Ladytron articles
Gina links to two old Ladytron articles. From Free Williamsburg:
Daniel [Hunt]: Reuben [Wu] has always been from Liverpool. I've known him for a long time. Mira [Aroyo] is Bulgarian and she lives in Oxford. Helena [Marnie] is Scottish and didn't live in Liverpool till very recently. Helena introduced Mira to the band. It was all quite organic. We didn't put up any adverts. We just met people. We fell over each other at a bar. I was working on stuff with Reuben anyway, so it sort of became a band about two years ago. We started working as a band.
From Montreal Mirror:
“Helen used to come to all the clubs in Liverpool,” says Hunt. “I probably fancied her. When she told me she wanted to sing, I said, ‘Oh, that’s funny, I’m looking for a singer,’ and she didn’t believe me. It took me three months to convince her that I wasn’t just messing around.” Hunt, who’d already been making and spinning music with Wu, was then introduced to Aroyo, a science student and DJ in Oxford. The easy juxtaposition of her Slavic chill and Marnie’s girlish hush gave the budding band the go-ahead to bloom....
“I respect a lot of synth bands from the late ’70s and early ’80s,” says Aroyo. “They were pioneers in their field and there was something really punk about it. But they did their thing at their time, and now this is our time.” Kraftwerk and New Order became staples in Ladytron write-ups, but the band couldn’t help but balk at some of the other names being dropped.
“I’ve never, ever liked Gary Numan,” says Hunt. “Even when I was four years old, I thought he was a fool. When we were recording the new record, we stuck a copy of The Pleasure Principle on the wall as an example of where not to go. Whenever things were becoming too pompous, we’d look up at him and go, ‘Okay, this is Gary, let’s ditch it.’ We also had a picture of Gillian from New Order as an example of a good synth - good synth, bad synth. So in that way, Gary Numan was certainly an influence on the album!”...
"[W]hen Emperor Norton suggested [Beck, Eels producer] Mickey Petralia [for Light & Magic], we chose him. And everyone told me I would hate L.A., but I [Daniel Hunt] fucking loved it.”
“I’ve never, ever been anywhere so inhumane,” says Mira, who loved the sun but loathed L.A.’s massive freeway grid and wall-to-wall weirdoes. “It’s very Lynchian, glossy on the outside, but so sinister at the same time, like there’s something lurking at the bottom of the swimming pool. And you’re lost without a car.”
Stranded at Petralia’s studio with little distraction - other than a pool and constant car chases, broadcast live on TV - the band recorded quickly and flew home. Hunt, however, stayed on to mix the album, and L.A.’s creeping surreality began to outshine the sun.
“By that point, we were working in a studio just behind Hollywood Boulevard. I think Earth, Wind & Fire built it, it’s where Prince did his first albums. It was really old school, just a big, stone-clad room with all these leather couches along the back wall and black surfaces everywhere. I don’t drive, so all I had was Hollywood Boulevard, which is just strippers’ clothes shops and dodgy bars, and after a couple of weeks of that, I was completely losing it. Eventually, our manager Tony came out to rescue me, to show me what reality was again.”...
Moving to 2005, here's an August article from Billboard:
U.K. electro/rock combo Ladytron has signed with Rykodisc, which will release its third studio album, "Witching Hour," Oct. 4 in North America. The set arrives a day earlier in the United Kingdom via Universal/Island. First single "Sugar" has been making the rounds via digital download retailers since late April, while second single "Destroy Everything You Touch" was commercially released earlier this week in the United Kingdom.
A video for the latter cut shot by up-and-coming director Adam Bartley can be found on Ladytron's official Web site.
Produced by Jim Abbiss (DJ Shadow, Kasabian), "Witching Hour" offers 14 tracks of Ladytron's trademark synth-tinged rock rendered on a wider sonic palette than such past albums as 2002's "Light and Magic," which reached No. 7 on Billboard's Top Electronic Albums chart.
The set is highlighted by the dark, driving opener "High Rise," the chiming ballad "The Last One Standing," the industrial dance assault of "Fighting in Built Up Areas" (replete with singing in Bulgarian, from where vocalist Mira Aroyo hails) and the majestic, bittersweet closer "All the Way."...
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