Music: Django Django

Jeff Hemmings speaks to the award-nominated band

Recipient of a very well deserved Mercury Music Prize nomination for this year, few bands are as maverick as Django Django, the Hot Chip of their day, and made up of four faintly normal, geeky, slightly older men who, by accident more than design, have suddenly found themselves in the frontline of the new music scene…

“We were told about the Mercury nomination before the official announcement, and in confidence as we had a gig the day of the official announcement,” says Tommy Grace, who is billed as ‘synth operator’ for the band. “It was a bit weird; we couldn’t tell anyone for a few days, even my girlfriend. I had this weird feeling that they might say we can’t have it now, ‘cause we told someone.

“We met at Edinburgh Art School, first with Davey [David Maclean] our drummer and producer, who’s from Dundee. And Vincent [Neff, guitars] was there studying architecture. Me and Davey knew each other very well, our bass player, Jimmy [Dixon], was at Glasgow Art School – there’s quite a lot of cross-pollination between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and after we left college me and Davey ran an arts space in Edinburgh.

“Eventually we all moved down to London for different reasons. Vinny approached Dave about a song he’d made on the acoustic guitar who was making these weird dancehall type tunes, and that’s where Django Django started. The songs were then put on Myspace, people liked them and were asking about doing gigs… we weren’t a band then, it was just Davey and Vinny. Davey then approached me because I had some synths he coveted, and then we got Jimmy on bass, and that was the start of it.”

They describe their playful sound as ‘rollicking sing-alongs, galloping into disco sunsets like whiskey-addled and leather-saddled bandits on the stolen backs of prairie wild Mustangs’. I’m not sure if that was made up after one too many fire-waters, but there’s no doubting their psychedelia/Beach Boys/dance music/african fusion has captured the imagination; for its inventiveness, its warmth, and for the fabulous songs that permeate their self-titled and Mercury-nominated debut album.

“We’ve always been self-sufficient and self-produced, and we keep as much control over everything as we can; from the design of the sleeves to the videos, or we get people who we know to work with us.”

The band have had a very heavy schedule this year, so it is with some relief that time off beckons soon to get to work on album number two.

“We hear about bands like Franz Ferdinand writing songs on the road. We just can’t do that! So much of the creative process; arranging songs, sequencing software, we can’t do it on the road! I don’t think one person has ever come up with a complete song, it’s more of a germ of an idea and then we work on it as a band, let the idea run and see where it goes.”

Django Django, The Old Market, Monday 29 October, 7.30pm, £12