Dummy Mix 24 // We Have Band

WE HAVE BAND (interviewed here) finally release their debut album ‘WHB’ via Naïve on April 5th. It’s felt like a long time coming, following two thrilling singles, that amazing video for ‘You Came Out’ (interview with director David Wilson here) and the Glastonbury Emerging Talent accolade at last year’s festival. Needless to say we’re excited. To tide us over, Darren, Dede and Thomas made us this super on-the-money mix. We like it a lot.

What will your mix do for our ears?

Wet them nicely! We wanted to do something that wasn’t especially dance focused and could just be more about hearing some nice tracks. Every song is a little moment in itself we hope.

Tell us about some of the tracks and why you’ve included them.

Well going in order; I (Darren) spent Christmas in Berlin and the soundtrack to a lot of that time was for some reason The Do who start the mix. Track 2 is Bullion who was new to us until a few weeks ago. We heard it on Huw Stephens’ Radio 1 show on the way back from a gig in Bournemouth and just thought it was great. The Fool’s Gold Remix is pretty cool we think. We do a fair few remixes these days so we generally pay more attention to them then we used to. The Danielle Dax track is such a freaky tune and it’s lovely. Its from her 1982 album called Pop-Eyes which is superb. The next track is a sort of interlude from Neon Indian, short and sweet. Then it’s a Joy Orbison remix of Four Tet Love Cry which is another great remix. Lali Puna was another chance find just listening to tracks online so we don’t know anything about her other than she’s from New York. MEN is JD from Le Tigre’s new band. We met her in Australia when we toured there over new year and then she invited us to see the band play in London. This song really stood out. Pantha Du Prince (read our review here) is so great and his new album is amazing. It was nice to have some calm before the last track and he fitted that perfectly. Then the closing track is Caribou featuring Erlend Øye which we’re loving at the moment. That’s it!

Did all three of you get involved with the mix?

We’re always all in the room when we put things like this together and when we do remixes. It’s important for us to all agree on whatever goes out the door with our name to it and it’s more fun to do together.

From the outside, 2009 looks like it was a massive year for you. Would you agree?

It was certainly a busy year! We toured an especially huge amount. We were in Russia twice, in and out of America three times, did loads of loops around Europe and then ended the year touring Australia. And inbetween it all we were writing and recording our first album. But we like being busy and we had a lot of fun. We love everything we’ve done so far but the album is the big one so that’s the thing that feels the most massive and that’s coming this year.

How’s tour life been going? Highlights?

Touring is cool. It’s hard sometimes to be away from home so much but we’re getting used to it and you get better at balancing things. We all love traveling and going to new places though so it’s definitely something we see as a big privelidge. Seeing people from literally all over the world sing our songs with us and dance with us is a very special experience. It sounds cheesy but it’s quite an honour to play for so many different people everywhere.

I’m really looking forward to your album. What can we expect?

You’ll hear the story of We Have Band right from the very beginning until now. Some stuff we did very early on like the title track WHB. We did that the very first night we met up to make music. And then the most recent tracks were finished about 6 months ago. And you’ll hear absolute equal amounts of each of us. We do everything together and we all write the lyrics and melodies for each other. We like that mixed up feeling.

What are you most excited about in 2010?

We have to say we’re pretty excited about our album coming out. It feels like it’s been a long time coming. We’ve only released 2 singles but we did our first gig almost 2 years ago now. Festival season is exciting us too. We get less and less chance to see other bands gigs these days so we play big time catch up all summer at festivals.

What’s your favourite colour?

Currently we wear all white on stage so we’re fond of that. But that’s changing soon. We think.