Words by Art Jefferson
Photography by Lucy Morris & Karen Hornby
Oh Baby is the duo consisting of distant cousins Rick Hornby and Jen Devereux. Based between London and Manchester, their sound is inspired by 70s and 80s synth-pop, new wave, disco, German electronica and more, yet blended in an alchemic way, fostering something that is quite distinct and interestingly unique to them.
Coming together after attending a family funeral and talks of music, Devereux and Hornby decided to form a group which would find the pair releasing their debut EP The Art Of Sleeping Alone back in 2019. A glorious hybrid of dance-driven styles and electronic ballads, the record took a nod at the past whilst simultaneously delivering something refreshing for the now. The deliverance of moods conveyed throughout each track also highlighted not only the musical brilliance of the two but the shining chemistry between them.
Oh Baby’s new EP ‘Hey Genius’ continues the duo’s exploration of sonics with the production encapsulating sparkling synth-pop, electro, and nocturnal disco, just to name a few. In a way, the EP can be considered a soundtrack to perhaps a new blossoming world of underground clubbing with enough accessibility for the mainstream, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect.
The origin of the group is quite interesting. You are actually cousins who met at the funeral of a family member. Were the two of you always aware of one another but never met or was that your first time actually finding out that you were related?
Rick Hornby – We had met a couple of times when we were young, as part of a bunch of kids thrown together at a wedding or some kind of family gathering, but the blood connection is distant enough that as adults we never really crossed over into each others vicinities.
When I started to show more of an interest in music in my teens, my parents would occasionally mention that they thought I might have a cousin somewhere who was into singing, but teenage cynicism would kick in to over-ride any thoughts of actually getting in touch, and would convince me I would never be interested in what they might be doing.
How shortly after meeting did you two decide to form a band?
Rick Hornby – I’d say within the hour, most of which was taken up with intense conversation about music and bands. I remember having the definite feeling of faith in music being largely restored after that conversation, both of us having been floundering separately for a few years in and out of various bands.
The whole thing culminated in a firm handshake over the ham vol-au-vents.
Can you talk about your love of electronics and using them as vehicles to reflect the varied aspects of humanity?
Rick Hornby – We find the whole concept of electricity, and using it to create music, pretty captivating. Years ago hearing keyboard lines and synth sounds on records by Soft Cell or Human League seemed to give the electricity some sort of personality which in turn gave the songs their character, almost like it was another member of the band. That’s where the fascination with machines being emotive comes from. Because we are both self-taught musicians and not particularly technically gifted it’s always in the back of our minds when we’re experimenting with sounds or programming synth lines that we’re playing around with something that knows more than we do and therefore it goes beyond just being functional. There is something about electric flow and current that, in our minds at least, relates to pulses and rhythms just as much as any human instrumentation. The old saying that any good song will stand up just being played on an acoustic instrument will always be true to a point but equally there are many instances nowadays where it just won’t sound half as good.
You’re both lovers of 70s/80s post-punk, new wave, German electronica and more. However, whilst these various styles may have been part of your palette of inspiration, you’ve managed to craft a sound that is quite uniquely your own. How long did it take to define that sound?
Rick Hornby – We’re still defining it, and probably won’t ever see it as being done, but it all comes from a love of very specific sounds from equally specific times in music. I guess over the last three years since we began writing the first EP we have learned how to find the sounds we’re after, or at least it doesn’t take us quite so long to try and make them. Also, the more we wrote the more we realised there was a repeating pattern of techniques that we would be using, almost absent-mindedly but all taken from those influences. Things like very minimal drum fills if any, synth lines or hints of guitar parts that only happen once in a track, and no acoustic guitar anywhere.
Your debut The Art of Sleeping Alone was written in multiple cities, London and Manchester where you respectively live, but also Los Angeles. How did the vibe and sounds of those places creatively make their way into the release?
Rick Hornby – The music was mostly written in Manchester, then worked on and rehearsed in London before we went to America. Los Angeles was our escapism, to try and hear the tracks as far away from ordinary life as we could and finish the production in totally different surroundings with a sprinkle of sunlight. So there is that split personality going on through the music, from where the songs are thought up to where they end up…the darker sounding beginnings that flourish into pop arrangements. We never wanted to sound like we were from any particular place though…we always wanted to sound Worldwide. Having said that, we can’t write songs about skipping along a beach because there is an attitude in Manchester which is almost instilled in the creativity of the city, a kind of brutal honesty that pours out from literally under your fingernails. I grew up studying each Factory release intently, and to me that attitude was just as important as the music.
