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Two years ago, Beth Jeans Houghton had a bittersweet epiphany. Standing among the props in the “David Bowie Is…” exhibition ­at the V&A Museum, she realised that she had not been true to her childhood vows – to always keep moving, keep pushing her sound and never be pinned down. Things had to change.

Beth originally started off alongside The Hooves of Destiny, which saw them release the critically acclaimed “Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose”. Eager to expand on their success, Beth and the band took to LA in the hope of recording their second record. But soon Beth became disenchanted with her sound and artistic direction, and decided to split from the band to go about things alone.

After some soul-searching, she underwent a transformation. Beth Jeans Houghton was dead, and Du Blonde was born. While Du Blonde isn’t a stage character, it is a complete reinvention – introducing a new look, band and sound. We talk to Du Blonde about her newfound confidence, album and about setting off into the LA desert with Future Island’s Samuel T Herring.

You said that Du Blonde isn’t a character or persona. So how would you describe it?

I’d say it’s a new project, but it’s me 100 per cent. It’s not like I’ve created something artificial or change when I’m on stage. I’d say that I am probably more myself than I used to be. And the name just acted as a good way to make the point that I’m not doing my old sound anymore.

Would you say that there’s a lot of emotion and anger tied up with your latest album?

Yeah, definitely. There’s a lot of releasing of emotion. I got to a very stagnant point in my head and in my life, and I needed to expel all of that. But I would say it was more of a productive anger than anything else. Sometimes when problems build up over a long time, and you’re not really addressing them with yourself or other people, they can come out in ugly ways. But rather than do that, I wanted to do things in a positive way and put it into music. That way it’s healing for me, and I also save everyone else from my wrath.

How do you think you’ve evolved as an artist over the years since Houghton & The Hooves of Destiny?

I think I’ve become a lot more honest with myself and with my music. The first record was honest, but this one is more blunt and to the point. I’m not avoiding certain subjects by shrouding the lyrics in mystery; I’m just saying it how it is. I think I’ve become a lot more confident to be myself and not worry so much about what people are going to think. You can change as much as you like, but there’ll still be people who won’t like it.

Do you prefer being a solo artist?

It’s very different. I prefer it at the moment, but there’s something to be said for The Hooves of Destiny, as I was with them for eight years. There’s something really beautiful about that in a personal way. But in a creative way I definitely prefer being solo, because I get to call the shots and do all of the creative aspects exactly how I want, which is the only reason why I’m in this job.

Why did you choose “Black Flag” as your first single? What was the inspiration behind the video?

We chose that song because it was a good statement to begin with, and we wanted to make the point that it’s all changed. The video is about my love for LA. At the time of shooting the video, I hadn’t written “Black Flag” or any of the record. The desert footage was shot two years ago, but at that time I already had an idea of how I wanted things to be. So when filming I just danced to Beyoncé, because I knew I could put my song on top of it later. I wanted the video to represent my life in LA, ‘cause that’s a huge part of the record.

You’re also into photography and artwork. How important is creating art to you?

I only started doing music when I was 16, so before that I did a lot of art and photography and I thought that that’s what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life. It sort of acts like an escape as well. If I have writer’s block with my music, it means I have something else to keep my creative juices flowing. That way I’m not wasting time or being lazy, I’m putting creativity into another medium and that can also inspire me to go back to music with fresh ears. It’s like a little club in my head; they all help each other out.

People make a lot of assumptions about your music. Do you dislike having to pin it down, or do you have a particular sound that you’d subscribe to your songs?

With the first record, it was a lot harder to answer that question because there were so many influences. I still wouldn’t know what the first record is, genre-wise. But I know that this record is a lot simpler. It’s a guitar-based record and it was influenced by punk and rock.

You’ve also worked together with Future Island‘s Samuel T Herring. How did that come about?

