s kind of some differences across the album. What happened was we were recording for a while and then once we got into the newer songs, which were actually the some of the ones we released first like ‘ Hey Now ’, we released that’s what we wanted some of the old songs to sound like as well. So we went back and reproduced those.
MR: What’s the recording process? Is it collective process or does Hannah come in with a melody and you build off her?
LG: It changes a lot. Most the time it’s just the three of us in the room and we just jam stuff a lot of the time and the lyrics tend to come last. Hannah writes all the top lines and then Dan will write some guitar or I’ll write some piano or vice versa. There are two or three songs on the record that Hannah kind of wrote on her own and brought them to the band and we arranged them after that. Then we go to the studio and it kind of just forms, really.
MR: On the album there’s a cover of ‘Nightcall’ from the Drive soundtrack. Whose idea was that?
LG: One the guys who produced the record, Roy Kerr , had the idea to do that cover. We were already debating a couple covers from Michael Jackson , stuff like that. It all just came out in an evening, 99 per cent of it is just vocals, guitar and piano. Completely live, sort of one take in the studio, while we’re in separate rooms. Then we just added a couple strings. .
MR: You guys have been described as a cross between The xx and Florence and The Machine . I personally hear more of Daughter or Bat For Lashes . Who else influences you guys?
LG: We do like Daughter, I’m surprised not more people mention them because I think when listening to them, out of all the new bands at the moment, I think we’re much more similar to them than anyone else I can think of. In terms of modern bands that we like, we’re all into The National , Alt-J and Radiohead . We’re influence by a lot of film soundtracks, stuff like Thomas Newman .
MR: How did the video clip for ‘ Wasting My Young Years ’ come together?
LG: It was a high risk production, because basically it’s all on film, essentially hundreds of pin hole cameras in one circle, open up the all the shutters and exposure. Then make them all flash at one particular time, then play all those pin holes in a series, effectively making the video, one moment at a time from different perspectives, rather than a normal video which from one perspective, but the rig was flawed in the sense that we had this lady that would literally pull the film around and every time they wanted to change the film, we had to turn all the lights off in the whole building and it was really mad and quite stressful.
MR: How long did the shoot take?
LG: Well the actual filming was in one extremely long day, but the result was just amazing. The guys who did are so intelligent and forward thinking.
MR: This is a question you’ve probably been asked a thousand times, but how did the Disclosure collaboration happen?
LG: We’re really good friends with their manager and they showed them our stuff, a couple tracks off the album that were early demos and they liked it, and they really loved Hannah’s voice and so they asked if we’d go in the studio with them and then Hannah basically wrote this top line. Howard and Guy had already kind of made the track in about 10 minutes before we went there. They worked so quickly. They made that beat really quickly and we experimented with a few ideas, but then it ended up being pretty much exactly the beat they made before going into the studio. Hannah and Howard basically wrote the lyrics and that was it really.
MR: When they played it live at Coachella , they had a face that resembled Hannah’s face between the two of them, during the song. Did they film Hannah’s face for that?
LG: I didn’t realise they were going to do that and Hannah didn’t either, they didn’t film Hannah’s face as far as I know. I think at some point it will be Hannah.
MR: Have you played it live with them?
LG: No, we will in the future, I’m sure.
MR: Speaking of festivals, you’ve played Live at Leeds , Great Escape , Night + Day and MELT! Festival . Is there any act you’ve met that you were really excited to meet?
LG: When we played at MELT! We were on this flight and basically the lead singer of Alt-J was checking out our luggage and was trying to figure out who we were and he didn’t know what we looked like and realised it said London Grammar. He came over and said “I didn’t realise who you guys were, I really like your stuff”. So that was cool.
MR: On the topic of touring, are you expecting to come down to Australia for our festival season at the end of the year?
LG: Yeah, we’ll hopefully be there around the turn of the new year, we’re so stoked for that. We’ll see you then.
***
WORDS BY Marcus Rimondini
Comments
.