Posted by Initially TTRRUUCES were a mystery wrapped in a fantasy, a series of bold, lysergic missiles sent from an unknown realm.
Gradually, the details have become a littler clearer. The duo’s incoming album, for example, was produced by sonic alchemist Alan Moulder, and mastered by France’s leading engineer Chab.
Out on June 26th, it’s an 11 track journey, a kind of psychedelic opera tracing the story of Sad Girl and Lost Boy.
Sadie meets Syd on their quest for the TTRRUUCES Drug, lending their bold, exuberant songwriting a purposeful narrative sense.
Suitably entranced, Clash invites TTRRUUCES to break down the composite elements…
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Iggy Pop – ‘Nightclubbing’
We listened to that song a lot when we were developing the Lost Boy character. We love that sexy rock n roll vibe. There’s a line in the song, “we learn dances, brand new dances, like the nuclear bomb” inspired the line “the world’s burning but we’re good at dancing” in our song ‘Sensations Of Cool’.
Iggy’s record was made at the end of the 70s but the lyrics and themes are as relevant now as they were 40-odd-years ago. The world is a fucked up place – it always has been. There’s always an existential threat to life on earth. Whether it’s nuclear war, climate change, fascism, a virus… strangely as a species we live and thrive on distractions like social media, selfies, showing off.
“The world’s burning but we’re good at dancing” just summed up modern life perfectly. The world can literally be on fire but check out what I just had for brunch.
We hope the song ‘Sensations Of Cool’ can be a mirror for listeners; are you just dancing through life? do you love the world or are you just a creature of comfort dancing in the dirt?
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Kanye West – ‘Ghost Town’
The production on this track is incredible, so ambitious and quirky. We love how many sections there are and how progressive the songwriting is. The use of samples is beautiful, it reminded us of some of the Avalanches stuff… those dirty guitars and the energy that comes off his voice are beautiful.
It’s an odd track, we absolutely love it. We can definitely hear some of the Beatles influence on that track.
The song is a real journey, and the “I put my hands on the stove” section is amazing… it’s so catchy and we love that he didn’t make a chorus of it and only put it at the end of his song.
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Serge Gainsbourg – ‘Valse de Melody’
We love Gainsbourg because he stayed so unique while being completely eclectic with his sound throughout his career. In this song, the string arrangements are perfect: the sound of them, their placement in the mix, the vibe they make you feel.
Strings have been a recurrent element in our album, and this song was being played a lot when we were writing the Opera. The second section goes into that magical place with those falling violins.
We invite everyone who haven’t done it to listen to his full concept album ‘Histoire de Melody Nelson’ – it’s a beautiful album.
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‘Pink Elephants On Parade’ (From the original Dumbo soundtrack)
When we first came up with the synth part of our track ‘Evil Elephant’, we thought it really sounded like elephants were walking and at first we used to play our song on top of the images of the drunk scene in Dumbo… it worked so well. That made us want to add lots of layers to the music and that how we got those ideas of sampling 1930’s obscure jazz tracks and to give it a Disney vibe in a twisted way. Those old sounding horns is just such a fun sound that we don’t hear anywhere anymore.
The track became a mechanical techno-y psych track and that’s what we love about it, that mix of those styles really surprised us and we lived in an elephant world for a month when we first wrote it. In the TTRRUUCES world you’ll find elephants everywhere.
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Offenbach – ‘Barcarolle’
We love how graceful and full of emotions that waltz is, that low and soft double bass, that floating flute, those harmonised strings and the build up of vocals. It surely influenced some of the arrangements in our song ‘Sleepy Head’.
Classical music can convey something grandiose that we have always loved and wanted to integrate somehow to our sound. We are so happy we achieved that on the ending of ‘Sleepy Head’.
That emotion can be found in a lot of the Ennio Morricone music, which was a massive influence as well throughout the record for us.
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TRRUUCES will release their debut album on June 26th.