Django Django have something to tell you about sticking to your guns
- Text by Tom Fenwick
Musicians know better than most that the road to success can be paved with stumbling blocks. But what does it take to get past potholes in an industry where even the strongest acts can trip up?
A couple of weekends ago while we were down in Brighton for the tenth annual Great Escape Festival – Europe’s largest emerging music showcase – we asked artist both new and established a simple question to see if we could get to the bottom of the issue:
Is there anything you know now, that you wish you’d known before you started out?
Here’s what they said…
Django Django
Jim, bass: “Tommy has this really annoying little snore.”
Dave, drums: “He sounds like a baby fox, which you’d think was quite cute, but it’s really not.” [Laughs.]
Jim: “But apart from that I guess the biggest lesson we learned was to stick to our guns. When we were first being offered record deals, labels tried to get us to work with outside producers. But Dave was always determined to make stuff our own way and wanted to produce the record himself. When you start a band it’s your thing, so it seems strange to hand a huge part of it over to someone else, and I think our first record vindicated that idea.”
Dave: “Totally. If you’re talked into something that you think it doesn’t sound right or seems dodgy then stick to your guns… and obviously don’t sleep in the bunk next to Tommy.”
Saycet
Pierre: “Patience. You must wait, because things will come. Ten years ago I was very impatient, I had to get my work out fast I wanted to make an album every year. I always onto the next thing… but now I don’t care.
“It’s been four years since the release of my last album, but people who like my work and follow my career know it takes time to produce something good, so they’ll enjoy it regardless of when it comes out.”
Spector
Fred, vocals: “Of course, so much… And with the benefit of hindsight I’m sure we’d do a million things differently, but what would be the fun in living if you knew how everything was going to end?
“Take your work seriously while not taking yourself seriously is the only rule I live by.”
Latest on Huck
Clubbing is good for your health, according to neuroscientists
We Become One — A new documentary explores the positive effects that dance music and shared musical experiences can have on the human brain.
Written by: Zahra Onsori
In England’s rural north, skateboarding is femme
Zine scene — A new project from visual artist Juliet Klottrup, ‘Skate Like a Lass’, spotlights the FLINTA+ collectives who are redefining what it means to be a skater.
Written by: Zahra Onsori
Donald Trump says that “everything is computer” – does he have a point?
Huck’s March dispatch — As AI creeps increasingly into our daily lives and our attention spans are lost to social media content, newsletter columnist Emma Garland unpicks the US President’s eyebrow-raising turn of phrase at a White House car show.
Written by: Emma Garland
How the ’70s radicalised the landscape of photography
The ’70s Lens — Half a century ago, visionary photographers including Nan Goldin, Joel Meyerowitz and Larry Sultan pushed the envelope of what was possible in image-making, blurring the boundaries between high and low art. A new exhibition revisits the era.
Written by: Miss Rosen
The inner-city riding club serving Newcastle’s youth
Stepney Western — Harry Lawson’s new experimental documentary sets up a Western film in the English North East, by focusing on a stables that also functions as a charity for disadvantaged young people.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The British intimacy of ‘the afters’
Not Going Home — In 1998, photographer Mischa Haller travelled to nightclubs just as their doors were shutting and dancers streamed out onto the streets, capturing the country’s partying youth in the early morning haze.
Written by: Ella Glossop