Matt Cocksedge of Delphic

Mike: Thanks so much for taking some time to talk with us. Are you guys getting ready for the tour right now?

Matt: Yea, just getting all the gear together right now. Also an updated iPod is really essential, so I’m just loading mine up with some TV shows and all that. I’m looking forward to it.

Mike: So we read that you guys all hail from Manchester?

Matt: Yea we’re all from the area and have been living around here for a while now.

Mike: Have you guys done a North American tour before, or is this a first for you?

Matt: Well we’ve never been up to Canada before. We were in America for about a week and played 3 gigs in New York, LA and San Francisco. That was a really brief visit though, and we’ve been waiting for a while to kind of get back into it and actually spend some time there.

Mike: Do you guys have any plans before your show here? Or are you just flying in, playing the show and moving on to the next city?

Matt: I’m not too sure, we do have quite a few gigs but hopefully we’ll be able to find some time. We try to stay in hotels the night before and stay in the city all of the next day, so we’re kind of driving all through the night. We like to wake up in a new place and have some time to go out and see it a little bit. That’s a great irony of being in a band though, you get to travel all over the world to these amazing cities, but you never actually see any of them. You see a hotel and a venue and sometimes that’s about it. We like to try and get out and look around, we actually have these apps on our phones now that show us cool places in these different cities. But most of the time, you know, we have sound check to do before the show, then we just try and get some food, do the gig and then it’s mostly just off to the next place. It varies, but we try and get out whenever we can.

Maurizio: So let’s go back to the beginning, how did you guys all meet?

Matt: Well Rick and I met at school, we were in a few bands together from the time we were 15 or so. We were in this sort of avant-garde, post-rock kind of Godspeed (You Black Emperor) type outfit when we were that age, we were pretty adventurous. Then we met James and Dan at university, we were all playing in various bands around the Manchester scene. So we were friends for a while and then eventually decided to quit our respective bands and join up together. We all wanted to do something new, and the chemistry just really worked out. And now here we are, coming to Canada.

Maurizio: So if you guys were mainly in rock bands before you formed Delphic, where does the dance element of your music come from?

Matt: Well the dance element was kind of all around us for a long time. We were all growing up in the 90s when raves were getting really popular, that was always quite prevalent; bands like Prodigy were kind of always around the area. The rock element more came in when we formed the band. We were really just feeling our way around at first and didn’t have any sort of overall plan or idea of who we were yet. Each song was a step in a different direction as we tried to branch out, and we eventually decided we wanted to make this new type of music that kind of combines euphoric dance music with the melancholy indie music we were also in to. It was a long path that got us to the sound of the band we’re in now.

Mike: It’s definitely a very different sound that you don’t hear too often. How would you classify your music?

Matt: Well when we were writing the album we called it post-dance. Just trying to be ironic and play off of the post-rock genre. It was sort of a joke but while we were writing the album it also kind of gave us a framework. It was important for us to have an overall concept of what we wanted to do and work within those guidelines. It can be really overwhelming making electronic music because you really have the opportunity to do anything you want to do, you can make any sound that you want to create. So you have to choose the right sound for what you want to do and capture the right mood. The post-dance label sort of describes a new type of dance music where it’s not so much about the classic heavy bassline, but it’s still really dancy in a different way.

Maurizio: What’s the creative process like for this post-dance music?

Matt: Well in terms of writing the songs, it was all about getting things done on the computer. We all have laptops and loaded them up with music software. We kind of worked individually at first, coming up with ideas for synths and stuff and then started putting our ideas together. We often work in pairs of two; we find we work best that way. We all think it’s important to be able to argue one on one, because there’s really no ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ it’s all about taste. It works out for us much better that way. It’s a very gradual build up from just a beat and a synth line and a melody with no words to a full song, it’s actually a very tough process. We didn’t write lots of songs, but we had a lot of ideas and were only really able to develop a few of them into full songs. For this first album we were picking from a huge pile of songs, and we could only put so much time into each arrangement with all the little things that need to be done. We just couldn’t do that with 30 or 40 different songs, you know?

