Aeroplane
Interview Aaron Coultau
Photography Andreas Lux
We enter a small backstage caravan in rain-sodden Victoria Park and find it littered with make-up accessories, lipstick and an assortment of fruit. “Not mine,” shrugs Vito De Luca, one half of Belgian duo Aeroplane, before he sits down and starts flicking through a magazine. They’ve just finished a well-received set at Field Day in east London, one of a handful of festival appearances in a summer schedule dominated by the recording of their debut album. Some banter ensues as to who owns said makeup (they suggest that it is mine: turns out to belong to Little Boots), and it doesn’t take long to feel the dynamic between the two: Vito, cheeky and outspoken; Steph, quiet and reserved.
The pair met in 2001. Vito, a classically trained pianist, ran a record store in Brussels. Stephen Fasano was a regular customer who had been DJing around Belgium for more than a decade. Both possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of music–from pop and disco to soul and classical–and before long Aeroplane was born. After releasing three singles on Eskimo Records (“Caramellas”, “Pacific Air Race” and “Whispers”), the pair set about remixing the who’s who of the disco and synth pop world: Cut Copy, Lindstrom, MGMT, Das Pop and the Shortwave Set all received the Aeroplane treatment. But it was their remix of Friendly Fires’ “Paris” that really got tongues wagging, showcasing their talent by turning a fast-paced indie track into a blissful disco anthem that topped many an end-of-year chart.
In 2009 the pair released two even more accomplished remixes: A synth-soaked rework of Sebastien Tellier followed an inspiring take on Grace Jones’s “Williams’ Blood” (which was at first turned down by Jones but later accepted). Add to that a regular output of mixtapes, energetic DJ sets and a debut album due out in 2010, and it’s easy to see why Aeroplane are the frontrunners in the Balearic revival. We sat down to talk about puns, musical influences and which genre of super-fast dance music is worse: gabba or hardstyle.
I love that you guys started your set with “The Sound of C” by the Confetti’s. That’s old school Belgian dance!
Vito: Yeah. We love that song. The Confetti’s were part of the new beat scene in Belgium, so we play that track as respect to our home country.
Steph: It’s also the right kind of style to open one of our sets. We like to start things off pretty slow and build it up. Our style is similar to the new beat style in some ways.
For such a small country Belgium has a pretty eclectic history when it comes to electronic music.
Steph: It’s very true. You’ve got the big guys like Soulwax and there are also so many amazing festivals here. Pukkelpop, Dour, Rock Werchter…
And I Love Techno.
Steph: Yeah. They are all huge. And the club scene is good, too, for such a small country. We have a residency at the Make Up Club in Ghent which has been great for us.
But what about gabba, surely the worst music ever invented. That’s big in Belgium, isn’t it?
Vito: Gabba is more of a Dutch thing, but in Belgium we have this horrible music called hardstyle. It’s like the worst parts of all kinds of electronic music put together into one. Everything happens on the beat: a snare, a kick, whatever. And it’s 150 beats per minute or something crazy [Vito starts pounding his fists and making “doof doof” noises].
How did you guys meet?
Vito: I was working at a record store in Brussels and Steph was one of my regulars.
Steph: I had been DJing for many years and we just got talking about music.
Vito, did you have a hardstyle section in your record store?
Vito: Yeah, of course. I’d like to have just sold music I like but I needed to put food on the table by selling shitty records.
What kind of music inspired you growing up?
Vito: Oh, loads of stuff. I listened to a lot of soul music. Lots of hip-hop too. Oh, and Michael Jackson. I loved Michael Jackson. Both of our backgrounds are Italian, so that’s an influence. I listened to a lot of Italian pop growing up, and people like Lucio Battisti.
Steph: Michael Jackson for sure. A lot of stuff like Supertramp (starts singing an indecipherable Supertramp song). And I’ve always loved Italo disco. It’s so cheesy but so good.
And what kind of tunes are you listening to now?
Vito: Bowie!
Steph: I’m still listening to a lot of Italo.
Vito: But in terms of new stuff, I love the Leo Zero remix of “Rabbit Hearts” by Florence and the Machine.
How is the album coming along then?
Vito: It’s nearly done. We’re not rushing it. We are allowing ourselves the opportunity to change our minds on things. I think that is important in the writing process.
Is it true that Dave from Soulwax is producing it?
Vito: No. We spoke to him and he wanted to produce it, but Soulwax’s schedule is just crazy so it was impossible to organize.
Your mixtapes are amazing; they seem to take the listener on a real journey. How do you go about putting them together?
Vito: We’ll play a lot of promo stuff that gets sent through. We try to play music we’ve just discovered. The mixtapes are just things we make on planes and trains to make the time fly.
Steph: We try and make the mixes representative of what we’re listening to at the moment, so people know what to expect when they come to one of our sets.
Vito: In our last mix we started with Siriusmo’s “High Together”. He’s such an amazing producer. No one is doing anything like him at the moment.
Steph: Two of the mixes we made–the “Taking Off” and “Landing” mixes–are pretty much one mix. They go together really nicely.
Your remix of the Friendly Fires track “Paris” was one of the tunes of 2008. It still sends shivers up my spine when I listen to it. How and why did you decide to replace the male vocals with female?
Vito: We were just sitting around listening to the different parts of the song and we heard the girl vocals [provided by members of Au Revoir Simone] on their own, which were backing the boy vocals on the original. We both loved the girl vocals so much we decided to use them instead.
Steph: It’s funny, we didn’t even know who Au Revoir Simone were at the time, but that remix worked out pretty well.
Your remix of Grace Jones’ “Williams’ Blood” was rejected at the first time of asking. What’s the story there?
Vito: At first Grace only heard certain parts of our remix and she didn’t like them, but apparently it was on a really crappy sound system. So we gave it to a blog and then before we knew it, it was on like 300 blogs. Then Grace’s management contacted us and said she wanted to have another listen and she accepted it. It all worked out great in the end.
Your most recent remix is of Sebastien Tellier’s “Kilometer”. Why did you name the remix “Italo 84”?
Vito: We called it that because we produced in that old Italo-era style in our production. We only used old drum machines and synths. No samples or software.
Is that how you do all of your production?
Vito: No, we usually produce with both traditional equipment and software. It’s getting them to work together that is the trick.
The disco revival is in full swing. Where do you see yourselves standing in that scene? A lot of people have you pencilled in as ‘cosmic disco’.
Vito: I see cosmic disco as coming more from the Scandinavian guys at the moment, like Todd Terje, Prins Thomas and Lindstrøm. That sound is characterized by very long tracks, extended intros and a really laid back kind of vibe. I don’t think we are cosmic disco. We are probably a bit more poppy than that.
The disco scene in London has exploded in the past couple of years . What city receives you the best?
Vito: London has been great for us. We have played a few gigs here. The Kitsuné party at the Scala in June–that went off. There was a stage invasion at the end. We played the Smiths as our last track and everyone went crazy. At first it was like, ’Shit what are all these people doing?’ But then we realized they were just having a good time! But we get a good reception in other places around the UK, like Manchester and Glasgow.
On Discogs.com it says you used to be called the Spankers. What’s that all about?
Vito (laughs): Ah yes, that was our first project. We were trapeze artists in a circus.
Hmm…
Vito: Okay that’s not true. We made one song and did one remix as the Spankers. That was a long time ago and we decided to change our name.
The Spankers doesn’t have quite the same ring as Aeroplane does it?
Vito: That’s why we changed it!