I saw them play in Newcastle in 2011. I was totally blown away, because it’d been so long since I’d seen any band that engaged with an audience like that. I made a record in LA that never got put out at the end of 2012, and my producer at the time asked me what else I wanted while I was there, and so I told him about this guy in Baltimore. I got in touch with him thinking that at most he’d send over an MP3 of his vocals, but he said he’d come up to LA. He decided that as soon as he got there, we should drive into the desert. Which seemed like a great idea at the time, but as it got closer I got more nervous about my wellbeing. But it was fine – he was not a dangerous man, he was a real goofball. So we just drove round the West Coast for a couple of weeks, and went back to the studio. He did the vocals for my song in his first take, and he ad-libbed the whole thing. My producer and I were just like: “What the fuck?”.

If your listeners take one thing away from your music, what would you like that to be? 

One of the sole purposes of music is that you can relate to it and apply it to your own life. So I really wanted to try and make a record that would stand the test of time. You know when there are always some records that you go back to, and are always in your collection? I’d love it if this album was one of those.

Your album “Welcome Back To Milk” is out in May, so what’s next for you over the upcoming months?

We have a show on May 18th, which is the record release day in London, and then we’re going on tour in June. I just want to be playing live as much as possible. I won’t be playing my guitar anymore. It’s really fun and freeing, and it’s a lot easier to connect with an audience and involve them. Before I was probably hiding behind it because I didn’t know how to harness that power. But I think I’m almost there now.

Words: Leonie Roderick

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Most musicians spend their whole lives perpetually writing songs and recording demos, desperately hoping for their lucky break. Not Hanni El Khatib. The San Francisco native originally worked as a creative director for skate brand HUF clothing, while doing music on the side as a self-described “hobby”. Suddenly, his career took off. He released his first record ‘Will the Guns Come Out’, went on tour and seemingly turned his back on apparel. Luckily, he can now express his creativity not just through his music, but also as art director at his record label Innovative Leisure.

For his second album ‘Head in the Dirt’, Khatib collaborated with producer and The Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach after meeting in a bar in Paris. Returning to Auerbach’s Nashville studio, their collaboration resulted in a solid record filled with raw riffs and big drum tunes. Khatib’s third record ‘Moonlight’, will soon hit our airwaves in January 2015, before he embarks on a global tour to test his new material on an eager audience. On his latest record, it seems that the singer has moved away from upbeat tracks and catchy hooks in favour of being noticeably darker and experimental.

We decided to catch up with the singer to pick his brains about his evolution as an artist, being his record label’s in-house art director and pushing the boundaries with rock’n’roll music.

https://soundcloud.com/innovativeleisure/hanni-el-khatib-feat-gza-moonlight-remix

What made you decide to go from fashion to music? When did you decide to switch? 

It wasn’t really a “when”, it was more that I had to make the choice. I was doing it as a hobby and then the music just took over. There are only so many vacation days that you’re allowed to take in the US, so I had to make that decision. A few opportunities came up that if I hadn’t jumped on I may have regretted or it may have never come again. I can always go back to designing clothes, it’s not a big deal.

Is music a better medium for you to express yourself than fashion?  

Absolutely. I wasn’t necessarily a fashion-focused designer, I was very graphics-based. That being said, I’m currently my record label’s in-house art director. So with my own records I can visually express my concepts through album packaging, merchandise, accessories and other products. It’s so much better because I’m no longer limited to products that people wear. For example – I had an idea to release my new album on VHS tape. It would have a visual template matching the album, so in this case a super trippy video that’s the entire length of the record. I get to package it the way I want to. Most people don’t even have VCRs, so the fact that I’m allowed to make something that’s totally absurd, to me that’s more creatively gratifying. I’m not solely limited to apparel.

How would you describe your sound? 

It’s rock’n’roll music. I’ve listened to every type of rock, so my sound is a bit of psychedelic, heavy stoner rock, a little blues and more classic rock music. I jump all over the place. But then I also listen to a lot of hip hop and old funk, so it has all sneaked its way in there. It’s difficult to describe.

How would you say your sound has evolved from your first album, ‘Will the Guns Come Out’? 

To me it seems like a natural evolution. The first record came at a time when I was working for the skateboard company and I was making music as a hobby. I wasn’t a serious musician per se – I didn’t have a big time studio and we weren’t making an album. We were working on a collection of songs over the course of a year. It went from that to playing live shows. That first record sounded the way it did because it was recorded in my bedroom. You can hear the growth through the different records because my first album was the initial marker. Those were essentially my demos, it’s just that we released them.

