They may have named their soul funk act Jungle, but Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland weren’t able to hide behind the camouflaged canopy of anonymity for long. The release of three eye-catching videos made them one of the UK’s buzziest acts and bloggers and the public soon came knocking to find out who was behind the slick production. It’s hard to maintain the mystery when shortlisted for the Mercury Prize.Childhood friends, J and T weren’t always deliberate about their obscurity and before press releases sans press shots, they fronted the wistful post-pop act Born Blonde. They failed to make a dent for as T has said they were in “for all the wrong reasons”.But Jungle are now approaching the game for all the right reasons and things seem to be working. On the phone from his home in London’s Shepherd’s Bush, J talked excitedly about the new challenges of handling fame.Noisey: You’ve had a massive year. Your debut album was nominated for a Mercury Prize and you sold out your first UK tour. Have you had time to reflect on it?
J: It was a mental year. I probably did more than I’ve done in my whole life. We’ve learned a lot in terms of confidence and what we think we are. It’s about being natural and honest. And honestly it’s very difficult to do that the whole time if you’re sometimes insecure or self-conscious; you’re gonna opt for fakery. Definitely. And you are! Did you ever think it’d work out so well for you?
It’s obviously amazing and we take each day as it comes. It’s important not to get greedy. We try not to be like that, but once you get to play to a thousand people there’s a yearning. I didn’t think we’d play to 200 people. When you play to 4000 people you go, ‘I wanna play to 7000 people now.’ But you have to work to that, and be appreciative. It’s a constant balancing act. Jungle started as an excuse for you and T to hang out. Now that you’re playing bigger shows and there are more demands does it feel more like work?
Yeah, well when labels get involved you see the importance, from their point of view, of selling records. They still believe in that, that’s the model. Obviously the model in the real world is vastly different, and it’s changing and has been changing for a while. So that puts pressure on, when you’re being told what your sales are. And then you look at your Spotify streams and they’re 25 times that. It’s an interesting dichotomy because of what labels consider success. Has technology changed how you work?
You have to almost be a multi-instrumentalist now, and either play or program everything. T and I have always just been writers and producers, that’s why it was really difficult to do the live thing. We were happy to sit in the studio and produce and write. That was the dream. But the band kind of took over, because you are expected to do that if you create this music. You’re not taken seriously until you can play live.I heard you recorded potato chips and creaking doors for this album. How does that kind of thing work live?
A lot of the sounds have to be played on the sample pad, because in the studio you might have someone playing a coffee cup with a fork, but you’re not going to take 15 coffee cups and loads of forks on tour, that’s just stupid! (laughs) But when you’re playing samples people assume that you’re not playing it, that it’s on a backing track, because there’s this big sound coming out and somebody’s just hitting one button. You almost want to do a walk-through guide for everybody as you’re doing it, explaining how it’s come about. That would be awesome. How do you put songs together when they’re made up of such random sounds?
A big part of song writing is the editing process, you know, being able to say ‘that’s rubbish’. I played somebody something yesterday, and I sat there talking over it, explaining that the mix wasn’t great. Whereas I could put “Busy Earnin’” on now, and I don’t need to say anything. Because I know it’s a really good track, and it’s developed enough to talk for itself. It’s about finding that point. Do you still want to write a hip hop album?
Yeah! That’s something that we’d love to do. What I was doing before Jungle was instrumental kind of chill wave hip hop. But it wasn’t connecting emotionally; we had more to say. A lot of what makes hip hop brilliant is rap, getting messages across. We’ve been working with rappers recently. Whether or not the public will ever hear it… We’re always working with ideas, but sometimes they don’t quite fit in. If we released a load of hip hop now the public might be quite confused!Catch Jungle in Australia:
January 29 - Sydney at Metro Theatre
February 4 - Melbourne at 170 Russell
They are also appearing at Laneway FestivalSarah Gooding is a Melbourne based writer - @sarahgooding
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J: It was a mental year. I probably did more than I’ve done in my whole life. We’ve learned a lot in terms of confidence and what we think we are. It’s about being natural and honest. And honestly it’s very difficult to do that the whole time if you’re sometimes insecure or self-conscious; you’re gonna opt for fakery. Definitely. And you are! Did you ever think it’d work out so well for you?
It’s obviously amazing and we take each day as it comes. It’s important not to get greedy. We try not to be like that, but once you get to play to a thousand people there’s a yearning. I didn’t think we’d play to 200 people. When you play to 4000 people you go, ‘I wanna play to 7000 people now.’ But you have to work to that, and be appreciative. It’s a constant balancing act. Jungle started as an excuse for you and T to hang out. Now that you’re playing bigger shows and there are more demands does it feel more like work?
Yeah, well when labels get involved you see the importance, from their point of view, of selling records. They still believe in that, that’s the model. Obviously the model in the real world is vastly different, and it’s changing and has been changing for a while. So that puts pressure on, when you’re being told what your sales are. And then you look at your Spotify streams and they’re 25 times that. It’s an interesting dichotomy because of what labels consider success. Has technology changed how you work?
You have to almost be a multi-instrumentalist now, and either play or program everything. T and I have always just been writers and producers, that’s why it was really difficult to do the live thing. We were happy to sit in the studio and produce and write. That was the dream. But the band kind of took over, because you are expected to do that if you create this music. You’re not taken seriously until you can play live.I heard you recorded potato chips and creaking doors for this album. How does that kind of thing work live?
A lot of the sounds have to be played on the sample pad, because in the studio you might have someone playing a coffee cup with a fork, but you’re not going to take 15 coffee cups and loads of forks on tour, that’s just stupid! (laughs) But when you’re playing samples people assume that you’re not playing it, that it’s on a backing track, because there’s this big sound coming out and somebody’s just hitting one button. You almost want to do a walk-through guide for everybody as you’re doing it, explaining how it’s come about. That would be awesome. How do you put songs together when they’re made up of such random sounds?
A big part of song writing is the editing process, you know, being able to say ‘that’s rubbish’. I played somebody something yesterday, and I sat there talking over it, explaining that the mix wasn’t great. Whereas I could put “Busy Earnin’” on now, and I don’t need to say anything. Because I know it’s a really good track, and it’s developed enough to talk for itself. It’s about finding that point. Do you still want to write a hip hop album?
Yeah! That’s something that we’d love to do. What I was doing before Jungle was instrumental kind of chill wave hip hop. But it wasn’t connecting emotionally; we had more to say. A lot of what makes hip hop brilliant is rap, getting messages across. We’ve been working with rappers recently. Whether or not the public will ever hear it… We’re always working with ideas, but sometimes they don’t quite fit in. If we released a load of hip hop now the public might be quite confused!Catch Jungle in Australia:
January 29 - Sydney at Metro Theatre
February 4 - Melbourne at 170 Russell
They are also appearing at Laneway FestivalSarah Gooding is a Melbourne based writer - @sarahgooding