++INTERVIEW++
In Part One of our Duke Spirit Special, Don Blandford catches up with Luke Duke to talk about recording in the desert with QOSTA knob botherer Chris Goss.
Artrocker: It’s been a while…are you worried people have forgotten you?
Luke Ford: We haven’t really got any fear about anything like that – we’re kind of confident. There’s always going to be a passing buzz with bands. It’s the nature of how the music scene is. I think the certain core element of people you do touch, do stay with you.
"We wanted to really twist it and take these songs that we’d been writing in London out into a very alien environment."
Artrocker: What’s changed since 2005?
Luke Ford: Since we recorded the last record we’ve played a lot of shows. The weird thing about our first L.P was that we recorded it quite a long time before that came out so we weren’t like this focused live proposition that we became. We’d not played a lot of the songs live at that point so we spent quite a long time through 2005 and 2006 just playing and playing really.
Artrocker: Tell us about your new album Neptune?
Luke Ford: We’ve always been about lots of soundscapes which maybe didn’t come across on the first record and we wanted to bring that in now. It had to happen this time around. We also longed to bring in other aspects of music or sonics which we hoped would come through…not that we were desperate to copy other records but we were obviously influenced by other things. Some more gentle things, some more broader strokes. We’ve always listened to people like Serge Gainsbourg...Jack Nietzsche…Aphex Twin, Bjork. We just wanted to try a lot more out, really…hence where we went to record and who we recorded with.
Artrocker: How did you get to work with Chris Goss?
Luke Ford: We were talking about who we wanted to record our record and Goss’s name came up at certain points because of stuff he’d done with KYUSS and QOTSA over in that mysterious desert environment. We wanted to really twist it and take these songs that we’d been writing in London out into a very alien environment.
Artrocker: Ah yes the desert studio…what was that like?
Luke Ford: This place had horizons which stretched off everywhere with stars at night, the heat, and there were always really interesting people just popping into the studio all the time bringing us food and bringing us drinks - just wanting to come and see what was going on. It’s just this small town with artists and bands and messheads.
Artrocker: Did the environment influence the record?
Luke Ford: What Rancho de la Luna and Chris provided was the bringing in of different sounds. The place is just full of the craziest old musical equipment from the Forties onwards. Amazing little amplifiers, crazy organs. Really weird double-necked guitars, perspex guitars - just amazing. Basically we were just thriving on all these stories and stuff around us. It was a catalyst just to get these initial inspirations we had in London down in the best way. I think desert energy definitely infused into the record.
Artrocker: Are you happy with the results?
Luke Ford: It’s weird. I feel pretty cocksure about how things are going really without meaning to sound like a cock!
++ Don Blandford ++
The newest sounds as heard in the Artrocker Office and our Resonance FM podcast.
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