The English Electronic duo known as Disclosure made up of brothers Guy (22) and Howard (19) have taken over the Contemporary House scene. Preceded by a series of hit singles, their debut album Settle was released on June 3 to massive popularity and critical acclaim. Just one month later they’re playing a live set at Hard Music Festival in LA, taking a key Saturday night spot on the Underground Stage.
Settle was heavily influenced by Chicago house, a sound characterized by a reinvention of late-night soul: a mix of disco classics and Eurobeat pop containing chopped vocals, heavy filters, and dreamy synth melodies. Disclosure's massive success has come from a mix of talented production, a shrewd selection of talented female vocalists, and a distinctively fresh take on House just as the genre is having a resurgence in the UK.

Though you would be hard pressed to find a House fan who hasn’t heard of 'Settle,' many of their best songs can be found off the album. Sprinkled throughout the interview are a few of those tracks.

What are you guys looking forward to playing during your set?

Howard: Like which song? I dunno man, all of them. Its a live show so we’re playing all of our own songs. We’ll do some stuff from the album and also some of our old tracks.

Where do you do you look when you need vocalists for tracks?

Howard: For the album (Settle) most of them are just our friends, people we knew. There were some people we’re just fans off like Jamie Woon, Ed McFarlane. We just reached out and said ‘We’re big fans, wanna meet up?’ and luckily both of them were like ‘We’re big fans of you too’ so it worked out.

Now that 'Settle' was so successful, is there anyone you’re looking to collaborate with?

Howard: Yeah, I can’t say any specifics, but we’re looking to work with some American rappers just cuz we listen to so much hip-hop, as much as we do house, so it makes sense to experiment in that as well.

Which one of you got into electronic first?

Howard: Well probably Guy cuz he’s the oldest.

Guy: I got into clubbing first, probably electronic music before house. I was into hip hop in my teen years and then got into House and Dubstep around 16/17 when I was going to college. I showed Howard a few of the things I was in to and we just went from there.

For 'Settle,' was there a concept or theme?

Howard: No, we didn’t really know we were making an album, we were just writing songs and then we thought we had so many we might as well bang it out.

When you’re playing sets in America versus the UK, is there any difference in your sets- besides being able to drink legally in the UK?

Howard: I don’t think there’s a huge difference in the crowds, and we play the same songs. I would say probably the main difference is the demographic. Over here a lot of people are still into Dubstep and Trap and Big Room House. UK’s just moved on from that to just house.

Well you guys are always a step ahead on that.

Howard: Well, I dunno, but they were doing all the stuff thats here now two years ago.

Guy: Not so much Trap though. Trap kinda missed us a bit.

Well Trap has hip hop influences and that’s American.

Howard: Yeah, that makes sense.

Guy: Well, Trap, I don’t even know what Trap is. Trap was around in the 90’s.

XXYYXX just described his sound as driving down the freeway underwater, the underwater theme I kind of get with your music too- how would you describe your sound?

Howard: (laughs) That’s amazing.

Guy: That’s good. To put it much more boring than that, what we wanted to do with the album was create a nice balance between clubs songs and pop songs. I think we did that, there’s a nice mix of vocal tracks and club tracks, all produced by the style of house music and 90’s Garage. But you could say we sound like driving down the freeway underwater (laughs).

Who are you most looking forward to see?

Guy: Well I’ve never seen 2 Chainz so I thought yeah, just to do it.

Howard: There’s a few people, whoever’s on our stage (Underground Stage), I really like the lineup. But I don’t think we have much time, we’re on to Montreal.

It’s too bad, you have all these talented artists together and you hardly get to see eachother.

Guy: I know, yea. But we do this every day so eventually over the course of the year you get to see everyone you wanted to see.

Are you looking to move your music into more of a Detroit house style?

Howard: We’re just obsessed with Detroit as an idea, we just think its an amazing city. I mean our music’s already so inspired by that and Chicago house, I don’t think we’re planning to move any nearer it.

What music did you guys grow up to?

Howard: Quite a wide variety of stuff- mostly what our parents would play us, stuff like 80’s pop and rock. Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush.

Does that influence your melodies?

Howard: Yeah very much. The songwriting, some of the stuff we started listening to to learn our instruments, because when we were growing up we didn’t ever write music, we just wanted to play. I played the bass, and Guy played the drums, so we listened to a lot of funk, Stevie Wonder and all that, so heavily influenced by that stuff.

Where’d the drawing on faces come from?

Howard: It started as the artwork for our first single, just the face on its own and blue background. Then we got to our second single and we couldn’t afford any more artwork so we just used it again. And then the same with our third single. But then we started pasting it onto photos of people we like for the Soundcloud pictures, and then on the picture of the singer that was on that track, and eventually that led to us pasting it onto ourselves, it became like our logo.

What’s your creative process like, I know its always different, but can you pick a song and describe it?

Howard: Yeah, that’s the thing with us it’s always different. The thing with the album is they’re all completely different. So for “White Noise” Guy wrote the little bass riff and that was it, and didn’t think much of it. We had this session booked in with Aluna, so we went to that and she really liked this little riff so we wrote to that. We wrote the verse and chorus to the bass and just a 4/4 kick and nothing else. And while we’re writing, Guy worked on the beat a bit, by the end of the day it was finished.

You’re part of this wave of very young and very quickly successful producers, can you talk about where you think the Electronic scene is moving, both in America and in the UK.

Howard: I think there’s a lot of different scenes. With the UK there’s definitely a very positive rise in House music. There’s us, Duke Demont’s playing tonight, Rudimental, Chris Malinchak. There’s just a lot of really great House music coming out. And then Daft Punk have obviously come out with that Disco record which is cool. I think in the US it’s leaning toward doing the same thing its just a bit behind, I think its showing the same signs.

What’s the most interesting adventure you’ve been on lately?

Guy: We once played on the roof of a Parliament building in Romania, it was Ceausescu’s old palace, the dictator. Mad, mad, its like abandoned, and on the roof of it they had a festival, it was just amazing, that’s the first generation of kids who have actually been allowed to party and have a good time and they do it on top of they’re old dictator’s house (laughs). So it was wicked, we’ve had a lot of great at shows over the last couple years, but that was probably the weirdest.

Howard: More recently we played Red Rocks. To see who else had played there was ridiculous, like The Beatles and shit: crazy.

How was the Red Rocks show?

Howard: It was wild, we were standing on stage, and normally when I’m singing I just look at the back of the crowd, but with that place you end up looking up because the back of the crowd is 100 ft. above you, its a weird one.

Any technical tips you’ve discovered lately?

Guy: Always press save, frequently.

Howard: Always press save.

Ableton?

Guy: Logic.

Two other artists that I might now have heard of that I should check out.

Guy: There’s a guy in the UK on the same label as us called Dornick, he’s just had a song called “Something about You” and its fucking amazing. It’s like D’angelo with electronic stuff- its fucking incredible.

Howard: It’s like Michael Jackson D’Angelo.

Guy: Who else?

Howard: I mean we’ve just put out a record on our label which we help run, Method Records, from Friend Within,  just bangin house music. Just big house music, heavily bass driven. I think you’d like it.

 

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