On his Beats 1 show tomorrow Tuesday 16th May from 5pm BST, Zane Lowe speaks with Royal Blood and his World Record will be their track ‘Hook Line & Sinker.’ In the clip below, the guys discuss finding their sound for this album and working with different producers. (Which they didn’t end up using on the album). One of those producers was Dan Auerbach.
On making the new album:
Mike: The initial kind of stages of writing we wanted to be incredibly open minded to literally anything. We were like let's try adding lots of other instrumentation and and see where it takes us. And really quickly we realized that our kind of identity as a band and our sound is is really like a delicate cocktail really. And I think the moment you put a guitar or a synth or anything that's too much. It just capsizes everything that's good about us.
On considering working with a producer and making the album in a different environment:
Mike: We were really open about it and we we spent a lot of time in LA here and went to Nashville for a bit and we met lots of different producers. But I think really we did full circle, we went back to Brighton and it came down to me and Ben being in a room and relying on each other really and the buck kind of really stopping there. And yeah I guess it just became about let's get better at what we do. Let's refine what's good about us rather than this huge reinvention where we come back with bleached hair and onesies.
On who they met with on a collaborative level that didn’t quite happen:
Mike: We did a little bit in Nashville with Dan Auerbach. It was so fun. I think the whole experience of that and at the time we experienced it was so important for us because... I guess we just were reminded that anything's possible and that there really are no rules to this. And I think a band like ours, we're built on limitation and rules, the first album's like 'no harmonies, no one else'. These are our tools and we have to make something whereas yeah we did realize you know what this is this is about being creative and about entering your dream world.
Ben: It did get a bit mad though out there because I remember just playing electric bongos and things were happening that were like so uncomfortable with but they were just so funny and fun that it was nice to get out of our system. It was definitely a good time to experiment and widen our perspective on what we can do because then we could really focus on what we wanted to do.
