We talk musical influences and Wolverhampton nightlife with the Ninja Tuners.
"Fun and un-self conscious" is what they say about Wolverhampton's Letherette, the duo whose Featurette EP on Ninja Tune had us bopping at our desk like the Churchill dog at the tail end of last year.
The EP is a two sided coin, with lucid indie-pop on the A side and a French-touch influenced club banger on the flip side. As you might imagine their sound is hard to pin down, but has gained them support from the likes of Benji B, Brackles and Gilles Peterson, with 'Blad' featuring on the latter's Brownswood Electric compilation.
We had a chat with the childhood friends in a bit more depth before their appearance at XOYO this month.
You're the second act we've interviewed from Wolverhampton this month. Is there a strong music/club scene up there at the moment?
Really? Who's the other act?
The club Scene in Wolverhampton is pretty much none existent now, a far cry from what it used to be and it’s a real shame. There are still a few dedicated individuals who make an effort to house some decent nights but it’s a pretty bleak place right now as a whole.
Back in the 90's it had some great clubs, The Canal club, The Dorchester, The Light Bar, amongst others, and although it wasn't always our cup of tea, there was always something happening and a buzz about the place. It’s a ghost town now.
How did you start making music together?
we had shared interests and influences growing up and always wrote tracks individually, but we decided we should combine our styles in to one outlet. I think that was about 10 years ago now.
Surface and Warstones on the Featurette EP are quite different in style, did you intentionally decide to put out a varied EP?
Yeah, we wanted to make an interesting and varied EP and show people all our facets, but also make something cohesive, which we hope we've managed to do.
A lot of people seem to be less inclined to release music if they think it’s not in keeping with a style they feel they're known for, so they release it under a different name etc, which is cool, but we didn't see the need to do that. It’s all us at the end of the day and i think in doing that you have more of a chance of finding your own voice and not sounding the same as everyone else.
I love the chopped-up boogie of Warstones, do you have a favourite bygone era in dance music?
Cheers. We love all eras of dance music, there's always someone doing something great, whichever era but I guess house music from the mid to late 90's is closest to our heart and had the biggest influence. Crydamoure, Roule, Cassius, Alan Braxe, MAW, Todd Edwards, they just hit the spot back in the day, and still do.
I hear traces of everything from indie to hip hop to disco in your productions, do you come from quite a varied musical background?
We're just into lots of things I suppose, so i guess that’s why it all comes out in our tracks. You just write what feels right and gets us going.
What you got planned for the next 12 months?
We have a single coming out in march, followed by and album in April so we'll be gigging a lot for a few months to support the releases. All this whilst writing new music of course!
Letherette are at XOYO this Friday
.jpg)
Add an event
Review: Byzantium
20 years after Interview with a Vampire, director Neil Jordan cooks up the theme on a ...