Alphabeat

“Just move it on now, don’t hit the brake, nothing’s gonna stop the music that we make…”
The Beat Is, Alphabeat, 2009

It might seem unlikely, but the new Alphabeat record was, in a strange kind of way, conceived during a walk through a market in Bristol. “This sounds like something I made up,” laughs Anders SG, “but it’s true.”

Anders had “sort of forgotten” all about Black Box. Then, one day in the South West, he heard Ride On Time in an open-air market place.

“At first I didn’t know who’d made it or what it was called, but I knew that I knew it from somewhere. I only heard 20 seconds. Later that day I sang it to Anders B and he knew what it was. Then I heard Strike It Up (another Black Box smash) and it was then I knew what we had to do next. We had to create a really strong sounding record that we could apply our love of classic melodic songwriting to.”

It sort of seems quite simple when you look at it like that, doesn’t it? Alphabeat have been reborn through their collective love of great danceable pop music. This is the sort of music that is still in thrall to all its senses, music that is about love and heartbreak and the trials of life itself while never losing sight of the redemptive power of letting it all go under the forgiving eye of some outsize lazers.

Alphabeat are special for a number of reasons. For one, they’re from the Danish version of Motown – their hometown of Silkeborg is famous for its huge number of car dealerships. For another, there’s loads of them, six in fact. Anders SG sings, as does Stine, Anders B plays guitar and some keyboards and is quite the whizz in the studio, Rasmus is the band’s resident keyboard player, Anders R plays bass and is another keyboard player while Troels is the drummer – without him, there is nothing. They went to school together and aged fifteen (they’re now all in their early 20s) they formed a band. They first moved to London in the summer of 2007 around the release of their debut top ten album This Is Alphabeat and the huge pop smashes and playlist staples Fascination, Boyfriend and 10,000 Nights. They lived in a big house together. In Hackney. Now, rather sensibly, they live in three different houses, which is a bit like The Beatles in Hard Days Night except that was four. Or was it two? Anyway, it’s in these three houses that they’ve written all these incredible songs. Alphabeat are survivors. Alphabeat are explorers. Alphabeat are incendiary live performers (as anyone who witnessed their 2008 T in the Park show will attest). Alphabeat are the only real pop band in the entire world...

“We’ve changed a lot since the last record,” Anders B says. “I wrote our first record on keyboards and guitar. We rehearsed it then made it. Now we work on the song at home then we make it come alive with the band. We still are a band who play live together, it’s not a backing band with singers. But we decided it was OK to leave the guitar off a track if it wasn’t needed.

“Last time people talked about us as ‘indie-pop’” says Anders SG, “and this is not indie-pop at all! It’s pop. If the song would be a bigger hit with just keys and bass then that’s what it’ll sound like. Pop music takes elements from what people have learnt before. To push things forward you need to borrow some of the ideas from people who worked out what went well together.”

Alphabeat’s new album, The Beat Is…, has its eyes dead set on the horizon ahead and is full of great songs built on properly affecting retro-pop styles. You’ll have heard the Mantronix-like funk-pop of first single The Spell, but there’s the slippery filter-house of DJ (“Spin my world like a record now…”), the piano-riff-meets-speaker-rattling bassline of melancholic-house monster, Hole In My Heart, pure heart-rate pushing dancefloor monster, the RnB touched, down-tempo reach of Q&A (“Don’t tell me a lie, let me know now, look me in the eye…”).

You might go for Chess with its fantastically pointed opening line, “Baby let’s quit playing chess, you’ve been to my address…” and pitch-bend vocal samples rarely heard since 1989. Right near the end of the record is the epic, euphoric bliss of The Right Thing where a Black Box style big piano screamer tumbles down a huge great chasm of a breakdown. No need for a remix – everything you’ll ever need is right here.

“I just wanted to love you baby, and hold you tight, but now it’s over and it’s Friday night…”
Til I Get Round, Alphabeat, 2009

“Our last record was very influenced by 80s pop,” says Anders SG, sat in the band’s rehearsal room. “This is more 90s. We mixed the house and pop-house with the more trancey sounds – it’s important to make something new.”

