WALT DISCO about catharsis, change and being different

“… it felt a little ominous.”

2 Facts:
– Duran Duran, Simple Minds and OMD have already supported Walt Disco.
– The Scottish-born band will be playing at this year’s WGT on May 20, 2024.

Formative albums:
– Sufjan Steven – “Illiniois” (2005)
– Scott Walker – “Scott 3” (1969)
– Björk – “Post”

Walt Disco will release their second album “Warping” on June 14, 2024. It is almost impossible to describe her style. You will soon be reading a review here in which the influences of David Bowieand The Cures are discussed. But even that only partially reflects the melancholy that hovers between a seventies vibe and post-punk. You have to hear Walt Disco for yourself. We talk to Jocelyn (vocals) and Jack (songwriting) about their performance at this year’s Wave-Gotik-Treffen, personal songwriting and much more.

Outsiders?
Orkus: Your performance at the Wave-Gotik-Treffen is coming up soon. What connects you to the gothic scene?
Jocelyn Si: The big pop acts of the eighties and nineties like The Cure, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, who were decisive for the gothic scene, were all great writers and artists. They have always inspired us creatively and dramatically.
Jack Martin: The social ethos of being a bit on the fringe has always appealed to us, we’ve always felt like outcasts musically and personally. We feel a kinship with the Gothic movement.

Profound?
O: With “Jocelyn” you have written a particularly personal song, which is more or less a dream conversation between you, Jocelyn, and your mother. How did the need to write this text arise?
JS: It felt cathartic, I suppose. And because I wrote it with Jack, it was nice to have a reason to talk to someone about those feelings.
JM: It was a special song that we wrote together. As Jocelyn says, it was as if we had a personal conversation with each other, in a less direct way, but it still felt like it brought us closer and led to something profound.

Exhausted fairytale world?
O: There is also a fascinating video clip for the song. Your dress is fantastic and reminds me of the 1920s. How did you decide on the costume and what experiences did you have during filming?
JS: The costume was inspired by woodland animal lore and fairy tales. The concept of the video and song is to be a country girl who is slightly overwhelmed with the city, hence the junkyard and city streets in the video. The shoot for the video was quite cold and exhausting as we had to wait for nightfall on a day off from our tour with OMD, so we were pretty exhausted.

Check out the clip here:

Not in the right place?
O: How did the idea for the clip “You Make Me Feel So Dumb”, which is also well worth seeing, come about?
JS: The video is pretty much directly derived from the song, which is about feeling out of place at corporate events and the like. We know how many people can relate to it, so we didn’t want to mess up the concept of the song in the video, we just wanted to get it across in a humorous way.

O: The video begins with a cassette being inserted into a Walkman. What do you associate with cassettes?
JS: Probably – and many others will probably feel the same way – the movie “Ferris macht blau” because it has this Walkman in it, right?
JM: You remind me of being driven to elementary school in my mother’s Ford Focus, which had a cassette deck on the dashboard.

See for yourself:

Creepy premonitions?
O: In general, “The Warping” is very autobiographical. Was that a certain overcoming or rather a kind of catharsis?
JS: I would say the writing was cathartic and we contextualized certain feelings very well, but it felt a little ominous to record it in early 2023. It felt like a premonition as we experienced many of the issues we wrote about on the album that year more than ever before. It felt kind of creepy, but it was also nice to be able to listen to these songs over and over again.
JM: It’s always a bit of a leap of faith when you’re writing very personal songs, and the less you try to hide the fact that you’re admitting things about yourself, the harder it can be to pull off. But we took the plunge as authors and learned a lot, it helped us grow creatively and made us braver overall.

