With a name like The Duke, Detroit, you'd be forgiven for believing this Edinburgh four piece to be a solo project. The Duke, as we they are affectionately known, emerged in full form late last year, garnering airplay and reviews for debut single Saturday. A band with a real electro 'summertime' vibe, they've enjoyed a spate of gigs recently, and have a host of new tracks to boot. Read on, read on, read on.
Hello! How the devil are you?
We're all feeling pretty dandy, think we're finally recovered after our show at King Tut's at the weekend and the after party that went with it.
It's the question everyone hates, but could illuminate our readers with a little bit about your music and your influences?
We're an 'electro-indie' band but we like to dip into other genres, play with samples and reference previous artists or songs that have influenced us and our listeners. Vague, I know. We mainly draw our influences from post-punk, New York disco, French electro and '50's rock 'n' roll.
What's your song-writing / creative process like?
We try and keep it as natural as possible, let the song write itself. With our instrumentation we will always retain 'The Duke' sound. We don't like to force the songs into other genres. If we've written a swing song, it's going to be Duke-flipping swing song!
What could we expect to see from a live show?
We like to mix it up a bit live, such as letting the tracks run into one another creating some real nice, melodic interludes between some of the songs. Allowing it to become a bit more of a show oppose to just a gig.
But mainly... Sweaty vests, and floppy quiffs.
Tell us about latest track Summer's Come.
Summer's Come right now is just a track we put up online recently as a bit of a feeler for some of our unreleased material. It won't actually be released until next summer. We just felt Scotland had such a great summer this year; with the commonwealth games and the lovely weather; and that this could be our contribution.
What else have you got planned for the rest of 2014?
We are in the process of getting ourselves together to release our tune Dangerous. So that means all our focus right now is on filming and gigging. Got some remixes we will be putting up online over the next few months as well. So keep an eye out for them!
What are you listening to at the moment?
Right now we are listening to Young Fathers album Dead. Incredible album and proud to say we are from the same city. We also listening to Honeyblood. We were lucky enough to play with them the other week. Real charm to their sound and really enjoying the debut! But our favorite is Night Noise Team Rever Electrique. Absolute masterpiece and everyone should check it out.
Thanks for speaking with us, would you care to share a joke with us?
How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?
"Oops, I broke it!"
Lame, we know...
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