So how much has music completely taken over your lives over the last five years? Is there still time left for other things?
Jaymo: Not really. There’s about thirty minutes on a Saturday morning when Andy plays badminton, but other than that…
Andy: There’s no getting away from it, but it doesn’t feel like I’m making a choice. Saying that, we’ve both realised recently that it is good to step away from the computer or the studio or wherever for a couple of hours and just do something completely different, like playing FIFA. Just moving in front of another screen…
Jaymo: Music becomes part of your psyche. You’re just attracted to anything music-related and you’re always talking about it. Basically you become really one-dimensional. I need a hobby!
We’ll have to ask for suggestions in the comments.
Jaymo: Yeah, do it!
Music becomes part of your psyche. Basically you become really one-dimensional. I need a hobby!
Do you think you would still have been pretty obsessive about music no matter what you ended up doing as a career?
Jaymo: I think that’s what dictated our career in the first place. I used to work in corporate marketing, doing events basically, but at the same time as I was doing that we were doing Moda parties. That was my hobby, but when it became a full-time career I really appreciated it. It’s like having every day off and doing your hobby constantly. It’s important to hold onto that.
Do you think things might have worked out differently if you’d been around say ten years earlier? Do you think the opportunities were there?
Andy: I do sometimes think that it’d be interesting being in that time period. Things were obviously tailing off slightly but people were still buying records. You could sell ten, fifteen thousand pieces of vinyl. When we started out we were both quite young and we didn’t really have any preconceptions about where things would go but we really did put our all into it. I think passion does pay off. If you throw as much as possible into it then you’re going to succeed in one way or another. If you really feel passionate about something then it’ll happen for you eventually.
Jaymo: I think legitimacy’s really important. If you’re doing something for the wrong reasons and you don’t have that really long-founded legitimate passion for it then people can see straight through it. A product can only have so much depth when you’re doing it for those reasons. We were caught up in a period of our career where we were doing so many things that we never really had a chance to go in on anything and it was really frustrating. There’ll always be a time in everyone’s career where something seems like a logical thing to do but if your heart’s saying no then you probably shouldn’t because sooner or later you’ll come unstuck. The reverse of that is really just to follow your gut instinct, even if it goes against whatever’s popular at that moment in time. I think that’s important. If you can’t trust your own instincts then how can you possibly have a long career? Hopefully that pays off. I’m saying this now but maybe it’s not going to pay off. Maybe we’ll end up releasing oboe music or something. It could all go horribly wrong.
So what’s the plan for the future?
Jaymo: Oboe. We’re focussing mainly on wind instruments for the latter part of this year.
Andy: I’m quite good on the panpipes, actually.
Jaymo: What instrument was it you used to play?
Andy: Cello.
Jaymo: Maybe we should bring that in, man? We’ve been hiding this secret talent of yours.
Andy: The cello’s never made it into dance music. I can’t think of one cello-based track.
What's the plan for the future? Oboe. We’re focussing mainly on wind instruments for the latter part of this year.
Now’s the time.
Jaymo: What more could the world want?
Andy: I guess other than that we’re about to embark on a fairly hectic summer again. We’re residents for We Love Space on Sundays, we’re also playing the opening party at Privilege, which’ll be wicked, and then it’s festivals: Eastern Electrics, Creamfields, Zoo Project and a few others that we can’t mention yet. And we’ve got a new project on Moda called Little Black Book, which is a more artist-led thing. Lots more music to come!
Moda Black Vol II is out now on Moda Black. Find Jaymo and Andy on Facebook and their Twitter accounts (guaranteed negativity-free).