Django Django Share New Single “Don’t Touch That Dial” ft. Yuuko

Listen HERE + YouTube

Release Off Planet Part 2 Today / Stream All 5 New Songs Here

New Album, Off Planet, Released In Four Parts And Out In Full On June 16 - Pre-Save / Pre-Order Here

Announce Appearances At Christine And The Queens’ Meltdown, Kite, Bluedot And Standon Calling Festivals This Summer

 

Django Django today release Off Planet Part 2, the next 5 tracks from their new album, Off Planet, which will be available in full June 16 (Because Music).  “Don’t Touch That Dial” ft. Yuuko, the lead cut from Part 2, is a futuristic, percussion-driven club track featuring the Japanese rapper Yuuko. Django Django co-founder and producer Dave Maclean stumbled across Yuuko online, and after some communication she delivered a blistering vocal take with impeccable flow describing a typical day in the life where there’s only one rule… Don’t Touch That Dial. Watch the visualizer: YouTube Part 2 also features another standout track, “Back to Back” ft. Patience, as well as “Squid Inc”, “Come Down” and “Golden Cross”.  About “Don’t Touch That Dial” ft. Yuuko, Maclean, said: “This was a weird instrumental track that came out of looping some little chopped up bits of a studio jam. I liked the odd groove of the track and I wanted a vocalist on there but I wanted something quite different, so I reached out to Yuuko and she totally got it, and delivered this outstanding top line.”  Stream “Don’t Touch That Dial” ft. Yuuko, here. Stream Off Planet Part 1 and Part 2 here.

“Don’t Touch That Dial” follows the release of the album’s Part 1 and the BBC 6 Music A-Listed single, “Complete Me” feat. Self Esteem. An explosion of 90’s inspired breakbeat, packed with organs, pianos and synth strings, the track makes Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s hooks completely irresistible, as if echoing from some familiar memory. A long associate of the band, Self Esteem released her first EP on Dave’s Kick + Clap label, appearing on 2018’s Marble Skies and supporting the Djangos on tour. The track was described by Clash as “a dazzling piece of synth pop”, while NME took notice of the “clubby piano, synth strings and keys.” Watch the accompanying animated video, taking inspiration from acid rave and 90s TV channel logo stings, directed by the illustrator Ed Croucher, here.  Off Planet, an album released in four parts, each as a separate “planet”, features a cavalcade of mainstream and underground stars – Self Esteem, Jack Peñate, Stealing Sheep, Toya Delazy and many more, all of them either friends of the band or personally sought out by Dave Maclean, bringing entirely new creative angles into play. From bluesy pop and Middle Eastern cabaret goth to Afro acid and piano rave, to call it kaleidoscopic is putting it mildly. Despite smashing the Django Django mould and at times not sounding like anything on their previous releases, Off Planet is very much still recognisably them, and is the biggest, boldest, and most varied statement the band has ever made. Django Django will play five instores this June to coincide with the release of Off Planet. The band will also perform at this year’s Meltdown Festival curated by Christine and the Queens, as well as at Kite, Bluedot and Standon Callingfestivals.   Dates are as follows: 09/06 - London, UK @ Southbank Centre, Christine and the Queens’ Meltdown Festival 11/06 - Oxfordshire, UK @ Kite Festival 16/06 - London, UK @ Rough Trade East - instore 19/06 - Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade Records - instore 20/06 - Liverpool, UK @ Jacaranda Records Phase One - instore 21/06 - Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade - instore 22/06 - Kingston Upon Thames, UK @ Pryzm - instore 20/07 - 23/07 - Macclesfield, UK @ Bluedot Festival 20/07 - 23/07 - Standon, UK @ Standon Calling

Off Planet - full album

16 June 2023 via Because Music

Pre-order/ pre-save here

Full album tracklist:

1. Wishbone
2. Complete Me ft. Self Esteem
3. Osaka
4. Hands High ft Refound*
5. Lunar Vibrations ft Isabelle Woodhouse
6. Don’t Touch That Dial ft. Yuuko
7. Back to Back ft. Patience
8. Squid Inc 
9. Come Down
10. Golden Cross
11. No Time ft. Jack Penate
12. A New Way Through
13. Galaxy Mood ft. Toya Delazy 
14. The Oh Zone
15. Dead Machine ft. Stealing Sheep
16. Dumb Drum
17. Fluxus
18. Slipstream
19. Who You Know ft. Bernardo
20. Black Cadillac
21. Gazelle

 

Off Planet Part 2

Released today, March 17, 2023 via Because Music

Stream here

Part 2 tracklist:

1. Don’t Touch That Dial ft. Yuuko

2. Back to Back ft. Patience

3. Squid Inc 

4. Come Down

5. Golden Cross

 

 

Django Django began with, and remain driven by, the core of Dundee-born Dave and Vincent Neff from Derry, Northern Ireland, who met at Edinburgh school of art. Dave was, and is, an obsessive music collector who started DJing spacey jungle / drum’n’bass and then played and produced all kinds of electronic and experimental grooves from dancehall to krautrock and library music, but with a solid heart of raw American house and techno. Vinny meanwhile had grown up on rave and indie from his older sisters and was finding his own voice as a singer-songwriter. On moving to London they began making tracks together - Vinny’s songs and Dave’s arrangements – but it quickly blurred with both writing and structuring songs. Vinny’s natural facility with writing harmonies became a key part of the sound, and with the addition of keyboardist Tommy Grace and bassist Jimmy Dixon, they became the fully-fledged band that has carried on to today.

Off Planet, the band’s fifth album, began with Dave’s beats. Throughout lockdown and the surrounding period he had been super prolific, returning to his DJ roots and making standalone dance tracks – and at the start of the album process they went back to the original core pattern of Vinny writing over these beats (“fast and furious because he was making them faster than I could process them!”). Initially Dave was also making a lot of instrumental electronic tracks “very specifically to be not Django Django”, but as the writing process went on and tunes were passed to Tommy and Jimmy to write parts for, the idea of having a whole load of guests crystallised, and in fact Dave’s more ravey or hip-hop beats suddenly made sense when they imagined different voices on them and reaching out to friends or, in one case, just googling “Japanese rapper” (Yuuko). Just as the Django sound had evolved in the first instance from Dave’s immersion in club culture and Vinny’s songwriting, to become fully formed as they became a band, so the process was repeated on this album, albeit with grander ambition and a whole lot more participants.

From some 50 initial sketches on Dave’s original beats, the shape of the four “planets” began to become clear, and so did the songs, and during a week playing and recording together in the Scottish countryside at Dave’s family home in Polbain in the far northwest, it all became “Djangofied”. Off Planet remains fully functional as four separate “planets”, but the full rocket ride around them all is, incredibly, an even more coherent and enjoyable experience. 

Flowing through all of this is the emergent sense of cosmic wonder: as Dave puts it, “just about everything we love, whether that’s old psychedelia or Detroit techno, has that futuristic or outer space feel, and I think we can’t help putting that into what we do.” The term Off Planet comes from Dave’s obsession with ufology: it’s a term for hyper-advanced technologies kept secret from the populace. And perhaps that natural sense of the scale and potential of music and art as a technology itself is what has allowed them to very naturally align all their planets, to make sense and coherence from the ludicrous palette of colours they presented themselves with. Whatever it was, it worked, and whether you take Off Planet one part at a time or all at once, you’re immediately taken into the Django's universe.

 

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