UK brother duo Disclosure returns to Austin a little higher up on the marquee, armed with a cohesive live show and new material. We spoke with younger half, Howard Lawrence, on their soulful new direction.
Austin Chronicle: Where would you say the differences are between your debut Settle and this year’s Caracal?
Howard Lawrence: I think some of the main differences would be the marriage of the tracks. It’s generally a lot slower, a lot slower tempo for the most part. I would call Settle kind of “house,” but this one, it’s just as much R&B as house.
AC: Were you actively trying to get away from the “house” label?
HL: We started writing, and I think we probably got three or four tracks in, and then we took a step back and realized that they were all around 100 BPM. We enjoyed writing the more structured ones like “White Noise” and “Latch,” so we just continued doing that on this record.
AC: You’re singing and writing more on this record, but you’re maintaining the different voices.
HL: Having different voices [like Gregory Porter and Lion Babe] on the record was important to us. I feel like it’s something that’s become part of what Disclosure is. I think people enjoy being refreshed with a new voice every now and then. The only reason I sang was because they were songs that we wrote when nobody was there. When we wrote Settle, we had only written about 10 songs ever, whereas now we’ve got a few more under our belt and we’re a bit more confident with it.
This article appears in October 9 • 2015.
