Tron Legacy: Ladytron in Interview

It's mind bending to think that the UK's premier cult electro band Ladytron are over ten years into their existence now, having formed in Liverpool 1999 when the assorted DJs and musicians met up and plucked their name from a Roxy Music song.

On the day we catch up with him, Reuben Wu is in London, "Just back from attending my mum's art show opening in Nottingham," and despite being on the verge of releasing a Best Of collection, he's clearly as excited about the future of Ladytron as the past; " Our next album is full of spherical songs" he says, intriguingly.

This tension between looking forwards and looking back isn't however, something that the band tend to think about; "It's not so much living up to a standard of the past as much as wanting to create music which keeps pushing our own limits," he says. "Even then, it isn't at the forefront of our minds when we write songs and we try to keep the process as instinctive as we can."

The Best Of collection then, is just a chance to draw a line under the last four albums; "It's meant to signify a 10 year span of our work," explains Reuben, "so in actual fact it should have come out in 2009, and also the title of Ladytron 00-11 would be a bit Spinal Tap!"

When Ladytron first formed in 1999, they had zero idea that it would evolve into such a long lasting project. As Wu explains, most of the band were at university and doing the group in their spare time to have fun, while Danny was running his record label. "That changed pretty soon when people started taking an interest in us", says Reuben, "and as a result we're still here, playing shows in quite exotic locations around the world."

"Our favourite show so far was probably playing St Petersburg in Russia. We'd watched a footy match beforehand and and were going on quite late, around 2am, and we were all a little bit plastered. A lovely huge crowd too. The lights broke during the encore but it was still light as it was outdoors and there was 24hr daylight, but then they came back on again during the final song. It was quite spectacular and magical."


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The band's fusion of glistening electro and melodic drama have had them described quite commonly as 'cinematic' - which is not entirely a coincidence. "We're all big film fans and I suppose it's difficult to not let it influence us when we write music" suggests Reuben. Would Ladytron therefore write a film soundtrack?

"A lot of our music has been used in films but we've not had the chance to actually write a soundtrack from scratch. It's definitely something we'd be interested in."

It's time to cull the interview, but before we do there's just time to ask Reuben about one of the band's best loved songs, 'Destroy Everything You Touch'. How does he feel about it these days? The answer is something we can all relate to; "I still love listening to it."

THE BEST OF LADYTRON IS OUT 29 MARCH - STREAM A SELECTION BELOW

Ladytron - Best Of 00-10 by nettwerkmusicgroup