The recordings – have something to talk about?
O: “The Warping” was created in a wide variety of places. To what extent did that influence the songs?
JS: We got involved with each studio and the sound it could produce. With the demos we were able to get an idea of what each song would be like and focus on the details, the parts and the production. When we went into pre-production in the workshop with Chris McCrory, we started to give the songs an analog character by running them through tape recorders and expensive preamps, compressors and reverbs. In The Vale, a very cool, larger studio in the style of the seventies in a converted manor house, we worked, slept and rehearsed all day in this environment. There we gave the music a very strong band identity that we didn’t have before. We could really experiment with the technology as a creative tool, every microphone and every microphone position offered new possibilities. The vintage equipment we had access to gave us insight into how we would approach certain things that we hadn’t experienced before in home recording.
JM: Being in places like Austin, Texas and Los Angeles influenced the writing of certain songs. The physical distance from home influenced “Pearl”, and the experience of socializing in these places influenced “You Make Me Feel So Dumb”. Traveling, getting to know new places and people, as we do with the band, has always been a good way to broaden the source of influences. It gives you something to talk about.

Home?
O: But you also worked with Scottish musicians, didn’t you?
JS: Coming back to Scotland was a really nice way to tap into the wealth of Scottish talent, we had a great Scottish engineer, Jamie Savage, working with us. We worked with Krayg Miqman, who took care of the arrangements and the orchestral elements. The string, woodwind and brass players we used were all outstanding Scottish musicians or had worked/studied in Scotland. This has shaped some of the Celtic flavors in the pieces.
JM: Although this album was made in more places than any of our previous works, it’s the connection to home that holds it all together.

Happiness, longing, anger and … showers?
O: Is there a certain mood or environment that inspires your songwriting?
JM: Everything that touches me strongly enough, I try to express in writing. Great feelings of happiness, longing, anger or rage spur me on when I write.
JS: I feel like I’m always in the mood to write when I get out of the shower. The shower feels like a fresh start, and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to thinking deep thoughts in the shower.

Changes
O: How did the album title and the song “The Warping” come about?
Both: The word “warping” has both whimsical and unsettling connotations that describe change. We are changing ourselves, our music, the way our careers, lives and identities have changed. This metamorphosis is a major theme on the record. The title track deals broadly with these topics. As soon as we had the title for it, it immediately felt like a great word to describe the album.

O: “The Warping” is your second album. How has working on it changed compared to the first album?
JS: Even if the ambitions are perhaps comparable, it’s still very, very different. It’s not what people who only know us from “unlearning” would expect.
JM: We always try to make something that inspires us. We all listen to very different music, and our tastes change over time. We will always do what excites us the most at the moment. If that means big changes, then it will happen.

Weeping widows?
O: “Weeping Willow” is also particularly impressive. How can we imagine working on it?
JS: The narrative inspiration was that a member of the band left us. We had a meeting and decided that we didn’t want to stop, that it was worth sticking with this band. We still had the feeling that we had something to say. After this meeting, we went into the studio to write the song.
JM: In its arrangement it became this epic but slightly frightening world, it almost sounds like a cautionary tale that sailors would share on the lonely sea.
JS: We took up this kind of Celtic horror story with the figure of the banshee. The visual language was very much inspired by the movie “The Secret of the Enchanted Cave”.

O: What was the biggest challenge?
JS: During the recording process there were family-related medical emergencies, band-related medical emergencies, logistical nightmares and, as always, problems with money. But in the end, that made us stronger.

Claudia Zinn-Zinnenburg
Photos: Izzy Leach

Experience WALT DISCO live:
May 20, 2024 DE-Leipzig, WGT
November 10, 2024 UK-Leeds, The Wardrobe
November 11, 2024 UK-Manchester, Yes Pink ROom
November 13, 2024 UK-Nottingham, Bodega
November 14, 2024 UK-Birmingham, Institute 3
November 15, 2024 UK-Bristol, Rough Trade
November 16, 2024 UK-Brighton, Dust
November 18, 2024 DE-Hamburg, Nachtspeicher
November 19, 2024 DE-Cologne, Blue Shell
November 21, 2024 DE-Frankfurt, Brotfabrik
November 22, 2024 DE-Berlin, Pracktwerk
November 23, 2024 NL-Amsterdam, Bitterzoet
November 26, 2024 FR-Paris, Hasard Ludique
November 28, 2024 UK-London, Bush Hall
November 29, 2024 UK-Newcastle
November 30, 2024 UK-Glasgow

Do you already have your tickets?