Drahla – in session for Marc Riley – BBC 6 Music – September 20, 2017 – BBC 6 Music
Drahla in session tonight – recorded for Marc Riley on September 20, 2017.
From the band’s own bio:
“Go inwards and be bold.” This was Harmony Korine’s advice to aspiring creatives,
during a Q&A at the British Film Institute back in early 2016. For the recently-formed
Drahla, his words served as something of a directive, encouraging the trio to trust
their own instincts, however far removed they might be from those of their peers.
Three years on, the Leeds-formed band have defined their own vital subset of artrock with Useless Coordinates, a debut album that’s as fearless as it is enthralling.
Speaking from her current base in south-east London with bassist Rob Riggs,
singer/guitarist Luciel Brown recounts the record’s somewhat chaotic gestation.
“Most of last year was spent touring, so we were squeezing writing and recording in
from the beginning of 2018 until end of August.” In-between a headline tour, support
slots with Ought and METZ, and multiple festival appearances – including at
Meltdown at the request of The Cure’s Robert Smith – Brown, Riggs and Wakefieldbased drummer Mike Ainsley managed 10 days in the studio in total.
It was the unsettled nature of the period that part-inspired the album’s title. “[Useless
Coordinates] summarised all of our situations,” Brown explains. “We had all these
shows coming up and we knew we needed to leave our jobs and change our living
situations to make all this stuff happen. So we had all these fixed points and
timelines, but at the same time we felt quite lost within all of that.”
Though they felt adrift in their personal lives, artistically Drahla thrived amongst
confusion. Experimentation was integral to the creative process, with Brown and
Riggs continuing to swap instruments as per their live shows, while collectively they
were open to relinquishing traditional song structures in favour of adopting a more
instinctive approach. Another integral development proved to be the involvement
Chris Duffin of XAM Duo, who played saxophone on large swathes of the record and
whose esoteric musical tastes were influential.
To get you acquainted (if you aren’t already) here is that session, done for Marc Riley at BBC 6 Music on September 20, 2017.
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