Then for my second record I worked with Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys, and we took this very quick-style raw approach to recording. We recorded everything on the spot and it had a very organic live rock’n’roll feel, just by the nature of how we did it. My songwriting hasn’t changed that much, it’s the process that has changed. The tunes are also getting a bit more varied.

For the new record, I think this was my moment to experiment and evolve as a musician and really try to implement all the ideas that I’ve had over the past few years. I was playing my songs every night, but I wasn’t writing and recording new music. I didn’t have any time between tours to record new songs and I don’t own a studio, so it makes it pretty difficult. But this time around I booked a studio for a month and I was really fucking amped to start recording. I was given the opportunity to get introspective, get weird and work on my own to see what happens.

What can we expect from your new record, ‘Moonlight’? 

I think there’s a larger palette of sounds on this album. I think that for people who are hearing it for the first time and don’t know who I am, the album will give them a good insight as to where I’m at musically. But there’s a lot of change from my previous records and I think it might be challenging for some people who just want to hear a blues riff with some big drums. I think this record is much more than that. I didn’t necessarily want to recreate the same records I’ve made in the past. The only thing I can do is to push forward and explore new sounds and keep my mind at use by challenging myself.

https://soundcloud.com/innovativeleisure/hanni-el-khatib-moonlight

Could you describe me through the creative process when writing new tracks? 

It starts with something as simple as one little riff or a lyric, and I just notate it using the voice recorder on my phone. If it’s any good, I’ll take it into the studio and write the other musical parts. I don’t do demos, that’s not really my thing. I find it pointless to do a full demo because if you’re recording the song, shouldn’t you just record it properly? You’re halfway there, it seems like a waste of time to me. If an idea is decent enough I’ll just start working on it as a song. So I collect all of these weird notes that I make, and then eventually I get through them all. One song on the new album was from a note that I made for my first record. It’s four years old.

Your new record is out in January, and you’re touring in the UK in March. Are you looking forward to the touring lifestyle for the next couple of months? 

I am, actually. I’m excited to start playing this new music and live shows. Playing live shows after you finish a record is good closure for the album cycle process and for me to put it to rest. I’ve fully realised the music, you know?

If your listeners take one thing away from your music, what would you like that to be?  

I’d like people to appreciate the fact that I’m genuinely exploring rock’n’roll music. I’m really pushing myself in that direction. When people who don’t know me as an artist get into the new record, I hope that they’ll be like “wow, this guy is into some weird shit”. But my album isn’t weird for the sake of being weird. There’s nothing too “out there” on it, but it’s definitely trying to push the boundaries of typical rock music.

https://soundcloud.com/innovativeleisure/hanni-el-khatib-the-teeth

Hanni El Khatib’s third album ‘Moonlight’ will be available in January and he tours the UK in March 2015.

Words: Leonie Roderick.

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Relationships are difficult at the best of times. But when Christian Pinchbeck and Amelia Rivas embarked on one back in 2010, at the same time as forming Elephant, they almost certainly weren’t expecting its spectacular demise three years down the line. Determined to make their musical careers work, they kept writing and recording throughout their break up. This led to an album filled with songs that take the listener on a journey from romance to anger and anguish.

But perhaps this painful disintegration in their personal lives only adds to the brilliance of Elephant’s record, Sky Swimming. It undoubtedly provides an intimate insight into the pretty pair’s relationship – the lyrics in the album’s title song, reveal a painful past: “Do your eyes turn blue before you cry, I see the blue in you.” Their debut is a collection of Amelia’s dulcet tones accompanied by a mixture of Christian’s slow beats and floaty guitar work, that leave you feeling slightly fuzzy inside.

We talk to Christian to find out more about autobiographical songs, French influences and having your music producer as a relationship counsellor.

Your band name is quite unusual. How did you come to it?

Do you want an honest answer or the one that Milly [Amelia] wants me to say? It was seven in the morning, and we were mashed up on drugs. I initially wanted to call ourselves “Tiger Tiger”, but Milly told me that it was a really shit club in London. So I asked her: “what’s your favourite animal then?” – which was an elephant. So that was that.

