Django Django reach for the stars on their four-part new album.
Anybody in music PR will tell you that for various reasons it’s very difficult to get eyes and ears on your artists these days in the multi-platform, multi-generational, omni-technology world we live in.
To be successful requires tenacity, and it doesn’t hurt for those you’re representing to have an angle. In the case of Django Django, it’s UFOs.
To take a step back, after the release of 2021’s Glowing In The Dark and the subsequent ten-year anniversary reissue of their self-titled debut, the group’s creative axis Dave Maclean and Vinny Neff agreed that their next project would be if not a completely fresh start then at least a tangible departure from their band-centric maneuvers of the past.
Cue Off Planet, a concept based on four different worlds and released in separate parts, the plan being to treat each as a unique environment and by which overall to deconstruct their collective identity.
The phrase itself stems from Dave’s obsession with ufology, which apparently is to do with, hhyper-advanced technologies kept secret from the populace’. Well, we did say there was an angle.
The initial ideas were birthed during a feverishly productive lockdown period for him in terms of beat making; the personal brief was to make stuff that didn’t sound Django Django, with Vinny writing over them and other members Tommy Grace and Jimmy Dixon fleshing things out.
If that sounds a little old school, Maclean then enlisted numerous collaborators to add vocals and generally hold a mirror up to the source material. The end result is twenty-one tracks sprawling across what is in ancient twentieth century speak a double album (but that can be our secret).
Not unsurprisingly, this construct both holds up and breaks down. There’s for instance a natural tendency to erm…gravitate to the many occasions on which outside help has been enlisted – and almost without exception the co-conspirators add something fresh.
The main prizes for this go to Jack Peñate, who apparently nailed the outline of his airy soul take for No Time in twenty minutes, Japanese rapper Yukko Sings for the bi-lingual bars on Don’t Touch That Dial’s Nostromo funk and Afro-rave queen Toya Delazy whose Zulu lyrics on Galaxy Mood meld acid house and freewheeling African grooves.
The undoubted star of that part of the show however is Rebecca Taylor, who as Self Esteem released her first EP on Maclean’s Kick & Clap label and celebrates a long association with the group by elevating the perfect early 90’s house of Complete Me into a dancefloor anthem for the ages.
When it was just the Djangos it has of course been all good before, so its not like the rest is lacking either in ideas or invention. Here opener Wishbone channels their convention-free approach to boffin-indie and Come Down shuffles neatly via over forlorn synth pads and a lonely sounding beat.
Depending on what you bought a ticket for its arguable that not all of rest works (Osaka, Squid Inc., Golden Cross all needing various degrees of an open mind), but closer Gazelle’s violin weirdness is somehow attractive, and the chattering techno of Slipstream is future phunk for astronauts everywhere.
Off Planet is ambition standing on the shoulders of ambition; even to attempt it was something for which respect to Django Django is very much due.
That the rocket falls back to earth is OK and, as a side note, it’s more than good enough to sell itself without having to work up some stuff on Area 51.