We've been jamming Metronomy's slightly off kilter drum machine funk for a good while now, and we had the good fortune of catching the boy(s) not once but twice last Friday. Metronomy's first album was full of risky little riffs, tricky loops, and unexpected infectious grooves. We first caught Joseph Mount, the one-man band (man) behind Metronomy, accompanied by a backing band earlier in the evening at South Street Seaport, but trust us, the night time is the right time for toy solider touchlight dance routines and melodica solos. Check the jump for our Q+A with Mount after the jump.
How has this tour of the States been? Have you been here much before?
Yeah, we did South By Southwest and then did a few shows in New York before that.
We’ve got nothing out here, so it was just to come and do it for fun as much as anything. At most of the shows, people have come quite a way to see us, which is quite nice. We’ve been half expecting to play with other bands and such, and a lot of them have just been us on our own. We’ve just been doing these odd little shows, like in galleries. But it’s been fun, apart from… well the driving, but that’s been fun as well.
When’s the new album out?
I’m not sure when it will be released in America, but it should be in the UK in March, and there’s a single coming out in October.
What’s it like? What can we expect?
I hope people won’t find it too different from the first one. There’s more vocals and stuff. From doing all of the remixes, I ended up entertaining myself by putting some vocals on other people’s remixes, and it just kind of started me to think about it more properly. Like to write songs and that, but not sooongs. It’s a bit more concise than the first one.
Have you thought about producing for anybody?
Do you know Foals? When they were just kind of off their deal, they were just trying out some people, and I did a track for them.
But you lost out to Dave Sitek?
Yeah, fuckin’ dickhead. They didn’t have like loads of money, so we just did it at my little studio. I suppose it sounded more demo-y in the end. That was obviously a band, and I’m not used to doing that kind of stuff, but I did three or four tracks with Kate Nash. It’s funny cause Stephen, my manager, he knew about her years ago.
Now she’s number one in the UK.
Exactly. He was kinda raving about her, and I was like “Hmm, I dunno really. It’s not amazing.” Then look at her now. So I did some tracks with her. One of them was supposed to go on the album, but they suddenly pushed the album release forward because she did so well. So we couldn’t end up finishing it. There will be an EP later in the year with my stuff on it.
I really like the “Foundations” Remix. The song’s so peppy, and in her version it sounds like she’s still holding on. In your version, she’s just bitter and sarcastic.
I didn’t consciously do that to begin with. For the remix I ended up just using the vocal. As I’m starting to do more productions and stuff, it’s a nice way to start with, “Well, this is how I would have done it.” The original version is kind of melancholy and a bit emotional. You say, “Okay, well that version’s been done, so let’s do something different.”
I heard DJ Orgasmic play your “La Ritournelle” Remix last week.
That’s great. With the remixes, because the deal I had was a bad deal, I needed to do them for the money. But then I just started getting into them a lot more. That was probably the third one I did, and you don’t really expect people get into it. It’s nice to feel like you’ve done something different. You can be rational about it. He’s obviously done this really nice, emotional song and you don’t want to make fun it. But if you like music, and you take a bit of a risk, they’ll probably go, “Oh, we’ll it’s nice.” That’s the thing with the Kate Nash one. It does sound very different, but hopefully you’ll see that it is sensitive to it. A lot of the stuff that I’ve done with Kate is a lot more dancey anyway. Paul Epworth did her other stuff, I think. It obviously sounds more acoustic and piano-y. I can’t fit a piano in my studio. So it’s little keyboards or nothing.
Is there going to be more remix work in the lead up to the album?
For record labels, it’s kind of a difficult proposition. It’s taken us a bit longer to sort the deal out. At the same time, there are these bands that you’ve played with in clubs like sixth months ago who’ve been around for six months, and suddenly you get an email from Island records saying “Would Metronomy be interested in remixing such and such band.” No! They should be trying to remix us! They’ve been around such a tiny amount of time! But, y’know, not in a bitter way. That’s not the reason I’ve stopped doing it. I’ve been trying to record my own album, and I haven’t had much time.