White Noise

"Man, so sorry Cam,” Howard, the younger of the two Lawrence brothers and one half of Disclosure, emphatically says the third time our interview is cut off. “We're driving at the moment, and there was this tunnel. Well, all these bloody tunnels, actually...” It's no surprise; as one of the biggest and most talked-about music acts in the world at the moment, Disclosure are incredibly hard to pin down. Howard and his older brother Guy are comfortably sitting at the top of the ladder at the moment... whether that ladder be one of dance music, crossover success or ability, paradoxically, to destroy the established UK dance scene. It's all been a very controversial couple of months, with every major music publication establishing an opinion on the young brothers. Still, water of a duck's back and all; Lawrence doesn't seem to phased about it. It might be because they just don't have the time.

“Ummm, it's been busy, would be the best way to describe it. We've got no time for rehearsals. We're constantly on the road. We're doing 43 festivals this summer, but I think we're about maybe three quarters of the way through that. Once that finishes we go straight into our world tour. So yeah, we're busy gigging really. “We haven't really done anything except shows, which means we really haven't had any time to think about anything else other than playing shows. It's mainly just kind of... playing, really,” Lawrence laughs when asked how the duo is planning for such big shows. Three months since the release of their debut album, Settle, has lead it to be pretty firmly established in the public psyche. Back home, there's not a crowd they can't play to, culminating in the El Doraldo for British musical acts, apart from your own BBC Session: a much-lauded slot on Later... With Jools Holland. They must be bloody sick of playing the album by now, right? “Well, no, actually,” he rebuts. “Even now, I don't think we've gotten sick of playing the album. I mean, we've got one of the best jobs in the world; we get to play our music in front of people every day. We're loving it, there's no complaints.”

Well, actually, there is. In this day and age, where every single artist is meticulously examined since their first gig or release thanks to the internet, it's practically unheard of for two young brothers to become the most prominent players in the dance game within three months. Not that that's the case here; Disclosure have been around for four years, at least. There just seems to be a plethora of people that think it is the case. Along with the obligatory glowing reviews of Settle – an album which blends pop structuring with deceivingly simple and entrancing bass and dub (Siman Mobile Disco and, lo, Daft Punk references have not been too amiss) – there's been just as many accusations of 'playing the game'. A few major publications have said that Disclosure are pandering to what's popular; one has said they'll be the death of what's popular in the UK's much loved house scene. It's a hell of a lot of reading into two guys who, honestly, don't care, as long as they're making music people will dance to.

“I'd say there really hasn't been any change,” Lawrence responds thoughtfully on the topic. “I think that the main difference is the stuff that we were listening to [when we started] has changed slightly. We've just moved onto different stuff. And I mean that about us and people in general. When we started, we were listening to a lot of house music, and it's just kind of broadened to a lot of other different things now, really. House music has always been a big part of what Disclosure is, and now suddenly it just seems that house music seems to be dominating the charts. Which is obviously great for us, but it does put us in this strange situation. Like, people saying that we're playing house music because it's popular. That's simply not true; it's always been what we've done. And I think, if you listen to our music, there's a lot more to it than that anyway.”

One example: their live shows. If you've managed to catch a Disclosure show before, either live or filmed, you would have noticed the obvious attention the brothers Howard give to the visual aspect of their gigs. It's become a calling card for the young band, in a current state where a “live” DJ can be someone who simply presses play on Ableton and dances around for an hour. That's refreshing.

“It's really important for us that there's something going on on stage, always,” Lawrence says. “It's pretty lucky in that our music kind of lends itself to that. You know, it's pretty simple to pull out all the percussion and have different pads and things for it. It was kind of a learning curve to get to the point where we are now... I mean, it's taken us a lot of time to get comfortable playing all these different parts at once. And obviously, you can't play every part of every track, but we try to do as much as possible live. You know, you get all these acts that say they play live, and then unload a few laptops and mixers or whatever and press play,” he argues. “That's not live. If you say you're going to play live, the least you could do is actually fucking play live. It's so important for us that there's something going on stage so you're not just staring at the back of a laptop. It has to be dynamic, it has to be entertaining.”

It's pretty good to see that Disclosure still preaches what they practise; it could've been easy to become jaded after the umpteenth interview on the topic. The whole 'crossover' thing has been thrown at them constantly along the same lines, with the Lawrences apparently being the figurehead for groups like Alunageorge and Duke Dumont to step out of the 'underground'. How does Howard feel about all this? “Ummm, well I mean, good, good,” he says. “I mean, it's great that there are people who listen to our music and have that much of a mind about it. I don't really know what the term 'crossover act' means in terms of us, even now. Does it mean we're making music to cross over, or does it mean that we've made underground music and for some reason it's in the charts? No one seems to know; I think that's kind of unclear in the term. But personally, I think we've just carried on making the music we were making when we were considered underground. Now that it's gotten popular, people consider it mainstream.

“I think it's frustrating when you meet these people who think that being in the mainstream is a bad thing,” Lawrence responds when asked if that gets on his nerves. “Obviously, changing your music to get into the mainstream is probably a bad thing, that's the wrong way to go about it. But we've just kept doing what we've been doing naturally, which is writing pop-structured songs in the style of house and garage music. And yeah, there's a lot of people saying that we're some kind of new movement. That we've become some poster child or something. Like, as if they look ate who we've worked with and make some kind of connection. Honestly, AlunaGeorge, and all the other guys we've toured and played with, it was just a matter of meeting them in certain situations. When we started all these projects, none of us knew each other. We just met via the music we were playing. There's no conspiracy; they like what we do and we like what they do.”

Luckily, Howard Lawrence seems pretty relaxed on the whole issue. It seems he's been prepared to accept the obstacles that obviously pop up with such fame, and the two have kept their heads on straight. “When we started, we were never worried about what was gonna get into the charts; you can't be, that can mess everything up,” Lawrence addresses honestly. “We were just making the music that we wanted to make at the time. That's still what we're doing.”