Little Dragon are skilled deceivers. Since 2006, they’ve been paring the seams between soul and electronica with such skill that it fools critics into asking wrongheaded questions about acoustic. The truth, as any fule kno is that they haven’t had guitar on even their most lambent campfire cuts.
Little Dragon are made up of Yukimi Nagano, Erik Bodin, Fredrik Källgren Wallin and Håkan Wirenstrand, a crew that originally met at a jazz club in Gothenburg. At the time Yukimi was singing for legendary contemporary composer Christoffer Berg, Andreas Saag and touring the world with Koop.
Her name comes from this period, Erik tells me: “It was coming from [Yukimi] wanting to do music of her own, and not making music for other people, and making something she really loved with us. She would get angry – it could have been she was trying to get us motivated, whipping us, but it was a good whipping.”
Speaking to me at their photo shoot, the band are fresh from playing at ?uestlove’s Jimmy Fallon show in New York, a stage quick becoming a byword for hyped young talent. Here they showcased their title track from their new album, which for now is called Ritual Union.
Yukimi describes the album is a sentence: “a dreamy, rhythmic, trancey, pop soul blend” and then expands: “I don’t think we’re being less electronic, because once we do things live, we’ll change things up, and become more like dance tracks, but I think that it’s still a mix, the new album, there’s a lot of songs on it that are dancing songs.”
“There’s no double bass on the third album” jokes Håkan, on their no-acoustic stringency. “It’s not very different – I think it’s in fact quite similar to the second one. The drums are more acoustic, it’s more organic and soulful.”
Yukimi is half Japanese, half-Swedish American, the daughter of a US mother who came to Gothenburg as an exchange student and a Japanese father who moved from London to work as an industrial designer and artist. Her father created the visuals on their Swimming Video. He sent her to a music high school in Gothenburg, which trained her voice although she was averse to the rules.
Erik remembers his first encounter with Clarks: “I remember when De La Soul’s album Stakes Is High came out, and one of them had these amazing shoes – the Wallaby hi-top – I was like ‘I wanna have those!’ I didn’t know they were Clarks – and they were quite expensive for me – and I saved money and was very proud of them – still got them now.” Look out for their new album, out in the summer, as Little Dragon charm soul and synth and all things in between.
Did you like this article? Share it:
Got something constructive to say?