Content: Runaway / High Rise / Ghosts / International Dateline / Soft Power / True Mathematics / Playgirl / Ace of Hz / Discotraxx / Season of Illusions / Fighting in Built Up Areas / Seventeen / White Elephant / Destroy Everything You Touch
23 May 2011
22 May 2011
21 May 2011
OC Weekly interview (2009)
"The key to working with a group of people is learning what not to put in," Reuben Wu says. "You've got to take the egos back a bit. We work very democratically."
Wu's perspective comes from experience and justified pride. The Englishman, one of the founding members of Ladytron, and his band mates have come up on 10 years' worth of writing and performing together, releasing a string of impressive albums and turning into a fierce live unit along the way.
While the group's initial work, most notably the entrancing early single "Playgirl," showcased a serenely cool synth-pop approach, last year's Velocifero was one of the strongest fusions of electronics and feedback-heavy dynamics since the heyday of Curve. It's something the band will showcase this Saturday at the Grove on their co-headlining tour with the Faint.
"We'd known of each other for a long time," says Wu of the Omaha neo-synth-rock notables. "Four years ago, we did a shared show at the Palladium up in Los Angeles that was really fantastic, so when the idea of a tour came up, we were excited. We haven't done that many support shows for other bands over the years, and we decided to be alternating headliners on this tour. That's nice because that means half the time, we'll be done early!"
Following this tour, Ladytron will be moving to an even-higher-profile series of gigs. They're scheduled to open for Depeche Mode's European shows, an extremely apt combination given both bands' deft touch with rock noise and industrial-strength beats, not to mention darkly dramatic performances and sonic styles. And much like the members of Depeche have long insisted about their own work, Wu resists classification as a "Goth" band.
"We never sought to be anything like that," he says. "It's all been very natural, very organic, over time—the whole 'scary, creepy' thing and being talked about as being Gothic maybe has relevance because we're wearing black and not moving around much onstage. It's a little impossible to bounce around while playing keyboards!"
Wu speaks knowing the peril of facile classifications. When Ladytron started, they were readily shunted into a catch-all of early-2000s acts awkwardly tagged "electroclash," as a variety of newer acts reworked a range of early-'80s styles to their own ends. Wu sees the band's success as a working unit as key to shaking off such labels.
"With every band, as you start working together, you end up becoming more comfortable as artists," he notes. "It was almost as if we became the band we were trying to be by the third album [2005's Witching Hour]. A lot of bands have no time to develop their own identity, and many rarely make it past their second album.
"We know that one song one of us writes might need a certain bass line from someone else; another might need a melody. Everyone works on every track now, and getting to know how to work with one another that way means something very different than working on your own."
The band's persistence and increasingly distinctive sound have attracted some high-profile admirers: Depeche Mode may not be surprising, but earlier this year, Ladytron followers were startled to learn that Christina Aguilera was not only a fan, but had also already worked with the band on a variety of songs to be released in the near future.
"We went in with no expectations; the whole thing was a massive surprise," explains Wu. "But it was incredible. She was so musically talented, a vocalist who really knows her voice. The first takes sounded really amazing, and while we'd made demos, it was only when her voice was on them that it all came to life. It's nice to talk about them, we've been sitting on this for a while!"
Wu says the band are hoping to score a film—"We've been thinking about it for a few years!"—and that, even given the music business' travails at present, there's still always something to look forward to, whether on the road or elsewhere.
"We've had to deal with difficult situations, but so has everyone," he says. "Things will change really quickly soon, but in five to 10 years, most artists will be satisfied."
23 April 2009
Source
17 May 2011
XLR8R interview (2005)
Of all the early praise directed at Ladytron for their new record, Witching Hour, the response that resonated most came in the form of tough love from a longtime friend. Upon hearing the album for the first time, Steve Pross, formerly the manager of the quartet's now-defunct label Emperor Norton, took founder Daniel Hunt aside and said, "You are now the band you were pretending to be five years ago." Others might have interpreted this as a backhanded compliment, but Hunt knew exactly what he was trying to say. "I completely understood it," he says on the line from his Liverpool flat. "I don't think he meant to discredit what we were doing before–but I don't feel like we're aspiring to be something anymore."
Bewitched
Stood beside 2001's debut 604 and 2002's Light & Magic, Witching Hour is a skyscraper. Not only is its production more agitated and alive, but its songs are sleeker, more aerodynamic and better crafted. Rounded out by multi-instrumentalist Reuben Wu and vocalists Mira Aroyo and Helen Marnie, all of whom contribute music by committee, there's a darker, more menacing bent to Ladytron circa 2005; cutesy tick-tock electro about movie theaters and cracked LCDs has given way to hurricane songs about destruction and screams bleeding through the walls.
Ladytron's showing increased confidence in its ability, which Hunt says was nourished by spending the majority of 2003 on the road. "We hadn't really toured properly before we recorded Light & Magic," he says. "When we finished, we'd become such a monster live that it was just night and day from before–it had become something mean and screechy and dynamic. We'd learnt so much and there was so much we wanted to do. We could've toured for another six months at least, but we wanted to crack on with the record."
