The Northern Irish duo The Japanese Popstars have been making waves for some time with their music - since 2006 to be correct. We loved their work on their last album "Controlling Your Allegiance," with "Song for Lisa" and "Take Forever" with Robert Smith from the Cure being some of our favorite tracks. Now, they just released their new album "Disconnect/Reconnect," that came out on Bedrock Records on July 15th. It's an exploration of electro tinged techno with an aggressive kick appropriate for destroying dance floors, including the track "Matter of Time," which was John Digweed's summer anthem last year (New Yorkers went ballistic to this track when they first heard it last summer as Digweed played it at his Governors Island gig with Danny Tenaglia). We sit down with them to find out their thought process behind the new album, getting picked up by John Digweed, and who they loved collaborating with.
Pulse Loves… monikers. Since you are neither Japanese nor pop stars, how did you come up with the name Japanese Popstars? There is no real sensible answer to that. We just wanted something that people would remember and we like Japanese things. The choice probably involved a lot of alcohol.
Pulse loves…John Digweed. From working with a variety of different pop artists, how did you chance upon John Digweed and being released on his label last year? Last year we were asked by the Ibiza Music Summit to create their annual anthem in Ibiza. The track/anthem that we created was called "Matter of Time." We heard that John had been playing it all summer and we reached out to him to thank him for the support. It all kind of snowballed from there. It's been amazing to have him working with us, we are huge fans.
Pulse Loves… albums. Tell us about your new album Disconnect/Reconnect that was released this month on Bedrock. The album seems to feature fewer collaborations than Control Your Allegiance. What was your motivation for making this album differently? As you mentioned, the previous album featured a lot of vocal collaborations and definitely featured more electronic downtempo music than straight up club tracks. We ended up playing a lot of festivals touring that album, but these were mostly main stage daytime shows between pop acts. Towards the end of last year, we kind of decided that we would like to push the sound back into the dances stages and to play a little deeper and harder. We also wanted to make the creative process more spontaneous, so we really limited the amount of collaborations on this album, mainly just to test ourselves and to bring the focus back onto the music. Thats where this album has come from.
Pulse Loves… musical influences. In an interview with BLITZ!NI, you described your music as “loud electronic music” with a lot of diversity. How has your music evolved over time and what have been some of your major influences along the way? I think each album (this is our third studio album) has hopefully shown growth and change. Our first album 'We Just Are,' we wrote when we were still doing this as a hobby, all of the music that was on that album was created specially for our live show, we didn't think about radio play and we weren't massively concerned about DJ's playing our tracks. We loved people like Justice, Soulwax, Van She, The Presets, Vitalic, The Chems.
The second album 'Controlling Your Allegiance' was more serious, or the process of writing it was. We were working with people that we never thought we would, from Morgan from M83 and The White Sea, to Robert Smith from the Cure and Tom Smith from Editors, and then all of a sudden it's going out on a major label as well, which brings its own commercial pressures.
I think we really tried to write songs for the first time, not just tracks. I also think we tried to open the music up to be a little more accessible. The influences from that period are pretty easy to see from the people that we approached to collaborate with. Then while we were touring the second album, we started also playing a lot of DJ shows. We were playing everything from people like Green Velvet to Brodinski, Maxime Dangles, Erol Alkan, Sasha, Digweed, Tiga, Turbo Records, Zone records, The Hacker, Phil Kieran, and Simian Mobile Disco. When we started to think about writing Disconnect:Reconnect , this is the music that was exciting us, we wanted to keep making music that would fit our live show, but this time make it a little darker, a little deeper, something that would push us.
Pulse Loves… working together. What have been some of the advantages of working as a duo? Are there ever moments of conflict between the two of you? How did the group dynamic change once member Decky Hedrock left? I think in any working relationship there will be moments of conflict, but gladly, as we have gotten older, these have become fewer and far between. Once you realize that no one is ever right all of the time in a relationship and sometimes you just have to trust in your partners' abilities, it becomes a lot easier. This album was definitely the easiest to write. The dynamic creatively is the same as its always been even with Decky's departure, as he was dealing with more of the managerial aspect of the band.
Pulse Loves… collaboration. After working with so many people over the years from Robert Smith of the Cure to the Caterham Forumla 1 Team, what has been one of your most memorable collaborations so far? I think the Robert Smith one still is a little crazy, as I am a massive Cure fan. Also I still haven't gotten used to getting emails from John Digweed yet either, I used to get all his radio show mixes sent over from London to Ireland each week. His DJ mixes were a massive part of me wanting to make electronic music.
Pulse Loves… touring. You will be touring all around the world to promote your new album this summer. What is one of the destinations you are most looking forward to playing and why? Yes, we will be back on the road from the end of the Summer and will be going everywhere. The first place we will be hitting is Japan. We have had some of our best ever shows in Japan and we can't wait to get back over, the last time we played Japan we toured with Vitalic, Justice and Bassment Jaxx. It was crazy.
Pulse Loves...weird food. What's the strangest thing you've had to try food wise, while on tour? As far as weird food goes, I pretty much eat anything. From chicken feet to snail, tiger bone wine (I don't think it's real tiger), and fish eyes . It's definitely one of the best things about this job is getting a chance to try all the different foods across the world. We are hungry boys.
Pulse Loves… remixes. You have done remixes for artists spanning several genres from Beyoncé, to Gorillaz, 30 Seconds To Mars, and Daft Punk. Do you have any plans right now for future remixes? We stopped doing remixes in order to write this album and to build our new live show, but if the right track was to come along in the near future and we had the time then we would probably take it on.
