In this interview feature, we get to know the most radicalist up and coming stars on the planet. 

This time we spoke with avant-garde synth-pop duo audiobooks about their artistic journey so far.

Having hit it off at a house party, London-based art student Evangeline Ling and mix engineer extraordinaire David Wrench started making music together the very next day. Within a matter of hours, they'd created their incredible industrial debut single 'Gothenburg' and thus, audiobooks was born. Showing absolutely no signs of slowing down, the dynamic duo swiftly signed with Heavenly Recordings and put out a limited edition EP of the same title featuring other successful spontaneous cuts including the wonderfully whimsical monologue 'Pebbles'. With a smattering of phenomenal sold out shows under their respective belts, as well as slots at Green Man, The Great Escape and Port Eliot, it's full steam ahead for this talented twosome and we couldn't wait to find out more.

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TMR: audiobooks is perhaps one of the most appropriate band names we’ve encountered for a while. Was it a preconceived concept to tell stories over music or is it just something that came naturally when you started writing together? 

It happened naturally. The name just suited the project despite it being un-googleable. We were going to be called Eurotunnel at one point.

TMR: Can you tell us a bit about your writing process? Do you have set roles or is it more of a free for all? 

The only rule is to question anything that might feel like a rule. We love the feeling of being uncomfortable. We improvise, then keep the bits that make us go “can we do that?’ and scrap the bits that are immediate… but not always…

TMR: Since the arrival of ‘Gothenburg’ back in April, you’ve already released an EP of the same title and another new single ‘Hot Salt’. Are you sitting on a stockpile of material or just super prolific?

We work incredibly fast. We make a song from nothing to finished recording in anything from minutes (‘Pebbles’ took 5 minutes) to a few hours for something like ‘Hot Salt’. So yes, we have a big stockpile. Not everything will get released though.

TMR: Speaking of ‘Hot Salt’ we’re absolutely loving that track at the moment. Did you actively set out to make a summer banger with this one? 

We wrote and recorded it on Summer Solstice 2017. We wanted to make a Solstice party tune. We were dancing around the studio when we made it.

TMR: With David’s engineering background (Glass Animals, The XX, Frank Ocean and FKA Twigs to name a few) it’s not surprising that the production sounds phenomenal on everything we’ve heard so far. David, how does the process of producing and mixing your own music compare with the work you’ve done for clients?

Every project I work on is different, but I’ve started taking what I’ve learned from how we work as audiobooks into other sessions. I like to work really quickly anyway, and just having stuff set up so a session can be spontaneous is great. Also, to remember that time spent sitting and talking and listening to records is never wasted time. I’d rather wait around for the right moment, then capture that rather than force creativity in an unnatural way.



TMR: Evangeline, as a fine art student at Goldsmiths, it’s a nice touch that you’ve created all the audiobooks artwork yourself. Do you think there’s any similarities between the way you approach making art and music?

I try tapping into a similar kind of head space when making art + music.

If I stopped making art I think my writing would suffer, and vice versa.

But maybe ‘art’ and ‘music’ are just name tags put in so we can distinguish the difference between looking at things and listening to things.

I’m really just interested in stuff that makes you go ‘oh wow’, and I attempt to do that with things you can see and hear.

TMR: Nearly all the music from Gothenburg has been predominantly synth driven but at your live shows we’ve spotted the odd guitar, bass and even saxophone creeping in. Are you looking to incorporate more organic elements into your sound going forward? 

We decided that for live we would take a more organic approach. There are a lot of as yet unreleased tracks we have with Guitar, Bass, Rhodes etc on too. We wanted the live set to be about performance and energy. We didn’t want to be staring at laptops on stage.

TMR: Talking of your sound, do you both have similar musical influences and are there any key reference points that have moulded your musical output?

We share a lot of influences, and have differing ones too. We listen to music together a lot. We message each other music we’ve discovered every day.

TMR: As a blog specialising in new music, we’d love to know if you’ve seen or heard any great up-and-coming bands recently that you’d like to mention?

I (David) just got sent some demos by an artist from Tel-Aviv called Zohara. Her family is from different cultures which reflects in her music which fuses Israeli, Arabic, and Western European modes and rhythms in a really interesting and new way.

TMR: Finally, what does the rest of 2018 hold for audiobooks? 

Lots of rehearsing, lots more writing, and… well, wait and see!



-Holly Mullineaux