Neu Mix #004: Regal Safari

When DIY asked Brighton electronic two-piece Regal Safari to compile a First On mix for us, we were met with a hugely enthusiastic response. The final mix — which circuits through various styles and eras of electronic music — makes perfect sense. Each act featured has their own impact on Sean and Guy’s sound, be it the abrasiveness of Neu! or the absorbing repetitive style of Food Pyramid. Each track can be linked to the group’s debut EP, ‘R G L S F R’. When speaking to the pair about their beginnings and their potentially stratospheric future, you’re almost thrown back by the level of ambition that the pair seem to have. They’re perfectionists; totally in control of how they want their music to be conveyed. So far, so good, as Regal Safari have already enjoyed a positive 2011, with blogosphere hype, the evolving of their live shows and several high-profile, high-standard remixes to their name.

We received your mix, it’s fantastic. How did you come to choosing these songs?
Guy: I’ll go through the tracklist: Radiant Dragon, we’re very very fond of that song, we’ve been listening to that for quite some time now. After Blondes, there’s Food Pyramid; a band I’ve really loved for quite a long time. They make future krautrock, the song itself really rang true in this mix. Chris & Cosey I chose because it’s a great track, I love what they do as well as Throbbing Gristle. Neu! I’m a huge fan of and Robert Gorl; he used to be in D.A.F which was one of the great synthwave bands of the 80s and I’m really fond of that song. And then, I really love Harald Grosskopt as well; it was very much an ending song – a very beautiful track to finish the mix with.

Is it supposed to reflect the way that you sound and the influences that you encompass into your own music?
Guy: There’s a temptation when doing a mix to either cover a lot of ground or drop songs from a more popular sphere that you want to associate yourself with. It certainly felt like – listening to the mix as we were doing it – there were particular elements of each track that were in our music but it’s not necessarily direct referencing.
Sean: There’s a particular energy in there that I think we try to put in our work. They’re not major influences but they’re just really great tracks and in a way it’s our way of showcasing them in the most humble way.

Are your tastes vaguely similar? Do you share your own musical interests and albums?
Sean: It’s quite wonderful actually; often Guy will come to me incredibly excited about something and say “we’re going to listen to this right now.” We do that a lot.

Could you tell me about your remixing and sampling technique?
Guy: It’s a satisfying challenge. We don’t sample in the 90s sense, like dropping other people’s tracks in our tracks. But the sampling technique is something that we do a lot and remixes are an extension of that. You’re given the pieces and rather than trying to do another version of those songs, we really wanted to take a piece of them and re-construct as if we were writing an original song.

How long have you been based in Brighton?
Sean: We’ve been here for two or three years. It’s a great place to live. It’s much more enjoyable to work in than London, although London does have its benefits. We’re both from London but we met in Brighton, around a year ago. We started making music and it really kicked off from there.

Were either of you involved in music before meeting in Brighton?
Guy: We both played a lot of stuff at different times. We had involvement in other bands, most of which are dead now but it’s a good learning curve. It was more about playing for fun at the time. We both have skills with instruments but that’s not necessarily relevant to how we make music as Regal Safari.

So this project is something a little bit more serious?
Guy: I think we’re always quite sincere people. I’m only really having fun if I’m doing something that I like. One of the reasons why we work so hard on our music is because in the end, I want to create something that I’d actually listen to.
Sean: When we started it was because a friend was running a night in Brighton and a band pulled out at the last minute and he really couldn’t get anyone. I’d been working a lot with sampling and electronic music and we had four hours to fill a thirty minute slot and make it appear as if we were a real band. That was fun – that wasn’t serious in the harsh sense. But as we did it, we applied our seriousness to it and we worked hard and I think that set the terms for us.
Guy: If people had told us that it was bad on the night, I imagine we’d have discontinued. Considering we didn’t have any songs, it went well!

How is playing live now? How are you adapting the sound live? Is it easy?
Sean: We had a good response. It’s not necessarily easy; the songs that we play live currently imitate the recordings, to a certain extent. We try to add new parts to it.
Guy: Rather than doing what a lot of electronic musicians do, as in play live by making loads of crazy noises for ages, we really wanted to showcase our songs and that was hard, making sure that the sounds we created in that environment really hit people.

It sounds like in the live show you’re quite disciplined – I’m not saying that negatively. But are you as disciplined when it comes to the image and the way that you release the tracks?
Guy: Not everything has to be in our control. The reason why we released the first EP for free download was mainly because I don’t want people to have bad quality downloads – I know people are going to illegally download so I’d rather they had a good quality mp3.

With the videos, you must have been delighted with what Josef Yvans came up with?
Guy: I love them all. You can really tell the different influences that are in each one and that’s very rewarding. I didn’t expect the ‘Light’ video to get such a big reception – I knew it was an amazing video.
Sean: I was in London when he finished it and Josef linked it to me. I remember watching it for the first time in complete pitch-black and it blew my mind.

You say you were surprised about the reception some of your videos received – what about the EP itself?
Guy: It wasn’t really something that I’d considered. It’s nice that we got such a quality reception and some publications put it in their top 20 EPs of the year and that was incredibly rewarding. There weren’t expectations as such but it felt very natural when the responses came through. You had people who put their own images to it, people who put it up with a single line, some pretty awful poetry at points. But overall we believe in our music.

What are your plans for the next few months?
Guy: Right now we’re working on finishing off our new EP. We’re doing a remix for a band that we really like. We’re playing a few shows – we played with Teengirl Fantasy recently. We’ve got Sounds From the Other City lined up and that’ll be fun because it’s our first gig up North.
Sean: We’re working on creating a lot of sounds and just playing with them and enjoying them. We’re only keen to work on images – film images of our own, that I filmed in transit or wherever I feel like it. We work a lot with projections in the space that we record in and we’d love to make that a permanent thing when we play live.



Regal Safari are currently working on their second EP. You can buy their first, ‘R G L S F R’, on bandcamp.