Mike: We see that you guys have bounced around a lot in terms of your labels. The first single was released with Kitsune, but you’re also signed with Dangerbird and a few others. What’s your situation right now?

Matt: We basically have labels from the individual countries that we’re singed in. In the UK we’re signed to Ploydor, but we’ve also released stuff with Kitsune and a few others. We wanted to keep as much control as possible and as much of a natural element as we could in terms of the whole relationship with labels. So for that reason we signed a lot of deals that were very much individual territories. In the US we’re signed with Dangerbird, in Europe we’re with Kitsune and others as well. It’s really just a lot of little deals because it’s better to have a good relationship with the label and really work with people you know rather than people who were just given the CD and told ‘this is what you’ll be pushing for the next month or so.’ Especially with Dangerbird, we found that they have a real passion for the records, so that’s why we went with them. We like working with people that we can work well with.

Mike: When you guys first got signed to Kitsune, how did it feel to be on the same label as some of the other amazing artists they’ve signed? Boys Noize, Klaxons, Bloc Party, Cut Copy etc are all really big acts right now all over the world, how did it feel to be included among their ranks?

Matt:  It’s crazy, it really is. Actually with all the labels that we singed to it’s kind of the same way. For example we’re signed to Radiohead’s label in Japan. Kitsune and Poloydor, they all have a great people on them and I still haven’t really gotten over our name being among them, it’s still a very strange thing even though we signed these deals quite a while ago. It’s really surreal, but right now we’re just making the most of it, trying to push ourselves to record and get more material done.

Maurizio: We also saw that one of your tracks made its way into an ad for the new 90210 TV series, what was your reaction to that?

Matt: Oh boy, yea that was definitely my happiest moment in music so far (laughs.) Well those sort of things, we’re never really told about them, they never ask us if they can use our track but it’s always fun. It’s weird actually to think: ‘wait, they’re using one of our tracks on this thing?’ I was hoping our music would get used in something a bit classier, maybe an HBO show or something (laughs).

Mike: We loved both your videos for ‘Doubt’ and ‘This Momentary,’ and we saw that you’ve gotten some accolades for them as well. How did you guys come up with the concepts for those videos and how much creative control did you have in making them?

Matt: With the videos we’ve been working with some really good directors. We had seen some of (video director) Dave Ma’s work before we did ‘This Momentary’ with him and we loved the look of his videos. With songs you write, you sort of get a feeling for how you want them to be represented visually, and we really take the music video as a serious thing. It’s a chance to do something special and make something people will remember. We just wanted something very real, almost documentary style for this video. So we gave that idea to Dave and asked him what he thought he could do with it, and he came back with something that we really liked. It’s really nice that with the labels we’re singed to we get a good deal of control over what exactly the video should be, we don’t need their permission or anything, they really trust us.

Maurizio: So we’re going to wrap up now with some questions that we ask most artists we interview. First off, who would you most like to collaborate with?

Matt: Well there are obviously a number of people I’d love to work with, Bjork, and Thom Yorke come to mind right away. Actually Andre 3000 is someone that I’d absolutely love to work with as well, I think we would come up with something really cool if we ever got together.

Maurizio: And who would you most like to share the stage with?

Matt: Bjork would definitely be in my short list again; I love her stage setup and how the band wears costumes and things like that. Kraftwerk would also be really cool because we both have a lot of electronic equipment to work with. The stage might get a bit crowded but I think it would be worth it (laughs.)

Maurizio: Alright, and lastly what are three of your favorite albums right now?

Matt: I really haven’t stopped listening to Dear Science by TV on the Radio since it came out; I think that album is absolutely fantastic. I’ve also been listening a lot to the new Everything Everything album, they’re another Manchester band I’ve been following. And finally, I’ve been going through a big Bob Dylan phase recently. I only recently got into Dylan in the last few months, which is quite possibly one of the most embarrassing things I could have told you. I knew it’s a massive undertaking to really get into his work, so I always thought I’d get into it when I was ready.

Mike: That sounds great, have a great trip and thanks so much for talking with us. We’ll see you here in Montreal!

Matt: Yea, no worries it was nice chatting and I’m looking forward to it. Cheers!