 So it’s got nothing to do with Hindu culture then, where the elephant is a symbol of dignity and reliability?

It’s exactly that.

How did you form your band? Where did you guys meet? 

She was working at bar and the band I was in before was playing a gig there. She was a friend of a friend, so I saw her again at a house party a couple of days later. We got wasted and started talking about music. I invited her over to do some recording and we just hit it off really well. We kind of energised each other ­– the whole romance was very exciting. We’d meet up around 7pm, get drunk and write until six in the morning and record some shit demos. We’d then spend hours listening to the songs that we’d just written. But it worked out well for us though.

You then split up a few years later, but managed to work things through. Hasn’t it been difficult?

It was fine, until recently. There is some passive aggressiveness going on. But we’re okay when we’re actually together.

The album took four years to make. Are your songs autobiographical?

Yes, completely. But we don’t exactly plot the lyrics, so we never really know where they come from. A couple of our songs are about how in such a shit space we were. It’s quite depressing actually. That’s what the lyrics are about, but musically it’s about what we were enjoying at the time. We started by emulating different music styles, but ended up being completely different as we’ve built on it. The album took four years because we went through so many different changes and we were quite flippant about the music. We ended up with a weird disco album and the label was like: ‘What is this?’. We ended up going around in circles. I think the album we brought out was an accumulation of all those different styles, actually.

 Your music is rather romantic, both the sound and the lyrics. Would you call yourselves romantic?

Our music is quite warm, isn’t it? If you would have asked us three years ago, we would have said yes. When we were together, I’d say we were extremely romantic. But we ended up stuck in a room, just writing all the time. We didn’t go out and do things together. It backfired, where the band actually broke us up.

 I read that Shapeshifter was your attempt to capture Hollywood romanticism of the 1940s. Is there an element of nostalgia in the music you make?

Yes, I’d say that’s true. When writing Shapeshifter, I had this image in my head of Mary Poppins, where they’re at the Riviera in a cartoon landscape. So it’s that Dean Martin style, Italian Riviera, that’s the image I wanted to create when people would listen to the song. It’s completely nostalgic. But the initial songs, like Assembly, didn’t start out like that. Only with the last ones did we start getting into romance and nostalgia, like TV Dinner.

 Your album arrived in April this year. You worked with music producer Andy Dragazis. What was it like working with him? 

He’d probably tell you differently, but it was amazing for us. He was basically our counsellor. Andy and I wrote some of the early songs, like Skyscraper. I’d just do the music. I’d leave at 4pm, then Milly would arrive at 4.30 and do the singing. This went on for probably eight months, when we wrote three or four of the songs. So he got us through our breakup. He was awesome.

 Amelia is half French. Is there a French influence to your music?

Yeah, definitely. It’s more of a European vibe, from Italy and France. We used to love the band Beirut, and use a lot more accordions with our music. I actually wanted to do a French sounding album, but I don’t know how in the world that would have happened. People in France also just seem to like us a lot more than anywhere else. It’s one of our favourite places actually, we seem to click more with our listeners. Maybe it is because on our press release it says that Milly is French.

 What has been a career highlight so far?

Getting signed was my childhood dream — that was absolutely insane. It was also crazy how it happened. We’d been writing for about three weeks, and we’d written four tracks together. Milly knew Memphis Industries from her old band, where she supported a band that was signed with them. We sent our demo to these guys, as it was the only link we had. And they wanted to meet up with us the next day. I also think Memphis Industries got in a rut of working with American bands. They missed working with English bands, so it was a development thing where they wanted to help us.

 You’re currently working on your second record, what can we expect?

We have loads of plans, but Milly needs to take some time to get her energy levels back up. I might be doing some collaborations for a friend of a friend. This could be a lot of fun and very different. We’re doing a lot of Grandmaster Flash style stuff. But we’ll see. We’ve got an amazing video coming out in a few weeks, for our song TV Dinner. Three producers pitched this crazy idea, of a spaceman walking along the beach in Margate. It even made it onto The Express and The Mirror after someone tweeted a picture of the spaceman and went viral. It was ridiculous.

Words: Leonie Roderick

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