by Matt Kelchner
On their latest album, Apar, Delorean still has their signature indie dance sound filled with vocal harmonies, but they altered the way in which it was created. After listening to the album through once, it was clear something was a little different.
“We still really like vocal samples/pitched up vocals but we felt that we didn’t want to repeat the Subiza formula again,” bassist and vocalist Ekhi Lopetegi explains to me.
There are more live instrumentation on Apar compared to their previous albums, but that doesn’t mean the songs started that way. While talking about their songwriting process, Lopetegi goes over the way songs typically begin. “We are four people and everyone has a small bedroom studio, so we usually bring homemade loops or song parts to the studio and there we share opinions and projects and we try to develop the track, replacing plug-in synths by actual hardware synths, real drums, etc.”
Another integral part that is added in are the layers of vocal samples. These are intertwined through most of the songs Delorean writes. “We wrote the track “Unhold” with vocal samples and pitched-up vocals as usual, but we weren’t satisfied, so we decided that we wanted to swap all the vocals samples by real female singers in the entire record,” Lopetegi tells me.
The band turned to Chairlift lead singer Caroline Polachek for help. “It was incredible to work with such a talented person. She can do whatever she wants with her voice. What you hear on “Unhold” is 100% her with no autotune/studio tricks,” Lopetegi tells me. He goes on to tell me about the beginning of the collaboration, “A friend of ours suggested to work with Caroline and we sent the track to her and she showed up interested from the beginning. We received the demo and we were blown away.”
A number of different singers were used on Apar. In doing so, Delorean added slight tones and complexity to the already vastly layered vocal parts. While it sounds great on record, replicating live is completely different. “After touring a lot with the Subiza album we ended up a little bit fed up of pushing buttons and this time we wanted to ‘play’ a little bit more,” Lopetegi explains. This meant adding additional singers to their live band and doing so costs money. The added investments, when financially doable, have been paying off so far for Delorean. Lopetegi tells me, “With more money you can bring more people on stage to do the backing vocals. We have been doing it at big festivals this past year and we love it.”
Lopetegi and company kicked off their 2014 tour last night in Brooklyn, NY. The tour is a rescheduling from last fall’s tour, a postponement which came after an unlucky and unwelcome virtual kidnapping. Delorean will play in the nation’s capitol tonight at The Black Cat before traveling back up I-95 for their stop in Philadelphia. The Barcelona four-piece make their way to Johnny Brenda’s to wrap up the week. Touring with them is Mas Ysa, the solo project of Thomas Aresnault. Doors open at 8pm and music starts at 9pm. Tickets are $13 in advance and $15 day of show.