With your single ‘Cruel Intention’, it’s interesting that you stated that you wanted the sound have a sort of disposable sensibility to it. However, to me it’s quite textured and brilliantly orchestrated with a killer, sexy groove underneath. I would say that it’s a track that will surely stand the test of time. What was the idea behind wanting it to have plasticity sonically?
Rick Hornby – When we first set up our studio we got a record player in there and went through a period of wading through a few stacks of 7” singles of songs we’d heard while over on the West Coast of America by mostly British or European early 80s New Wave groups like Department S or The Passions, songs that seemed to be better known that the actual bands themselves so at one time would have probably fallen into the one-hit-wonder category. We’d hunt the vinyl down in small record stores for a dollar each and fill our suitcases after hearing them in shops or on the radio or coming from car stereos, just circulating in the air having cemented their place in pop culture. I remember hearing all of them first time round as a little kid, dismissing something like The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats because of the singers haircut or something. But having not heard a lot of them since then, now picking up on all the clever pop arrangements, imaginative subject matter and great little keyboard or guitar riffs.
‘When ‘Cruel Intention’ first started coming to life it was only a drumbeat and the guitar riff you hear throughout the second verse, but it was coming from the time spent listening to those records. We wanted something that had a very concise pop arrangement and guitar riffs that sounded almost interchangeable and simple with as fewer notes as possible…that verse riff having only two. That was where the whole idea of a disposable track came from, with the plasticity coming from getting a kind of cheapness to some of the sounds of the drum machine and keyboard. Obviously as the track grew it became more involved, but I can still hear the 7’’dog-eared picture sleeve version in there that we started with.
You recorded a cover of Patrick Cowley’s ’Somebody To Love Tonight’. What motivated you to do a cover of that specific Cowley track, which is his instrumental version of the track he wrote for Sylvester’s ‘I Need Somebody To Love Tonight’?
Rick Hornby – The motivation was that bassline. We would always mess around with it at sound checks, or while trying to find a good sound on a keyboard in the studio. We discovered Cowley through a book by Tim Lawrence called Life And Death On The New York Dancefloor 1980-1983 at the same time that most of his work was re-released on a series of albums several years ago.
Apparently the original piece of music was part of some work that had been commissioned for gay porn films, which made it even more intriguing to our dark side.
We didn’t want to even try and attempt to add lyrics or re-write anything as everything you need to know is in that title, we just added a few guitar lines and synth layers and played around with the structure.
It’s a track for the small hours. We wanted to try and keep the sense of that late- night perspective that settles everywhere and can be either comforting or unsettling depending where you are, and although the chorus has a loneliness to it and is coming from a place of longing, it’s still a place you’d quite like to be.
How would you juxtapose your forthcoming record ‘Hey Genius’ with the previous mini-album in terms of musical direction and the overall creative process?
Rick Hornby – The first EP was more of a learning curve with sounds, writing and programming …basically learning how to make a record. When we took our original demo stems to the studio as references and ended up using all of them, apart from vocals, for the final tracks there was a definite light-bulb moment of realising just how much we could do ourselves without the studio time/pressure/cost involved. So with Hey Genius there was less guesswork and more confidence, and a much better understanding of how to craft the sounds into parts that we knew would end up on the final version.
What was the impact of the lockdown in terms of writing and recording ‘Hey Genius’. Did being confined make for more ideas to flow or did it have the opposite affect?
Rick Hornby – Once we’d realised there was a whole Summer ahead of us where we are going to go nowhere and pretty much see no-one then creativity kickstarted itself, partly driven by the fear of getting to the end of a lockdown and not having used all that time well enough. There is such a thing as healthy confinement if you’re trying to be productive, as long as all the elements are in the right place. Plus there’s nothing quite like a Worldwide pandemic to help keep you in one place with the door shut.
Finally, with ‘Hey Genius’ landing soon, what else do you have in the pipeline for 2021?
Rick Hornby – We have a London show on 23rd July, the same day the record is out, and then hopefully more shows following on from that. Meanwhile we are finishing writing the next EP, which we hope to have recorded by the end of the year and will involve us working with our highly talented artist friend Kelley Stoltz over at his home studio in San Francisco. So far the tracks are our most ambitious yet, and if we can stick to our timeline it will be the first time we’ve recorded everything during Wintertime, so we’ll see exactly what pops out in the Spring.
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