WhoMadeWho

Three is definitely the magic number for WhoMadeWho - a fact confirmed by the eponymous song being the ring tone on their lead singer's mobile. You only need to look at the success of the three guys involved, their three music backgrounds (avant garde jazz, electro and classic rock) and listen to the end result to know things have worked out just so.

Long before the indie-dance scene was just a twinkle in Fabric's eye, the Danish band were in Copenhagen mutating all sorts of musical genres. Jeppe Kjellberg (guitar and vocals), Tomas Barfod (drums) and Tomas Hoefding (bass/vocals) had hooked up in 2003 with the idea of working on some experimental sounds but mainly to have a bit of fun. One day's jamming session resulted in their eponymous debut album, which fused a spectrum of sound from electro-rock and dance through to folk and Italo disco. The album runs like a turbulent love affair, from swooning courtship tune Rose through to the sarcastic break-up dig Hello Empty Room.

The band have been building critical and cult success since then but it's been the buzz around their live shows that has really got people talking. Dressing up as skeletons, rabbits, and harlequins and with the crowd actively encouraged to crash the stage at shows, it's no wonder they were first choice to fill in for AWOL headliners The Klaxons at 2007's Benicassim. 

With the launch of their third album, The Plot, due later this month we caught up with lead singer Jeppe just ahead of their sold-out gig at the Hoxton Bar and Grill in London on March the 5th.

You all come from very different musical backgrounds - were you planning on making some amazing hybrid of music when you formed the band?
It's funny because when we started the band, the whole idea was just to make a group. We listened to all sorts of stuff from the New York underground dance scene where they play live music but in a disco way and our mission was to capture that, and also to have a DJ concept in a live band.

Had you worked together before?
I had worked with both Tomases on different projects so it was easy. Tomas B and I worked together on a dance project and we wanted to go somewhere in a different direction, it was perfect. It was instrumental, it was like a funny experimental thing.

You seemed to pop up just before the whole electro-rock scene emerged - were you aware of what was happening elsewhere?
I have to say I didn't know Soulwax at that point - I'm a bit embarrassed about that as we've toured with them a lot since then and I respect them a lot but we were listening to a lot of DFA and all kind of groups of that field.

I heard that most of your material for the first album came from your first jamming session which was  four hours long, is this true?
Yes, totally true!

What happened there?
Well, Tomas B prepared lots of beats for us because he is a DJ and he knew specifically what he wanted and had a really clear vision. Then of course the other Tomas was singing, and we just went for it, and had so much fun jamming along for hours and hours and hours. Afterwards Tomas B edited it to capture that live energy of us playing, then from that we got signed to Gomma Records.

You've spent the last few years touring pretty extensively, how do you find life on tour?
We did the album in 2005 and the touring helped us develop so much as a band. The whole concept and our live sound got better and better. But then at one point we got fed up with doing the same thing all over again. That's why we did the cover album of our own songs, that was just for fun, but we also needed new songs. You can't just be a live band, you need to do both things. It's like ying and yang, when you go to the studio you have to use one mindset and then live it is very different.

Yeah your live shows get pretty wild - where did you get the idea for the fancy dress costumes?
Well I guess the idea in the beginning was just fun. People were offering us stage costumes and we were like 'cool'. We went to Berlin and bought these strange old German costumes, then we played an MTV show in London where they offered us some skeleton costumes and it just went from there. The way you dress, it inspires you to do different things, I mean, if you're standing in a skeleton costume that's very different from if you're just standing straight ahead in a cool 'indie kid' way.

And what's been your favourite costume so far?
I think the most iconic one was the skeleton outfit. But we played a gig in Naples and they gave us Neapolitan outfits, a kind of folk dress for a special occasion, that was spectacular. I think we need to get them again! We have designers called Femmes Originales who are designing more costumes for us at the moment.  It's fun to play around with our identity, we get a buzz from that.

Can you tell us what you'll be wearing for the London show on Thursday?
Um...(hesitates) I'd prefer not too - it needs to be a surprise!

You're just about to release your third album, The Plot. Do you think your sound has changed much from the first album?
The first was very intuitive and almost the first thing that came into our minds. With this new album - well, what I call the second one as it's got new songs on it -  is different as we had three years to do it, we had so much time and raw material that is kind of crazy. It's more minimal, more pop sometimes more rock, it's all different parts.

You're also known for some amazing remixes, what's the one you're most proud of?
Well, in the middle of the new album we were in a very big studio using old school recordings and sound engineers, but we just didn't get anything done that we were happy about. But in the middle of the project we did a remix of Idealism for Digitalism. Tomas did a drum beat for it and we just did the rest of it in a Dutch basement which was an unhealthy environment in every way (laughs). We just did it in one day and I think it worked as it was very raw and simple. After that we changed the whole concept of recording the album as we wanted to get back to that whole raw sound.

Who's the one act you'd love to collaborate with or remix?
We got asked this recently and we all agreed the guy we'd be most interested in doing a remix of or to record with would be Michael Jackson (laughs).

You could launch his comeback!
He must be breaking down in so many ways but if wants to have a comeback and he wants a remixer he should definitely call us!

Now that's one tune we'd definitely want to hear.

WhoMadeWho play a sold out gig at Hoxton Bar and Grill, London on Thursday 5th March. But a further date has just been announced -  they headline Scala as part of the This is Not London show, check their website for details.
The Plot is out on March 23rd on Deadly Records.

www.whomadewho.dk
www.myspace.com/whomadewhomusic