Sands of Time: Simian Mobile Disco on recording Whorl

On a drizzly, stuffy night in July, hundreds of revellers – well-dressed lads, stag and hen dos and the odd leftover student – patiently file into the vast hangar of Manchester’s Gorilla club for a DJ set from Simian Mobile Disco. Half-filling the club, they bop and flex along to a warm-up set of deep house with the occasional acid flourish. Meanwhile, in a cramped green room feet above the decks, James Ford and Jas Shaw sip tinnies and discuss their upcoming fourth album proper as SMD, Whorl. Improvised, wholly instrumental and unwaveringly spaced out, it’s perhaps not the album their audience tonight might have expected. Nor is it necessarily the one they might want.

“We feel like we’ve changed a lot. But is it a good strategy as a band to change a lot?” wonders the ever-affable Ford who, in another world, is the production guru for Florence, the Arctics, and other critically acclaimed crossover groups. “I do feel there’s been a distinct progression. But it depends, have people have been paying attention between 2007 and now?”

Shaw is equally good-humoured and utterly direct. “What we’ve done is fucked off our entire studio to go to the desert to avoid doing vocals,” he explains. “And it’s hard to understate, just how much it could not have come out as OK. A few weeks before the gigs, we had nothing. We would reload tracks we’d recorded the previous day and it’d sound like complete gibberish.”

Whorl, an enigmatic-sounding term for a single 360-degree revolution, neatly follows SMD’s last full-length, Unpatterns, and does indeed bring the sound of the band full circle – and then some. Recorded entirely in three live takes, two in the remote California desert close to the famous Joshua Tree, Whorl sees Ford and Shaw strip back their equipment and aesthetic with absorbing results.

“We have stripped it down, but to two very complicated little boxes,” explains Ford of the album’s conception. “We had a very defined set of parameters, and we’ve never made anything so prescriptive before. So the kick drum and the bass is the same through the whole album, and so on. It takes away choice.” It might seem odd for producers as prolific and technically well-versed as SMD to actively want to deprive themselves of options, but their reasoning is succinct and entirely artistically logical. “We didn’t even want to do a live show at the beginning,” admits Ford. “But we’ve been touring the old live rig round a lot, and it got to the point where we got good at turning something that went wrong into something worthwhile. You can’t fake it. We were getting close to this point.”

“On this record, much has been made of the rig. To a certain extent the rig almost defined it. But we’ve always dicked around with modular synths,” Shaw explains, reaffirming what anyone who’s ever seen SMD’s flexible and ever-increasingly live show will attest.

"A few weeks before the gigs, we had nothing" – Jas Shaw

Much of the press pushing Whorl will undoubtedly focus on the ‘psychedelic’ elements of the LP, and understandably so. As well as its recording, during which SMD’s delicate gear was literally balanced on a prehistoric set of rocks in one of the most fabled spots on earth, there are the track titles: Jam Side Up, Iron Henge, Sun Dogs and Dervish, to name a few. Beginning at a languid, earthy pace, the LP eventually blossoms into a chugging, acidic groove that nonetheless merely flirts with the dancefloor. It is very English – somewhat paranoid as well as dreamy – and went down very well with the regional druids during a recent performance at Green Man Festival, deep within the Brecon Beacons.

“We’re huge fans of Broadcast, and I think it’s referencing similar stuff like old psychedelia, the early electronic pioneers,” explains Shaw. “I think that was a particularly interesting time of music, as everything was so new. There was no standard way of doing things.” Other reference points include the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and its icon, Delia Derbyshire, as well as the likes of Raymond Scott and early Warp – particularly important in both members' musical heritage. Nonetheless, just as they’ve ultimately evaded their electro-pop label, Shaw is keen not to carve any genre tags into Whorl. “The more I think about the term psychedelia, the more meaningless it is. It’s so broad…Yeah, it’s waffle.”

Partially inspired by Pink Floyd’s cultish and curious Live at Pompeii, in which the band perform at the Roman ruins of the title while bereft of an audience, Ford and Shaw had both visited Joshua Tree in the past – and embraced Pioneertown, a studio set for Westerns, constructed during the 1940s and now doubling up as a real community. It was swiftly selected as a stimulating spot for their planned live recording – but what the duo would play was, at this stage, less clear, and what the locals would make of it, even less so.

“The gig itself was a really weird mix,” recalls a chuckling Shaw. “In the day, it was just locals, and when we were soundchecking, I heard some bikers describing us as video game music.”

Ford nails the initial atmosphere with slightly more precision: “It was a definite ‘be in a proper band or fuck off’ vibe.”

Promo footage from the recording reveals the duo’s atmospheric show taking place isolated in the scorching afternoon heat, as well as throughout a dusty, windswept evening. A not-so-reluctantly grooving elderly cowgirl is joined by a visiting crowd of curious, more rave-inclined guests from the West Coast. Both technically and figuratively, it’s several thousand miles away from Fabric, or even the most outlandish of European festivals that SMD have so successfully frequented for nearly a decade. Is this the idea? Complete escapism?

“Well, we were almost going to do it under a different name. To draw parameters,” admits Shaw.

“But I sort of feel just ‘fuck it,’ at this stage,” adds Ford. “It’s the most honestly ‘us’ album we’ve made, without trying to second guess anyone else. On the others, we perhaps made a few concessions, perhaps a vocal here or there…” A wry laugh between the pair prompts memories of Temporary Pleasure, the follow up to their sleeper hit debut, Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release. A pop-oriented bonanza, it contains, in the words of Ford, “some of our best, and some of our not-so-best work,” slathering the painstakingly tuned synths over verses from indie royalty such as Jamie Lidell, Beth Ditto and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor.

“Temporary Pleasure ran away with itself in a similar style to this record. We were really excitable, we had nine vocals, which was just an example of our sort of ‘produceriness,’ trying to doing service to all of those guests. And the classic mistake was we made was losing a bit of our own personality in the process,” reveals Ford. Five years later and there is no loss of personality throughout Whorl, and, tellingly, no discernible vocals either. Having worked and experimented together for so long, there’s an evident, mellow understanding between Ford and Shaw that must only inspire confidence in collaboration.

“I think we’re getting older, and maybe what we want out of music is changing. Perhaps the party side of us has dissipated,” ponders Ford, who has previously been videoed comatose beside a pool at P Diddy’s mansion. Continuing to perfect their techno output in between albums, SMD have collaborated on singles with the likes of Roman Flügel and Bicep for their own Delicacies imprint. “I think the dance material works best as 12 inches, rather than as a full album,” adds Shaw, who feels the label satisfyingly scratches the ‘dancefloor itch.’

Taking to the decks and scratching said itch with minimal fanfare, SMD plunge headlong into a slab of offbeat techno that eventually morphs into chunkier house, satisfying both their newer generation of fans and the casual Saturday-night masses. Before 2014 is out, the pair will take up residency in London’s XOYO each Saturday, playing alongside a variety of personally selected guests. “I feel like we’ve always done our own thing, and sometimes we’ve been with the tide and also, against it,” reckons Shaw. Showcasing the band in their boldest and most creative form yet, Whorl is the sound of the duo fully grasping a complete new set of powers.