Elliott Wall, Pete Lawrie-Winfield and James Gordon—the three men that make up the UK band Until The Ribbon Breaks—have lots of energy to go around. They’ve just finished their first ever Coachella set and are escaping the beaming Indio sun under the tents of the festival’s gorgeous, grassy VIP section. James, hidden by a mean pair of shades, coolly reclines in the couch we’re seated in, unbothered by the rays or by Pete and Elliott’s playful banter beside him.
“I’m going to say what Elliott said because it’s a compliment,” a distracted Pete says between fits of laughter. “I said to Elliott while you were asking James a question, ‘Have you ever noticed how full on James’ beard has got?’ Elliott said, ‘Yeah, because the other day I saw a photo of him without the beard and I thought dickhead.’” James just laughs at his bandmates-turned-brothers.
Elliott Wall, Pete Lawrie-Winfield and James Gordon—the three men that make up the UK band Until The Ribbon Breaks—have lots of energy to go around. They’ve just finished their first ever Coachella set and are escaping the beaming Indio sun under the tents of the festival’s gorgeous, grassy VIP section. James, hidden by a mean pair of shades, coolly reclines in the couch we’re seated in, unbothered by the rays or by Pete and Elliott’s playful banter beside him.
“I’m going to say what Elliott said because it’s a compliment,” a distracted Pete says between fits of laughter. “I said to Elliott while you were asking James a question, ‘Have you ever noticed how full on James’ beard has got?’ Elliott said, ‘Yeah, because the other day I saw a photo of him without the beard and I thought, dickhead.’” James just laughs at his bandmates-turned-brothers.
Until The Ribbon Breaks first started as Pete’s musical pet project before evolving into multitalented trio—Pete, Elliott and James all handle vocals, brass, keys, guitar, drums, programming and percussion between them—with a bright future in the sphere of electronic music.
In addition to the release of their debut album A Lesson Unlearnt back in January, UTRB have toured with Lorde and Phantogram as well as collaborated with hip hop notables The Pharcyde and Run The Jewels. And things will only go up from there.
After basking in the relief of their first Coachella performance, the trio sat down with VIBE for a candid conversation about the making of their debut album, being closeted hip hop fans back home and changing the way people listen to electronic music. —Stacy-Ann Ellis
VIBE: For the people that don’t know, where did you get the name of your group?
Pete: Until The Ribbon Breaks comes from the idea that our music jumps around from genre to genre. When you were a kid, you would make a cassette mixtape for you, yourself or for a girl or your friends and it was just the music that you were a fan of. It didn’t matter what the different genres were; you would play it until the ribbon broke.
Let’s talk about the new song “Expensive Taste” that you have with The Pharcyde. How did that collaboration come together?
P: I have been a fan of The Pharcyde since I was 16 years old. When I first learned to DJ, one of my favorite songs to play at house parties or whatever was “Runnin” by The Pharcyde. And I still love that song to this day. Anywhere you drop that song people still love it. But the opportunity came up because the TV station E! wanted a spoke song for an ad they were making. And the song that we were making seemed like the perfect match. I mean, any chance that we can get to have a hero of ours featured on a song is massive opportunity. Then Elliott had an idea for a song, and Elliott doesn’t normally do much writing but he just had this epiphany.
Elliott: It was an epiphany. I heard this melody that I felt like we had to do something with. Then I took it to James and he came up with some brilliant words. Not as good as Pete’s, but really good.
P: And The Pharcyde was a lot of fun in the studio. They were fairly high… on life. I could add “on life” if you need to.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=a8JCp1HVEMQ
So, given the song title, would you consider yourselves men of expensive taste?
P: That’s a “no” for me.
E: No way.
James: No.
Talk us about your new album, A Lesson Unlearnt. What was your intention behind it and how did it come together conceptually?
P: James came up with the name of the album, so I’m just going to pass this to him.
J: I don’t know if that’s strictly true. The whole point of a A Lesson Unlearnt is if you look at the chronology of all the material of it, some of it we did a couple of years ago and then some of it we finished late last year. So it’s like a long time condensed into one record. But there is a lot of learning that happened through that and I think the whole title and the point of that is that… the problem with electronic music is that it’s really easy to produce things and just make the same stuff all the time. What we try to do in the studio is change things up all the time, like switching around instruments. Set certain rules in the studio like, ‘you’re not going to use that thing on more than just one track.’ Just to try to mix it up and create a much more varied record, really. Because we all like a lot of different types of music—if you combined all of our tastes together it would be a really weird type of mix. That’s kind of what the whole point is; to not get caught in any habits, basically.
When did you guys know when the album was absolutely done?
J: There was a point in time, I guess about six months ago, where we had just finished some new stuff that we’d made on the road a bit in New York and a bit in L.A. and it just felt that was kind of enough now. Let’s try and book end there and just get that out into the world.
And you guys have also worked with Run the Jewels. Talk to us about your working relationship with them, how you met and what projects we can expect from the two groups.
P: Me and Elliott come from a tiny little fishing town in Wales called Penarth, which has got the population of like 17.
E: He always says in interviews “a fishing town”; Penarth is not a fishing town. There is no fishing boats, no. Where are the fishing boats ?
P: Penarth means, translated in Welsh, “a bear’s head.” Penarth juts out on the coast and looks like a bear’s head… Sorry, that’s very boring for you. (laughs) Hip hop is not a thing in Penarth that you would normally be into. It’s kind of a strange thing to be into. I had to listen to it on my headphones will I was skateboarding. And one of the first rappers I got into was El-P when I was 16 years old. Years later when I was making hip hop and I moved to New York, I was working with rapper Mr. MFN eXquire and he asked me who my favorite rappers were. I said El-P and he said “No shit, I know El-P.” I was like oh my god like a fanboy. “Do you think you can send him some of my music.” And he was like, “Yeah, for sure, I’ll send it to him now.” I didn’t hear anything and like a month later I got an email from El-P saying, “I checked out your track I loved it.” That was enough for me. I could have quit that day. But then he was like, “We’re making a thing called Run The Jewels, would you like a feature on our record.” So I sung on that first record and then when time came to make our record I just asked if they would return the favor, I suppose. And I love Run the Jewels— if there is one band I’m seeing in Coachella this weekend it’s Run the Jewels.
If there is one takeaway that you want people that don’t know you to know about you and why they should listen to you, what would it be?
J: Anyone who is listening or reading, I think the thing about our music is that the core of the whole thing is imagery. A lot of people have got a lot of stuff going on in their lives and it’s nice sometimes just to listen to something that you get into. Because, let’s be honest, a lot of the stuff you hear on the radio, a lot of the buzzy records that come out, they’re not really things that take you away that far or kind of transcend life too much. The thing that our stuff will always do and hopefully just make you feel like you can get the fuck out permanent.
Photo Credit: Stacy-Ann Ellis