More Money, More Problems
Starting the record would be a cakewalk; seeing it through would be another thing entirely. After concluding Light & Magic's traveling roadshow with a homecoming gig in Liverpool in September 2003 (their support: a little-known Scottish band called Franz Ferdinand), Ladytron immediately commenced work on demos for Witching Hour. New material flowed readily; within a few months, they'd mapped out the entire record. But by the time they were ready to start recording in April, their ill-fated UK label Telstar had gone into administration. "They put us in the studio but didn't tell us that this was going to happen. They must have known, so it was kind of an odd situation," Hunt laughs. "We were like 'What do we do? Do we carry on recording?' So we just went ahead. They paid for at least part of it, but we had the fallback position of Emperor Norton in the States, so we were like 'Well, fuck it. It doesn't matter.'"Famous last words. As the summer wore on, it became clear that Emperor Norton was also on the verge of running aground. Island UK had stepped up in Telstar's absence, so there was never a point where the band was homeless, but that summer was a tumultuous one. Despite being all but mixed by June 2004, Witching Hour was still light years away from being released; although Hunt knew that Ladytron was too well established not to land on its feet, he acknowledges that the band could have faced a huge momentum killer.
It's a testament to the durability of Witching Hour that all four bandmates remain excited about the record nearly 15 months after making it. "This sounds narcissistic, but I can still listen to it on my iPod and enjoy it," he says. "I still hear little things I hadn't heard before." With the benefit of hindsight, Hunt also acknowledges that the label antics and the resulting layoff might be a good thing in the long run. For starters, it means they're on solid ground in both North America and Europe for the first time in a while. "Within a couple of weeks of signing to Telstar, we thought we might've made a mistake," he recalls. "We were attracted to the label for all the wrong reasons–they had all these R&B acts on there and we just thought it was hugely amusing, looking completely incongruous on their roster. The main thing is we thought we'd be invited to all their parties and stuff, which probably wasn't the best basis for a healthy business relationship."
Blade Runners
With any luck, the extended delay has washed away some of the lazy clichés that have plagued Ladytron since day one. Hunt is eager to finally outrun descriptors like 'aloof' (demeanor), 'asymmetrical' (haircuts), 'electroclash' (meaningless) and, perhaps most inexplicably, 'Kraftwerk' (sounds like). On the matter of that last bugaboo, Hunt simply sighs. "Our first single sounds like 'The Model', but we recorded it six years ago!" he says. "They are one of the greats, but if you told somebody that we sounded like Kraftwerk and they went and downloaded a bunch of our MP3s, they'd think you were full of shit. I mean, obviously we were named after a Roxy Music song, which would've been a more obvious place to look for influences, and Low by David Bowie is probably the closest thing to this record. I think we articulated that here better than ever."
In keeping with past tradition, Reuben and Mira of Ladytron are doing a DJ tour this month, with a proper full-band tour to follow in the new year. Until then, Hunt's sharpening his knives in preparation for record number four. Given the layoff, it's hard to blame him for looking ahead. "[Witching Hour] is the closest thing to definitive that we've done, but I think the next one will be even more so," he promises. "That's another way the layoff has been good–we've got quite a lot of stuff in reserve now."
Analog Graveyard: The Machines That Populate Ladytron's Synthetic Paradise.
While heavily treated guitars continue to make a dent in Ladytron's sound, the band's studio is still ruled by keyboards. While Hunt claims the band owns at least 20 vintage pieces, he also admits to having lost count somewhere around 1998. Here he talks shop about Ladytron's studio gear, live setup and recording philosophies:
"I've got this really shit, five-pound, sub-Casio keyboard that I got off this trader; the chords for 'International Dateline' were written on that. It's good to have that kind of gear. The shit toys can end up being quite inspirational.
"Our stage set-up is like Bell Laboratories. It's hugely complicated and it's a nightmare for anybody working with us. We've tried to rein in the amount of old analog gear we take out live with us just for logistics' sake–the stuff was breaking down and we had numerous keyboards just burst into flames. On the record itself, we've got free reign of course.
"Software synths are fine, especially for composition on a laptop. Once those sounds are down, we'll always look at alternatives. But sometimes you just end up using [the originals], especially if they're something basic like a string synth, cause you're not going to get a different sound out of anything else unless you really want a load of AC hum or crackle. [Softsynths] are so much better now than they were when we did the last record. The main thing is that it's not the fact that you're using software or hardware, it's just making something sound different and not using presets.
"Our approach goes back to the whole Eno/Bowie Low thing–the treatments are as important as the synths. We like to confuse synths and guitars quite a lot–there are some things people hear they assume is a guitar that's a synth and vice versa. On the last album, there were guitars all over 'Cease2xist' and a few of the other songs, but they were treated in a way that people didn't recognize them."
22/11/2005
Source
16 May 2011
"Gravity the Seducer" cover and track listing
Gravity the Seducer will be released on 13 September 2011 in the US and a day before in the UK. The first single "White Elephant" will be issued on 17 May 2011.
Track listing:
01. White Elephant
02. Mirage
03. White Gold
04. Ace of Hz
05. Ritual
06. Moon Palace
07. Altitude Blues
08. Ambulances
09. Melting Ice
10. Transparent Days
11. Ninety Degrees
12. Aces High
"White Elephant", the first single from "Gravity the Seducer"
Ladytron will release on 17 May 2011 the first single "White Elephant" from the forthcoming album Gravity the Seducer.
14 May 2011
Ladytron - Donaufestival, 2011
Content: Ghosts / Soft Power / Playgirl / Destroy Everything You Touch
10 May 2011
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