Music

More Crunk Please

Metronomy Remixes For Love and Money

By Theydon Bois


Photo by Russell Kleyn



STEPHEN SAYS: “It’s like something you’d hear at a nightclub and I don’t like that kind of music at all.”
Metronomy is a guy called Joe Mount who, if we all hold hands and believe hard enough, could turn out to be Britain’s answer to that chubby guy from the DFA and LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy. Not only has he “set indie dancefloors alight” with his stripped-down’n’pumped-up remixes for Franz Ferdinand, Bright Eyes and Lady Sovereign but his wild full-band live show—like Devo tussling with Can, apparently—had the girls from our office getting all hot and clucky (and that never happens).

Despite spending the majority of his 23 years in two of the most tedious places in England (Totnes and Brighton), Joe seems like a well-balanced chap who knows there’s a bit of a buzz about his music but isn’t too cocky with it. His debut album, Pip Paine (Pay The £5000 You Owe), held my interest throughout and I never got bored. The track “Trick Or Treatz” is especially good. Let’s talk to him about some of the remixes he’s done as Metronomy.

Ladytron “Sugar”
Joe: This was the the first one I did and it only took a few hours. That’s because I got really into it and couldn’t be arsed to take a break or anything like that.

Sebastien Tellier “La Ritournelle”
A bit of a weird one. I ended up making it like some techno track. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between me and the guy from the label. I sent him the remix and he’d go, “Yeah, yeah, it’s really good”, but then he kept saying, “Can you make it a bit more crunk?” And I was like, yeah whatever. I much prefer being left to my own devices otherwise you get someone telling you they want it “crunk”.

U2 “City Of Blinding Lights”
I’d heard some DFA stuff in a club somewhere and did a bit of a DFA-style thing here. I actually thought it was pretty good and I was imagining Bono listening to it nodding, going, “This young kid has taken a chance with our music. Let’s make him rich and famous.” But apparently it got as far as the marketing department where some guy was like, “Fuck off, no. Not going to even play it to them.”

Roots Manuva “Awfully Deep”
I made this one sound like Hall & Oates, an 80s funk thing. But Rodney [that’s Roots Manuva—Joe’s already on first-name terms with the stars] took away all the effects I put on the vocals. I still got paid.

THEYDON BOIS
Metronomy’s Pip Paine (Pay The £5000 You Owe) LP is out next month on Holiphonic Records. Check metronomy.co.uk

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