Q ’n’ A: Robert Delong

Robert Delong is the epitome of the digital era’s one-man-band. On stage he’s smashing drums, hitting keys, looping synths, singing and playing with video game remotes all at once. Along with the release of his debut record Just Movement, Delong’s futuristic dance party is now making its Australian debut. He of Global Concepts fame chats to TMN about the Seattle indie rock scene, mashing up genres and stealing his roommate’s stuff in the name of music. 

So it’s your first time in Australia, how are you finding it? 

It’s great. You know the shows have been great. That’s pretty much all I’ve done, the shows and press, but it’s cool. It’s been cold! But still cool.

That’s not the image you get I suppose when you think of coming to Australia. Cold, windy weather. 

Yeah, but that’s my bad. It’s winter.

So your album Just Movement was released earlier this year, can you take us a bit through how long it took to put together? 

Yeah I mean you know it is kind of weird because most of the songs were written almost five years ago and you know probably the newest song on the album is two years old or something like that. So I mean after all these songs were written I had about a year refining and putting it all together. I mean it’s hard to say, when it’s your freshman work you kind of have your whole life to put it all together.

Did you think it would ever blow up this big? Especially something like Global Concepts that hit us here and kind of went crazy. What’s it like adjusting to all this new exposure? 

It’s great, I mean it’s exciting. I never really expected anything. I was just writing songs and producing music and then it just kind of took off which is great. But yeah it’s fantastic. It’s fun.

Was your foray into producing dance music a deliberate move or did it just happen fluidly? 

I mean it just sort of evolved. I was pretty much just a high schooler before that, just messing around with music software and then producing my own songs. Really just kind of with no rhyme or reason. Just you know having fun. Then as I got to college I kind of got more serious about it and I was studying music production. Then after I graduated college I was playing in bands and then it just kind of evolved into taking up all of my time.

People really respond to your approach to dance music, which seems to have with a particular indie, songwriter-y soul to it. Are you looking to revolutionise the genre? 

I mean to me it was just I took a lot of the things that I liked and mashed them together and this is what came out. I don’t know though. To me, dance music has always been so segmented genre wise. You know if you like drum and bass you listen to house music etc. But I think, especially now days, people at least in the States, are really getting into dance music now after all these years. And I think a lot of people are coming into it not knowing that there are these lines drawn between the genres, which is kind of cool because as a producer you’re producing every genre of music and kind of mashing it together. And I think people are kind of ready to see what can be done with, well with everything.

So in terms of your start in all of this, who did you grow up listening to? 

You know when I was really young I listened to mostly whatever my dad was playing which was mostly like contemporary jazz and big bands and like prog rock and stuff. So it was a lot of I don’t know Pat Metheny and I listened to Yes. And then you know in junior high there was punk and then pretty quickly I got into like indie rock and stuff. From Seattle mostly. With all the stuff that was happening around high school like Modest Mouse and you know Death Cab and all the other Seattle indie stuff. So that’s kind of what I grew up with.

That’s a really vast range of music. Is that really influential on the music you make now?

I think I took a lot from especially the indie songwriters. You know the melodies and the little bits of melancholy and all that sort of thing.

Were you in bands? 

Yeah I was in bands. I did jazz band and all that stuff through school and I played in plenty of punk bands and then indie bands. In college I played in a lot of indie rock and folk rock too. So I was playing in bands pretty much primarily when I was doing my solo work and then it just kind of took over.

Do you miss that kind of collaborative vibe or do you get more kicks from doing your own stuff? 

I mean I love playing in bands. It’s a great thing to be in front of a drum set and just rock out. But I don’t know, I love being able to, well it’s fun being a frontman! And also have total control.

On that, how do you translate what you do in a studio by yourself to a live stage? 

Yeah, when I’m trying to figure out how to perform a song I just lock myself away in my room, plug in all my toys and see what comes out. By the end, obviously I refine the thing over time. You know a lot of the songs changed a lot after I started performing them. So I went back into the studio and made the songs reflect the way I performed them live. I went kind of back and forth for a long time.

Is that important to you, to keep a consistency between your recorded stuff and the live performance? 

Not necessarily. Definitely in my live shows there are some songs I play a lot differently then they are on the record. But you know it was just like, oh that’s a cooler way to play that song, that’s a cooler way that song came out and I’d go back to try and do something to make that happen.

A constant process. 

Definitely yeah, yeah.

And then there’s the live instrumentation. Apart from drums and keyboards and computers there’s also wii-remotes, controllers and joysticks. What’s the story there? Did you just have a bunch lying around?

Sort of, yeah! I mean I had a joystick and a game pad lying around and one of my roommates had a wii and so I stole his wii remote. I had just been messing around with those things and because I had seen that people had hacked them on the internet to use them for their music stuff. So I just started messing around with it and that was even before I started performing with it all. And once I started performing I just slowly started integrating the thing and it kind of came part of my signature.

It’s a really effective visual technique. But did your roommate ever get his remote back?

You know I’m sure, actually yeah I ended up buying him one!

That must take time to perfect. Is there a lot of rehearsal involved?

Yeah oh yeah. Definitely. Obviously now I’m on the road a lot so I don’t get to rehearse but I play ever night so that’s enough rehearsal. But yeah for the last two years I was kind of consciously rehearsing as much as possible. A few hours a day, which is great. You get to the point where it’s automatic and you’re not frightened when you’re on stage and something goes wrong.

Are you a perfectionist? This kind of production takes hours, just to get one fragment of a song right.

Oh yeah, yeah. I’m obsessive!

Okay and now the trademark face paint. Tell us, who are The Tribe of Orphans?

Oh, the Tribe of Orphans. I guess it all comes from my girlfriend really. Early on when I started playing shows, her friends would come out with their faces painted. They’d go out to electronic events together and get dressed up and have their faces painted. So when they started coming to shows, the other people would see their face painting and say, “That looks fun” so she would just grab her paints out of her car! Eventually it just became part of the show. So the Tribe of Orphans is really my close friends in LA, that kind of grew into a bigger group of people that were down to party!

What’s it like to have a cult following? 

Oh it’s cool, you know it really just started with my extended network of friends and it just kind of grew. It’s cool though because it always maintained that kind of communal vibe and everyone’s been good to each other and still hang out with each other.

You played Splendour. There must be a pretty cool creative vibe at these festivals, playing around a bunch of other artists you respect or are inspired by. Or is just full on partying?

No it’s definitely cool, it’s creative. You know it’s funny people always think of festivals as being crazy parties and they are! But a lot of times for an artist, you know they flew in that day and they’re working really.

You’re killing the dream there a little bit. 

I know sorry.

Can you do much writing on the road? Are you working on anything new at the moment? 

Yeah I’m always working on stuff. I’m on planes, in my hotel whatever. On the road I work on a lot of remixes and stuff so those things kind of sneak out. Anytime I have a free moment I’m in headphones on my computer working on tracks.