DearJoseph

You might have seen previous posts about these chaps on this blog before, or heard them on Filthy Disco. But if you haven't, DearJoseph are two sets of brothers. Emmanuel and Alexi, Guy and Piran. They’re originally from Dorset (home of scones and fishermen according to Alexi) and are now based in London where they make a dark and twisting noise. They met up with me to converse and here's what went down.

Sarah: How would you describe your sound? You’re quite Melancholy aren’t you?

Emmanuel: We play Rock N Roll music that’s quite dark, it’s quite expansive but it’s got a fragile heart.

Sarah: So who have you been influenced by growing up?

Alexi: There’s a lot of old soul records we used to listen to at home when we were growing up, a lot of 1950’s kind of dance hall stuff, soul records, Motown.

Emanuel: Where we come from Piran was well known for being a DJ, so he comes from a dance background

Sarah: Yeah I saw you DJ the other night at Bar 23 in Dalston, you pretty much packed the place out it was a bit of a zoo in there!

Emmanuel: Yeah it’s a really cool bar, it’s not too big but it’s got a really good atmosphere. It’s Alexi’s local and when he moved to London a few years back he started drinking in there, got to know the people and one thing led to another and before we knew it we were playing some records.

Sarah: I’ve been looking at your Myspace quite a lot, stalking you a little bit! It’s quite minimal I notice, very dark and there’s not actually any pictures of you guys on there. Is there any reason for that?

Emmanuel: Well I suppose there is a reason, we wanted it to be a bit more mysterious than the average. I know it sounds stupid but basically we feel that bands and music today are very disposable and people can just consume it and throw it away and we don’t want our band to be like that we want our band to be interesting.

Alexi: So people will make a bit more effort to actually find out more about the band rather than all the information being there straight away when you look - like a cheap magazine.

Sarah: I’ve seen quite a few funny old videos on your page, there’s one with some subliminal messaging going on. Who shot those?

Emmanuel: Alexi made that

Alexi: That’s in the middle of nowhere in France. Our parents are French so we’ve got a house in the middle of nowhere. There’s lots of strange buildings that have been there for years, we don’t even know what’s going on there and we just did a bit of filming to try and get a sense of the atmosphere.

Sarah: Have you been gigging anywhere recently?

Alexi: We’ve been doing a few at parties and stuff like that rather than the circuit where there are ten bands on the bill and it’s all a bit lifeless. We want to try and set something up where it’s a bit more specific to what we want to do, and make a bit more effort to do something a bit more memorable.

Emmanuel: Yeah that’s where the films came from as well. We wanted to do stuff that was a visual aspect to the music. So when we do gigs we want to show our films as well. So it’s not like going to the Hope & Anchor and watching some band for 25 minutes and not knowing what’s going on. We want to have a night that’s more interesting. That’s why we’re playing warehouses and parties.

Sarah: So what are you listening to at the moment, if I was to flick through your iPod what would I find?

Emmanuel: Well you’d have to flick through my CD player because I don’t have an iPod, but I really like Archie Bronson’s new stuff

Alexi: I’d say The Triffids

Guy: My favourite band is Glassjaw

Piran: I’ve actually been listening to Nirvana over the past few days and probably The Walkmen

Sarah: What’s the plan for the summer then?

Emmanuel: We’ve got more songs to record and more films to make and were gonna do some gigs as well and were just going to enjoy the summer.

Dearjoseph will be playing Hoxton Bar & Kitchen on 8th July. Keep checking their Myspace for all the movements. http://www.myspace.com/dearjoseph

Sarah T x