Track Of The Day :: The Letrasets - Dunes

Words: Linn Branson 

Little Indie featured Liverpool-based newcomers The Letrasets last week in our Sing & Tell feature, but we like this second single from the band so much we are reprising it as Track Of The Day.

The infectious 'Dunes', released last week, from the quartet - who all met whilst studying at the University of Liverpool, though are actually each from London, Leicester, Wigan and Northampton - has two salient differences, which intrigued us.

Firstly, our ears told us singer Tom Gamble was no Scouser! Was he a Londoner? That hip hop-rap-esque opening too, is a little left of centre for what the track unfolds to be.

We found the answers when we had a chat with guitarist Iggy Fletcher.

"Tom's actually from the Leicester area," he laughs, "he doesn't really have a strong Midlands accent at all so I can see why you'd think that. With the hip hop, it's really cool that you mention that, I don't think any of us set out specifically to take influence from it or even noticed it that much when writing the songs  but we do all listen to hip hop so I guess it must shine through in a rhymic sense with the vocals and drums especially. We do enjoy adding other instruments like synths and drum machines in the mixes."

Also, rather unusually for a song of this genre that has a jangly vibe to its indie jam, along with incorporating a lot of moog synth in it, there is almost 60 seconds of an instrumental break midway; not that it detracts at all, far from it, just not what you might be expecting.

"With the bridge, I think that was just really natural for us, we enjoy jamming and messing around and the whole breakdown/half time bit was a way for us to express that," Iggy adds. "We never really thought of it in a 'let's have an instrumental or not' way, it was more of a 'we got carried away in a rehearsal' type thing! But we do like doing weirder stuff."

We can't wait to hear more weirdness from The Letrasets, in the meantime, get your ears lost in 'Dunes'.