INTERVIEW: Dark Sky – Building Othona

I’m sitting in a studio in South London, listening to something overwhelming. The percussion is hard, metallic and evokes some kind of midnight ritual. The melody buzzes with dread, before rising into something almost hopeful, and the track builds on itself over and over, finding new spaces to grow into before finally, it fades out. I just got one small taste of Dark Sky’s Othona. And that was the track they had to leave off the album.

Dark Sky (Matt Benyayer and Tom Edwards) first came the world’s attention for their remixing prowess, but since then they’ve grown into one of the most fascinating, impossible to define names in electronic music. They’re about to release their second album, Othona, and it’s on track to be the most mesmerising piece of work they’ve put out to date.

Sitting in their studio, surrounded by all the equipment which will turn Othona from a recorded experience into a live one, it was hard not to feel like I was in a laboratory, minutes after some kind of crucial breakthrough. “The first album was more like a collection of tracks with slight coherence, but this is a big step forward, we’ve tried to create something more cohesive.” Matt explains. “Tom brought in a collection of photos, and we were just going through them in the studio. We had a bit of writer’s block to begin with so we were trying something a bit different, working off of an image, and how it relates to the sound. We were trying to compose to the image.”

Othona (named for a Roman fort in Bradwell-on-Sea), really started taking shape thanks to one particular image. “There was just this one image that really jumped out and grabbed our attention, and it was this old aircraft lookout tower. There was something about it that made us want to investigate further, so we ended up going down to the location. It’s where Tom’s Dad lives.” Matt says, before Tom weighs in. “We already had about 3 tracks written at this stage, so they don’t really have an image to go with them, but beyond that, after we really got into this process, all the tracks have some kind of visual inspiration.”

Matt pulls up the image in question so I can look at it. It’s one of those desolate, lonely images that speaks volumes – an old, military relic looming over a deserted coastline. “It’s really dramatic, it draws a lot of questions.” Matt says. Writing music by the image is far from unheard of, but with Othona, Matt and Tom seemingly wanted to dissect the images and find direct parallels in the sound they were creating. “We were trying to pick out certain elements in photos and then reflect that in the music, like making it jagged because of the brickwork, or just picking out any element and finding the sonic counterpart.”

It goes further than that though. The images which helped inspire the tracks came from all over the place (the one which ‘Dome’ is tethered to was taken by Tom in Berlin, for example), and some of the sounds were two. In some sense, Othona acts like a kind of travelogue. “‘Angels’ features a lot of field audio from Morocco, I used this for it.” Matt explains, producing a formidable-looking portable recorder. “It has really nice stereo imaging. I was in the main square in Marrakech and there’s this kind of session where people just gather in circles and have jams. There are different groups of people scattered around in these circles and the sound clash is pretty crazy, but everyone’s in their own little trance. It was tough to integrate, you can warp things in Ableton but it can kill the whole organic feeling. We just laid a pad on top of the percussion for ‘Angels’ and it sounded natural.”

“With all our equipment set up it was just a case of thinking about an idea and figuring out which pieces of gear needed to be involved in the process.” Tom says. “It might be the Tetra or analogue keys or whatever. We were testing out sequencing apps on Matt’s iPad and running them through other pieces of gear to try and get the right sound. We just kept jamming and recording whatever worked.”

With more lyrically driven music genres, getting that kind of wanderlust across is easy, you just sing about it. With electronic music, it’s especially difficult, so when an artist releases an album that succeeds in this, it’s a big deal. “Mala’s a massive inspiration for us in the way that he’s gone out to different parts of the world and worked with different musicians.” Matt says “That’s the end goal, I think, the way James Holden and Floating Points went over to North Africa, stuff like that is the dream, really. Rather than going through a sample library to try and find something which matches what you’re imagining, you go out and record it yourself.”

Sat between them, and in the midst of all the equipment used to bring the album to life, it was hard not to get absorbed into Matt and Tom’s world. Due to other projects and Tom’s job at Corsica, the two had to make the most of any time they had together in the studio, and even while I was there they were working away, developing Othona into a whole other form – a live show.

Dark Sky’s live shows have a reputation as technical marvels, combining live instrumentation and electronic gear to create something unique. Since the previous album, they’re gone from a trio to a duo, and the set up for the new shows is remarkably different. There’s no drum kit, and no laptop. “There’s loads of atmospheric parts which you spend on the studio that then get pushed into the background. Everything that can go in, will go in.” Matt explains, before getting up to talk me through the gear. “That’s drum machine one, that’s drum machine two, those are all assignable outs and then these are the four channels. With this you can just blend everything. Drum back, bass station, the Tetra, all this. We’ve tried to make this live show more dynamically impactful, the last album was very free flowing but this one hits harder.” He turns to Tom. “Tom do you want to expand on that?”

“The aim of this set up was to make us more adaptable to club environments, and festivals. Before there were stages we just couldn’t play because our setup was too big, this is more compact.” Tom says, using his hands to gesture the scale. “It’s nice to go between different ways of performing.” He finishes, smiling.

Tom and Matt are both Londoners, and they’ve seen scenes come and go, they cite bass music as a key influence of their work and utilise it cannily, especially live, but after focusing on Dark Sky for so many years, what’s their perspective on things now? “What’s beautiful about London is that there’s all these little pockets, there’s never one dominant thing going on. It’s out there if you want it.” Matt says, before Tom carries on. “Broken beat is seeping back onto the dance floor with people like Henry Wu. We had a massive scene here but it kind of got swept away with the closing of places like Plastic People. It seems like now it’s coming back.”

They also talk about the rising artists around Peckham, the parallels to dubstep and even a few newer tracks they would like to remix, given the chance (Thundercat and Throwing Snow, in particular), but it all comes back to Othona, and what it means for them going forward. “The music industry challenges you to stay relevant, but if you just keep doing you, you’re usually ok. I’ve always wondered if we have a sound, that’s what we always strive for in the studio, signatures. That’s the bread and butter of an artist, really.” Matt says, turning to Tom. “We want to keep up the momentum.” Tom says.

I’ve listened to Othona a few times now, and without wishing to give too much away, it’s a very special album. Even the track I heard in the studio was good enough to send me into a trance state, and that one got cut out. “It was the track that signified the whole process for me.” Tom says, before Matt finishes. “Sometimes you get tunnel vision, so we had to just treat it like a seed and discard it. I think we’ve grown in that respect; we don’t get attached to things. It felt right cutting it to 9 tracks.”

 

Othona drops on Monkeytown on Friday (April 7th), you can pre-order it here. 

On April 30th, they’ll be playing at the Queen’s Yard Summer Party in East London. Tickets here.