From the dilapidated tourist town of Bangor, Northern Ireland, Two Door Cinema Club emerge wielding short, sharp indie pop songs to dance to. Alchemising guitar-driven melodies into floor-filling electronica, their debut album Tourist History is on the brink of release on French electro label Kitsuné, but the buzz surrounding the band already is well underway.
So you’ve been working on the album for a while. What can people expect?
It’s ten tracks and only about thirty-five minutes long, so all of the songs are pretty short, sharp and to the point. I think it’s something that’s both nice to listen to in one go, and also easy to dip in and out of as well. Every reaction we’ve had so far has been phenomenal. The album came out in Japan yesterday and it went really well in the first day anyway. So we’re very excited to hear what people think of it. Obviously we’ve been with the album since July when we started recording. Hopefully people will like it.
What’s the story behind the album’s title, Tourist History?
We all grew up in Bangor and lived there pretty much our whole lives, and in the 40s, 50s and 60s that was the big tourist town in Northern Ireland. Like how English people went to Blackpool on their holidays, Northern Irish people went to Bangor. We grew up from the ashes of that, when all those tourist attractions were being demolished and the place was in decline a little bit. That’s where all our songs were written. And then when we went on tour, every time we played in a new city, we felt like tourists, no-one had heard of us and no-one had heard our songs. It referenced where we were from, and having to leave to record the album.
So you use sequenced drums on a laptop instead of a real life drummer. Which one gets more viruses?
Oddly enough our laptop has never really had a virus thankfully. We have employed a session drummer to play live recently. He probably talks back to us a bit more than the laptop does.
Do you think the laptop made you a different band than you would have been with a drummer?
We’d be a lot more pop-indie if we didn’t have the laptop. At first it was a necessity, because we didn’t know anybody. So we started trying to do proper drums on the laptop, which sounded a bit shit. We began to realise we had a huge archive of sounds we could use. We had no boundaries. So we made the drums a bit more electronic, a bit more interesting.
Do you think you’re part of any particular scene?
Up until last Easter we were very much part of the Belfast scene, but then we moved over to London to do the record, so we were out of that. Now we’re not really part of any scene. We don’t want to be part of any scene, we don’t want to be a London band. If anything we want to be a Belfast band, but we’re not in Belfast enough to be part of that any more.
What about Kitsuné?
That’s definitely brought out the electro side to us, and having a lot of remixes to our singles has been pretty good. It’s been instrumental to our success, especially in Europe, it’s just made us a bit cooler. They’ve been really helpful, they have a big following in France and Germany which has been great.
How was working with Philippe Zdar [of French house giants Cassius] on the record?
Oh man, it was amazing. We’d done the album with Elliot James and then we went over to Paris to mix the singles with him, and it was unbelievable. He’s just a genius, he’s the best dance producer around, I would say. He just had the ability to make things sparkle a bit more.
Is that what he brought to it? A kind of extra sparkle?
Yeah, and making the kick a bit punchier, the bass a bit more driving. More floor-fillers, basically.
A comparison you get a lot is to Bloc Party, but I don’t see that so much myself. Is there anyone making music right now you’d compare yourself to?
I think the band we are most similar to at the moment is probably Phoenix, that mix of indie guitar, pop and electronics. We’re also very different to them, but that kind of vibe.
Tourist History on Kitsune is available now.
Words: Karl McDonald
