Darkstar emerged in a hail of praise when their dubsteppy early 12 inches Need You and Aidys Girls A Computer appeared all full of 2-step rhythms and ghost-in-the-machine chopped up vocal samples. Needless to say it was a little surprising when their full-length debut North was an album of dark electronica more influenced by Thom Yorke, John Carpenter soundtracks and classic OMD with nary a skittering rimshot to be found anywhere. Totally Dublin picked producer/composer James Young’s brain ahead of their forthcoming visit.
Darkstar are playing the Workman’s Club on February 11th 2011 with support from Visionair and DJ Donal Dineen.
You scrapped a whole different version of your album last year before you making North. Was there a specific point where you thought: “this isn’t working”?
No I think it was working. The tracks were working but our tastes had changed. We didn’t really want to make music for clubs anymore. I was still DJing but I wasn’t really putting as much research into finding tracks and we wanted to work on writing.
Did covering Radiohead’s Videotape have a big influence on the direction of North? It seems to be a good bridge in between the early singles and the album.
Yeah it did have an influence. We hadn’t already decided on the direction. We wanted to work with a vocalist and James came in and it worked really well.
Is there a rigidly organized division of labour in the band between yourself and Aiden (Whalley)?
Well Aiden’s more musical, more musically trained than I am. So sometimes I’ll work more on production. But sometimes I’ll bring in a loop and we’ll work from something like that, it can be anything really. We started a couple of weeks ago working on material for the second record, myself and Aidy and James [Buttery, vocalist] are all writing stuff.
So James (Buttery, vocalist) is a part of the creative team now – rather just the singer like on North?
Yeah. Which is good ’cause he’s a good writer. It’s moved on from North but it’s not like the earlier stuff either. Its hard to tell what it’s like really, its so early.
Considering its December, I’m almost obliged to ask you what were your favourite records of the last year?
Caribou [Andorra] was a good record. Actress [Splazsh] made a good record. I suppose they’re the only to records I listen to apart from writing our music.
Is there other music you’re looking forward to next year beyond your tour?
The obvious choice is James Blake. He’s going to come up with something pretty special. I think he’s probably going to blow off into another stratosphere, which he deserves ‘cause his stuff is sick. Burial will probably have something taking shape next year. Kode9’s album – that’s pretty sick. Hopefully we’ll get an album out towards the back end of the year. We’re going to book a couple of month of sessions in March and April and if we can get enough done we’ll have the majority of an album ready to go.
What’s the live set up going to be for the Dublin show and the tour?
We’re just reworking the whole live set now actually. We’re going to have three synths, a couple of drum machines, a vocalist but we’ve got one laptop for certain things. I use something called a Maschine which is basically an MPC [sampler]. So if I can get a USB cable long enough to not put it on stage… but it’s definitely a live show.
Its the first time you’ve done a whole tour rather than just a series of one-off gigs after another – are there nerves?
Yeah it’s the first time [on tour]. It’s just bad to be with a couple of people for that amount of time! It can get quite tense but at the same time I think we’re all mature enough to leave each other to it when needs be. The shows make up for it as well. If you do a good show, you kind of get into a rhythm of things and you get an appreciation from the audience and it makes everything so much easier.
I suppose its just killing off the downtime in between that’s the main problem.
Yeah, well, I sleep a lot.
Words: Ian Lamont
