METRONOMY
“I think that if you ask most musicians when they got into music, the answer is going to be something along the lines of, ‘It’s been there forever’. Personally, I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t listening to music. As well as all the memories of going on holiday and watching TV, there are musical memories. Sitting with my dad’s box of old 7-inch singles and playing them just because I liked the look of the label. Music just ‘is’. It’s part of who you are.”
Although today’s Metronomy is an all-singing, all-dancing five-piece live band, the story actually starts over 15 years ago with Joe Mount and a little inspiration from his dad’s aforementioned record collection. He also had his dad’s old computer and a bit of sequencing software that he’s pretty sure came free with Computer Music, of all places.
For the first album – 2006’s wonderfully named Pip Paine (Pay The £5000 You Owe) – Mount did have some ‘hardware’ as well. He’d picked it up at the local recycling centre in Newton Abbot on Devon’s south coast.
“Back in those days, you could come away with little Yamaha and Casio keyboards,” explains Mount. “Maybe the odd effect box. There was something about having this piece of musical equipment and not having the faintest idea what it was going to sound like. It meant you were open to surprises.”
By the time album number three came out, made the UK and French Albums Top 30 in 2011, and Mount found himself remixing for the likes of Goldfrapp and Gorillaz. Live, they toured with Bloc Party, Justice and even Coldplay.
