Words by Emma Warren

Darkstar's latest adventure, plastered on billboards around the sleeping city, is called ‘Haunted House’ – and it is full of ghosts. Specifically, it is full of the ghosts of nightclubs that have been closed by Covid and of the clubs, bars and community centres that have been folded down by gentrification and austerity since 2010. More practically, it incorporates the sounds and processes they used on their recent, brilliant Civic Jams album which came out on Warp Records just as the pandemic hit. 

James Young and Aiden Whalley have been making tuff but sweet electronic music as Darkstar since releasing their first EP back in 2007. Since then, they’ve collaborated with the London Contemporary Orchestra, and composed the score for Sara Dunlop’s, Palme D’Or nominated, Dreamlands, as well as music for Channel 4 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2021. They’ve also reflected a series of grassroots social projects into endlessly inventive electronic music that spoke to their nightclub roots and their creative conscience. They’re London-based but remain strongly connected to their northern roots: Winsford in Cheshire and Wakefield, West Yorkshire, respectively.

The plug-in, which they built for Spitfire Audio in-between the two national lockdowns, transforms their palette of basslines, vocals, sounds and loops into instruments, all accessible in one place. This is great for anyone who wants to build on Darkstar’s sonic start points, but it’s of practical use for the producers who made it, too: they no longer have to scroll through 15 hard drives, 23 USB sticks or 864 emails to find their favourite sounds.

“I’ve never had time to put all the sounds in one place,” says James Young, bathed in orange light from a broken lamp in the room he’s Zoom calling from, whilst the light in Aiden Whalley’s room makes his Zoom square sea-green. “It’s weird scrolling through a plug-in and every sound is, like, ‘that’s sick, we can make something with that.’”

Film and gaming are in the mix too. They regularly collaborate with film-makers including Cieron Magat and once soundtracked an episode of Channel Four’s ‘Random Acts’. “I was thinking a lot about this old game, Shadow of the Beast” says James. “That and ‘Line of Duty’.” Aiden brought shades of Studio Ghibli. “I was watching My Neighbour Totoro with my son when we were beta testing and I was teaching him the melodies with ‘Haunted House’ stuff. It fits perfectly.” 

London’s ever-evolving nightlife has influenced their music since their first 12” releases in the mid-2000s on the Hyperdub label, and it’s ever-present in the sounds on Civic Jams and therefore, on Haunted House. The record is a sparse and soulful set of nine tracks which contains emotive samples reshaped from an Organ Reframed commission at the Union Chapel, crunchy chords inspired by ‘90s New York house dons Masters At Work, and wraparound basslines that evoke the importance of grassroots space – and the collective evolution that happens within them. Two of the songs Wolf and Jam were picked up by Sonos to soundtrack their most recent commercials, adding to a brand showreel that also includes Gucci and Hermes.  

The sounds are informed by the street-generated music of the mid-2000s, but also by how they listened to it: learning production on cracked software and the possibilities that come from learning on the fly rather than through predetermined routes. “I liked those plug-ins that when you got them – whether that be legitimately or through people with CDs – didn’t have instruction booklets. All the parameters were named things that meant nothing to anyone but the person that designed it. You just had to use your ears,” says James. 

“It’s got a slightly ‘off’ kind of functionality so I feel it’d appeal to those artists who are looking for something little off key or slightly detuned or a little bit irregular,” says Aiden, adding that whilst it has all the functionality of a conventional plug-in, they've changed all the names. “There’ll be a filter cut off or attack, decay, sustain, release, but they’ll be called something completely different. People are going to have to get their hands on it and start manipulating those parameters and their ears will do the work.”

“We processed it like we’ve process everything,” adds James. “You can get the Darkstar way of processing through a dial. There’s wet and dry and when it’s wet, it’s very Darkstar – a lot of tape saturation, pitch delays, blurred edges, things fizzle out rather than stopping nice and professionally. The sounds we choose are irregular. When you play through it, it’s rough and ready. It hisses analogue straight away.”

Aiden agrees: “When I was getting into writing music, in Cubase to start with, I’d be playing around with different effects and compression and there were people who’d tell you about the theory. ‘You need 1:1 compression or 2:1 compression or you needed this amount of decay on the reverb’ or whatever. I never quite got it. I was just using my ears. We wanted to bring that home on this plug-in and encourage people with the design and the name to jump in and play around and see what the sounds do.”

“I like the education involved in it,” says James, who has been teaching recently at Liverpool’s Institute for Performing Arts. “It’s aligned nicely. I’m teaching effects in Digital Audio Workstations and I’m like, ‘forget the theory, play with the parameters and your ear will inform everything’.”

Education is a community matter as far as Darkstar are concerned. It’s also a collaborative and creative matter and one that is embedded deep in their working practice. Their acclaimed third album Foam Island was described by The Guardian as a kind of ‘musical social realism’. It featured conversations with young people in Huddersfield and evoked the reality of living in a place suffering deep cuts to local budgets. It accurately suggested the outcome of the then-forthcoming Brexit referendum. In summer 2018, they were making the music that became ‘Civic Jams’, and were simultaneously working with Harthill Youth Centre in Wavertree, Liverpool. “I’ve got a strong association with Liverpool because my family are Scouse,” says James. “I thought I knew Liverpool. Then we got invited to do this project and I came across this Czech-Romany-Scouse community and I was blown away. I remember going to Harthill most days that summer and being like, ‘this is vital’. And the talent was just insane.” The Youth Centre collective made an album titled Trackbed which was performed at The Barbican as part of Different Trains, with Boiler Room, and Darkstar absorbed the inevitable inspiration that comes with collaborating with high-energy youth. 

They want to keep spreading the word – and access to the word. “I’d like different communities to get it. A younger thing. The kids I’m teaching, I’m excited to see what they’d do with it,” says James. “It’d be super cool to get a drill guy on it, just to see where that went. Artists like Coby Sey and CURL [Sey’s collective with Mica Levi and Brother May among others]. People who lie on the outskirts.”

‘Haunted House’ is part of a broader opening up of what were previously closely-guarded musical secrets. “I think culturally it’s the right time to let go of any notion of this secretive production club where people are super-sensitive about the source and how they go about sounds,” says James. “I was a bit resistant in the past because I didn’t want people to get everything we use, but after a while, watching Twitch emerge through the lockdowns, I thought ‘this is wicked, everyone can use some of the things that inspire us.’”

Covid complications require them to work in two studios simultaneously, sometimes together, sometimes alone. They’re now used to packing light – a Juno, a few outboard guitar pedals, a vocal harmoniser – so they can get going in a space quickly and efficiently. “Being flexible is the answer,” says Aiden. “We haven’t really had a home for a while, which is annoying but what it does do is streamline what you really want to keep.”

Covid compilations also meant that ‘Civic Jams’ didn’t have the performance life they’d imagined. Rather than just focusing on reshaping their own plans, they’re working with Music Venues Trust, who have done an incredible job before and during the pandemic to support grassroots music venues nationwide. Together, they’re working on an idea to take the music live in a way that supports Darkstar’s music and the network of local, low-resource venues that contribute so much to generating new music and culture nationwide. 

And still, there’s more music. Darkstar host a monthly radio show on ‘voice of young London’ Reprezent Radio and they’re also recording new material. ‘Haunted House’ might be full of ghosts, but they’re ghosts with at least half an eye on the future.