Disclosure’s rise over the last couple of years has been very interesting to watch. After Guy and Howard Lawrence plonked an EP on MySpace in 2010 with no real intentions behind it, they were soon charming the ears off hundreds of influential music bloggers. However, just when it seemed that the London duo’s futuristic take on house and garage was going to be the new sound of the underground, the brothers gathered a handful of talented vocalists and started looking at the charts. It’s not a typical tale of pop crossover though. The lads are still managing to please a lot of people on both sides of the music snob fence. You can read more about this exciting trend emerging out of the UK right here.
Sandro Dallarmi got on the phone for an interview with Howard from Disclosure to get some insight on elements of that topic, straight from the horse’s mouth. Howard wasn’t as talkative as we’d hoped, but we might have revealed the first Parklife rumour for 2013. You read it here first.
Sandro: To my ears, your recent singles have very carefully toed the line between shameless pop, and really intriguing club music. Is that something you’re aiming for?
Howard: I think we just write what we write naturally, and always have done really. Yeah we kinda cross between dance music and pop music
Sandro: Well whatever your aims were, you’ve certainly been achieving some success with that result haven’t you.
Howard: Yeah I mean it has been going really well, over the last couple of months it’s been really exciting yeah.
Sandro: I think that’s interesting though, because with a lot of successful mainstream club music, they’re all sort of festival-sized fist pumpers with one massive synth playing a really simple chord pattern. How do you capture the attention of people who accustomed to dance music being nothing but 100% energy?
Howard: (Laughs) I’m not sure man. It’s surprised us as well – that we’ve captured the same audience that listens to that stuff. Erm but yeah I dunno, we never wanted to make stuff as simple as that. We grew up with quite musical backgrounds and wanted to make it a bit more clever, yeah.
Sandro: You’ve been quite well-received in America then?
Howard: Yeah it’s been lovely, we just did Coachella and it was great, yeah, really good fun.
Sandro: Do you feel like the people who come to see you play at an American gig are the same people who check out an Avicii set, or are you attracting a different crowd outside of the whole ‘EDM’ “poppin’ mollies” sort of scene.
Howard: (Laughs) um yeah I think there’s definitely a mixture of both sides of things. You see some people with all the neon tank tops and gloves and that. You also see the cool hipsters and stuff. But yeah I think everyone kind of – well there are certain people from every group, and they all mix together and fit in.
Sandro: So I guess you’re kind of a link between the underground and the mainstream. Would you agree with that?
Howard: That’s what I’m told, yes. I mean we’re always making club music in our minds, but yeah.
Sandro: It’s the same case with Flume here in Australia. Have you guys run into him?
Howard: I haven’t met him, but I know his stuff yeah, it’s really cool.
Sandro: Yeah it is. Actually the first track I heard of yours was ‘I Love… That You Know’ because Flume had posted it on his Facebook page. I know that with your album coming up, you’re obviously going to include some pop-tinged tracks, and some raw club tracks. Is there anything that’s going to be sort of a bit subtle and twisted like ‘I Love… That You Know’ was?
Howard: Yeah there’s one track in there that’s about a minute and a half long that’s quite similar sort of like to that. The same tempo and stuff. We haven’t completely lost the stuff that we used to make, because I mean, it was only about a year ago so…
Sandro: Oh absolutely, yeah.
Howard: We get all this stuff saying like “oh why don’t you go back to your old stuff”. It’s like “we don’t really have old stuff, it’s all only about a year old”.
Sandro: Lastly, do you know when you guys are going to be back down here for shows in Australia again?
Howard: Yeah, I think we’re back in September. I might be wrong about that, I’m not sure. But we’re definitely back this year anyway.
Sandro: Sweet, alright thanks for that man.
Howard: Cool, thanks man.
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