The funk duo’s hardcore gear-nerd on UK crowds, Trump and the magic of his homemade talkbox

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Montreal electro-funk duo Chromeo put out their fifth studio album this summer, Head Over Heels, and it’s a right old banger; laden with stonking hooks, a polished sonic palette and massive features from Stefflon Don and DRAM.

The pair, comprised of David ‘Dave 1’ Macklovitch and Patrick ‘P-Thugg’ Gemayel, wryly describe themselves as "the only successful Arab/Jewish partnership since the dawn of human culture."

Now, with party season right around the corner, there’s no better LP to dust off in order to a) get your goddamned freak on and b) show what a discerning finger-on-the-pulse hip cat you are in front of everyone at the big festive do.

We caught up with P-Thugg ahead of a recent London date and here’s some things we learned…

Audiences have learned this album crazy fast

“Usually, we put an album out, we start doing shows, and it takes a couple of tours for people to sing along. This time, right from the first couple of gigs people got it. We consciously wanted to make something hooky, easier to understand. Simpler lyrics, less puns…

“And we love puns! But we made an effort to make it more fluid than our previous stuff. Not so many crazy rhymes, or complicated stories.

“Just look at the song titles – ‘You Got The Juice’; ‘One Track Mind’ – easy concepts, where after the first chorus you understand the whole song.”

The Head Over Heels artwork is (somewhat) a nod to #MeToo

“We’re sort of steering our whole aesthetic into a better direction [in the past Chromeo have used sexy girls pretty liberally in their artwork and iconography]

“A lot of things my parents did in the 70s wouldn’t have been acceptable in the 90s, let alone today… I think part of being in a band with staying power is understanding your surroundings, and changing what you do.”

Chromeo feel vindicated

“We’ve been advocates of funk for so long. Like, 12 years, since a decade before Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson started experimenting the funk sound.

“All these nerds only had us to speak up for the genre, when it was in the wilderness, when nobody was listening. Back in 2007 we were calling Phil Collins a genius, and telling everybody how it's ok to like Rick James. That’s something.”

UK crowds are mad

“The more north you are, the crazier it gets, I think everybody knows that.

“People have intensity all over though… One thing I appreciate about London it’s a more metro crowd. They don’t go nuts and drink and create havoc, but they do appreciate music. The finer detail of what we do.

“We never get negative feedback, no horrible reviews, anyway. The beauty of social media – our social media, anyway – is that only people who are interested come on, and encourage us.

“Unless you do something really fucked, like Trump, nobody is going to come on social media and troll you for no reason. We stay apolitical, in our songs, because we see funk as the medicine.

“Our whole mission is: funk the world, make people dance. Oh, and bring peace to the Middle East.”

Talkboxes are magic

“I made the talkbox I use on all Chromeo stuff. It’s pretty amazing. If you’re a mute person, without vocal chords, you can use the talk box and sing. You shape the sound with your mouth, it’s a whole different kind of instrument

“I could talk all day about gear, I just picked up a Yamaha DX1, just one of a hundred that was ever made, the granddaddy of frequency modulation synths. It’s so perfect, crystal clear, like playing a piece of glass.

And we like to mess with formats. Head Over Heels is out on cassette, if you want it. It’s because that’s the way we listened to songs growing up, on cassettes – even a CD, to us, is retro.

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Chromeo's Head Over Heels is out now via Atlantic Records. Stream the album in full here.



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