The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
DJANGO BELLS
David Pollock speaks to Django Django drummer David Maclean about growing up in Fife, branching out and creating new music
G rowing up at the other end of the bridge from Dundee, I always felt kind of half-dundonian,” reminisces David Maclean, drummer and electronic programmer with art-pop group Django Django, speaking from his home in London in the build-up to the release of their fourth album, Glowing In The Dark.
“I knew Dundee like the back of my hand, way more than I know most of Fife – I still don’t really know Dunfermline or Kirkcaldy at all.”
The son of artist Marian Leven and brother of John Maclean – who had his own musical fame with the Beta Band and more recently directed Michael Fassbender in the film Slow West – Maclean studied at Edinburgh College of Art, where he met his Django Django bandmates Tommy Grace, Vincent Neff and Jimmy Dixon. Two Scots, a Northern Irishman and a Yorkshireman, they didn’t form the band until they all moved to London.
“When I think about moving home, I think about moving somewhere in Dundee, looking over the water to Fife, or vice-versa,” continues Maclean, whose band’s self-titled debut album was nominated for the 2012 Mercury Music Prize.
“I’m biased, because I grew up with my bedroom overlooking the Tay, but it’s just such a wonderful view. I always knew when I was young that I’d come back to that area.”
He loves the V&A, but has fond childhood memories of the Olympia swimming pool, as well as nostalgia for lost Dundee landmarks like the Seagate Gallery, and record shops including Chalmers & Joy and 23rd Precinct; he took drumming lessons at Stage 2000.
“Dundee was like going to the big city,” he says. “Like going to New York or something, because I didn’t know any different.”
Maclean was already making plans to move back to Tayside before the pandemic hit, and is now even more determined, because “London when everything’s shut is… not great.” Despite their recording studio being in London, however, this will have no impact on Django Django; Grace has already moved back to Glasgow, while their last album, 2018’s Marble Skies, was made with Maclean living in Fife while he was between houses.
“The rest of the band had Anna Prior from (the band) Metronomy in doing the drumming, and I was in Tayport editing it – sampling parts and chopping others up,” he says. “For this album we were all there, and it was much more of a live group effort. I think it’s just a bit more focused and considered, maybe like going back to the first album.
“A song like Asking For More is probably one of Vinnie’s best songwriting achievements, for example. Then there’s a track called The Ark, which is me mucking around with a 303 and playing drums over it – it was the kind of music I was making before the band, where I didn’t have song structures, it was more about a groove.”
Another standout of Glowing In the Dark is the single Spirals, which revisits the sense of analogue funk blended with a club-influenced electronic groove that made their earliest signature track Default so irresistible, while Waking Up features Charlotte Gainsbourg on vocals.
“I wasn’t there when the others wrote that song,” says Maclean. “They’d demoed it and it was a lot slower, almost like a country song, and I just started to imagine Charlotte singing on it. I said ‘why don’t we ask her to do it?’, and luckily, because she’s on the same label, it was easy to reach out to her. She was into it and really liked the song, so Vinnie went over to Paris and bashed it out in a day.”
Over the last year, the Djangos have created a mountain of ideas for new music, as well as recording two songs produced by David’s brother John (who is, he says, otherwise busy with film scripts and home-schooling).
“This is maybe a chance for us to do an album that’s different, that’s a hundred percent acoustic or a hundred percent electronic or a hundred percent instrumental,” he says. “Something that doesn’t have the pressure on it to be the next album that you tour and play festivals with. It’s an opportunity to do something weirder.”
Saturday, February 13, 2021 | 31
W ith the pandemic putting the NHS, its doctors and nursing staff under greater pressure than at any point during its 72-year history, hospitals are currently a place most people are trying hard to avoid.
For those facing the realities of childbirth, however, this is often not an option.
As with many expectant parents who have found themselves conceiving over the past 18 months, the realities of appointments, check-ups and childbirth have come with an added complication – Covid-19.
Following in the footsteps of W’s hit series Delivering Babies, the latest instalment, Emma Willis: Delivering Babies in 2020, tackles these issues head on.
A brand new take on pregnancy, childbirth and the plethora of postpartum issues affecting parents-to-be, the series is centred on the highs and lows of prospective parenthood in the midst of the pandemic.
“I suppose the difference with this one is we could see people all across the country,” says The Voice and Big Brother presenter, Emma Willis, 44, of the featured families.
“So we’re obviously based in Essex but we had people from all over Great Britain, which was lovely.
“It was really nice to connect with people, talk to people, learn about people’s stories and find out how the pandemic, which was quite new to all of us at the time, was affecting pregnancy and childbirth.”
As the name would suggest, the series, presented by Willis, addresses a range of subjects linked to childbirth.
Following on from Delivering Babies, which followed Willis as she trained to become a qualified maternity care assistant (MCA), the new series sees the presenter helping parentsto-be as they bring a new life into the world.
“We did everything remotely via Zoom from my house, and then when restrictions lifted, we very carefully went and met them in a place that they felt comfortable,” recalls Willis of the production.
“Last year messed with all of us in some way, shape or form, so to be able to connect with other people and to be given an insight and the privilege of going on that little adventure with them, it’s a pretty big one.
“What we found most of the time with people was that (loneliness) wasn’t their main concern.
“Yes, the thought of it is absolutely terrifying, but you know, the hospitals, maternity wards, are doing fantastic work there and doing everything they can to keep people safe. So hopefully that will be reassuring to anyone that’s kind of going in.”
Given her experience as both a parent and a qualified MCA, Willis is perfectly positioned to talk with both the first-time mothers-to-be and parents who have already tackled the joys and stresses of childbirth first hand.
“It’s always an honour to witness, and if I really kind of think about it and put myself in their position, I wouldn’t have handled being pregnant in a pandemic very well at all,” she says.
“I could barely handle being a mum of three and not pregnant, let alone, you know, your body changing and possible other things happening as well as pregnancy; having to go into hospital regularly, being in that environment – which was an environment that none of us really wanted to go near.”
“So it was a real insight actually. Obviously a maternity ward is very different to a Covid ward, but there were a lot of changes on maternity as well, it was not the same experience you’d have had six months previously, so it’s a fantastic insight to kind of see what was happening.”
“I think, because they obviously wanted to be a part of it, and to be a part of something that is so personal to you, you have to be willing to want to share that,” says Willis of the parents featured in the show.
“So we’re all very, very open. And I loved it.” A combination of candid moments filmed remotely by the featured families and honest Zoom conversations with Willis about their concerns and expectation, the show tactfully balances understandable anxieties with warm and uplifting moments.
“Some of my favourite pieces of it are the dads in the cars, where you’re getting this insight into them,” she says.
“Personally, I feel really silly when I’m taking a selfie video. I get really self-conscious. But these blokes are just in the car kind of going, ‘Oh, my God’ and ready to get it all out, which I love.
“I love seeing a dad show their emotions, but also they must just feel so helpless as well at the same time.
“Also, we’re in this hideous situation and it is devastatingly sad and that’s kind of all you think about.
“But there are pockets all over the world of women having this amazing experience, so the mass devastation that’s happening in hospitals, there’s always also these incredible, joyous things happening as well.
“We all need a bit of happiness.”