“Anyone who loves pop music would say that first Ace of Base album was a brilliant record,” says Anders B. “We had Spotify up in the studio and we built up big playlists of great hits. What Ace of Base and Whigfield did brilliantly was match a great pop feel with great song-writing. They could be Madonna songs.”

“The Pet Shop Boys made good albums throughout their career,” says Anders SG. “Their music is clever, but they use this super-cheap pop element which is a really good mix, it’s classic pop. Sometimes you add more and more elements to a track and then you realise all it needs is a riff and some drums. Big pop songs keep it simple, really strong parts done well. We’re looking for simplicity of ideas in every version – go over the edge then come back! Just playing the songs together has a big influence,” Anders SG says. “If something is too complicated then it’s out. The best test to see if a song works is to play it in this set-up. A song in the studio is a different thing in rehearsal. It can be just as great, just in a different way.”

“Then they change again as you play them live,” says Anders B. “When they become hits and people get to know the songs the you can play extended versions with massive breakdowns!”

“You know it’s easy for producers to sit at home and make records on their own,” says Stine Bramsen. “But if they want to play live they have to get a back-up band. We sort of started the other way round – we already were the band – and we’ve decided what we wanted to do was to play dancey pop music.”

“It was important that we spent a lot of time on the vocals,” Anders SG says. “A lot of good dance records lack a sincerity in the vocal. They can be pale and monochrome. So we spent a lot of time doing the vocals. Stine found her place and you can hear that. She’s really inside these songs.”

The band all say that another big turning point for them were the Pete Hammond mixes of Boyfriend from their last record.

“They were so clubby and super-poppy,” says Anders B. “His mixes made us wish we’d done the songs like that. It’s always good to have other people’s ideas on your song – Pete’s mix was more like a re-production. It was a proper Stock, Aitken and Waterman style mix, like he did back then, and it was amazing!”

What about the songs themselves, I ask, what are they about?

“They’re all love songs!” laughs Anders B. “Same as on the last record.”

“It’s good love and bad love,” says Anders SG. “There’s more heartbreak on this one. We’ve not decided to be super-serious and moody, there’s no acoustic guitar, it’s just natural to write both kinds of songs. We were deliberately superficial on the first record – it was all good times – this time is more of a mix. Life isn’t all good or all bad. There’s a lot of stuff about hearts and booms and heartbeats. We didn’t think about it, it just happened. A lot of things have changed over the last two years. We don’t see our friends and families so much, but that’s a good thing, it focuses us. The heartbreak thing comes from not seeing your friends – but that’s OK.”

Now the plan is to take all these great new records to the world. Alphabeat are still a band, still intent on having as much fun as possible playing all these songs live.

“We started rehearsing the songs yesterday,” says Anders SG. “Even if there are a lot of 90s references in there it’s still a band playing it. Those records were DJs and producers – it’s fun to get raving in a live band! The songs come alive with the band.”

“We still are a band who play live together,” says Anders B, “it’s not a backing band with singers.”

“It happened so naturally,’ says Anders SG. “On the last tour we would extend the dancey bits every night and it was so much fun to play. Every day when we sound-checked we’d play these dance songs and it was different to what we were meant to go out and play. It became an opportunity to do songs that were less gimmicky. These songs were a bit more serious, but with the excitement still there. We didn’t want to be moody. It doesn’t necessarily fit with dance music. The lyrics aren’t all about having a good time – it can be in your face music with a more serious song. We’d not touched on that before.”

Another thing that’s changed is the label. Alphabeat are now happily at home on Polydor after leaving EMI.

“We were so happy to have the album out and it did well,” says Anders B. “But we got the chance to leave and we went to Universal and ended up on Polydor, who we love. It’s so fresh, everyone’s enthusiastic and it’s a great time. It was convenient how it took place and so far it’s fantastic.

“Alphabeat is a more personal thing now,” says Anders SG. “The last record was a compilation of things we’d written in that two-singer format. This time we only did what was right for the song. It’s more honest now.”