Interview: Two Door Cinema Club

I first listened to Two Door Cinema Clubin 2010 on a Kitsuné Maison compilation; normally this type of stuff is not really my thing, but these kids always had a edge to their music that made it interesting to me. So when I met them for an interview I was really curious what happened in the two years I hadn’t heard from them. Turns out that, at least on their new album Beacon, they’re trading in their dancy easiness for more complex sounds.

How did you get connected with Kitsuné ? 
I think a lot of people assume, that the Kitsuné  guys listen to just one kind of music, whereas they love bands like The Strokes and guitar stuff in general. At first we just took part in their club nights, but on the compilation they released our single. Obviously at that time we where meeting other labels as well, but Kitsunè where mostly interested in our music. We felt we get to exactly the point we wanted to with them.

Where would you place your music?
We have a lot of stuff that live is a bit more like rock and then in certain respect it’s quite dance and pop and indie. It’s a little bit of everything, which is nice.

How do you feel about the term ‘indie rock’?
I guess indie rock is just like rock music that is a bit more danceable and all that was sort of the time we formed the band. It’s obviously a progression on that and we have our own sort of different influences and being on Kitsune opened up a new world for us. We hadn’t really a massive appreciation for dance music before. The main difference is on the first record the danceability was kind of encapsulated in the music – on the second record the danceability is more encapsulated in the production and instrumentation. A lot of the songs if you strip everything away and play them on piano for instance, they become something different. We worked with grooves and bringing other rhythms in and different electronic elements.

Overall there is a stronger thought presence in making the song as good as possible. Where in the first album it was a case of recording the parts we’ve been playing live. We didn’t have much time to experiment back then, so it was a case of just recording things we’ve been already playing for years. This time we hadn’t really played any of the songs before, so we just recorded them and added things. Now we have to worry how we gonna play that live!

How was it working together with Jacknife Lee? 
He’s so good at what he does. He’s unique and the diversity in his sonics and instrumentation is incredible.

What was it like growing up in Northern Ireland?
There’s always a lot of interesting politics going on all the time from when we were born until we left, and there still are today. But the actual troubles and any sort of conflict wasn’t a part of our lifes, though it was definitely in the back of our minds… we heard about it and experienced something from time to time. It never influenced the band or the music though. We kind of grew up in the legacy of what had happened before and had to make our own experiences about the misconception of other people that characterized the country for a long time. We didn’t write songs about political stuff, what we did was playing shows with other bands in Belfast, that was all we were really interested in.

Also the country is run by scumbags, and that doesn’t help.

What’s the track that defines the new album? What’s your favorite?
Our favorite tracks are the ones less likely to be a single. One that stands out is ‘Beacon’, it’s driven by a kind of Pink Floyd vibe, drifting of into a My Bloody Valentine thing and with an almost Beatles-esque ending. (You better be right about this… – Ed.) It was so fun, because it was something totally different from what we’d done before. It’s not necessarily a song you can dance to, but rather a song you have to sit down and listen to.

Beacon is out September 3rd on Kitsuné Maison. Photo: Cooperative Music

Published August 20, 2012.