IDER's melancholic harmonies will break your heart

In a world of relative mediocrity it's rare to get something which stops you dead in your tracks, makes you forget what you were doing, cry actual tears....and resort to unbecoming hyperbole like this.

The London-based duo managed all this with their first track "Sorry" back only in April 2016. Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville appeared out of nowhere with a song built from rolling piano chords, burbling electronics and soon-to-be-trademark second nature harmonies. Both empowering and battling against an overwhelming sadness, its closing mantra "all my skin / I'm wrapped in / all I need" firmly embedding in your head.

Check out the full list of artists we're tipping for big things in 2017.

It's the harmonies I keep returning to, but there's also a collective IDER voice, when Markwick and Somerville sing in unison, and it makes the duo stand out from other electronic pop also-rans. You can hear it on "Pulse", whose honesty is refreshing as it is startling. There's a moment where IDER sing togther "gave myself to madness / to the madness" which makes the chest heave, leaves you gasping for breath, but then pulls you back with the most glorious "let's stick together no matter what" chorus imaginable. In singing "I'll fall if you do...show me how to hold you" IDER capture the perils and peaks of love and loss. Further singles "King Ruby" and "Million" contained moments which led me to swear in writing to get across just how incredible this band is, just how special they are.

IDER's sound, despite being nascently thought of in the south west of England, is very much the sound of London. The flecks of folk music not quite cast off speak of the city's green spaces - as do the ambient electronics which rise and fall like the mists and dew - while the percussion and electronics reveal urban London being explored in all its grit, darkness and glimmers of hope. We're being taken along on the most intriguing and promising of journeys; IDER are still discovering themselves but as they do so, we're going to be given some of 2017's most exciting music. Let's meet them.

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I guess it’s nice to start at the beginning…how did the two of you meet?

Markwick: “We met at the University of Falmouth about five years ago now. We did a music project together there and left uni….and started taking it a little more seriously. We’d been good mates since first year….and we’ve been together since then, and doing IDER for the past few years.”

Are you both from that part of the country?

Markwick: “Lil’s from just outside Birmingham and I’m from North London…”

It was a music course, right? Was that the reason for heading down there?

Somerville: “It was one of those things where personally I didn’t really fancy the idea of going all the way down to Cornwall, but it was great and in hindsight it was the [adopts mock delighted tone] BEST DECISION EVER!”

Markwick: “Clearly we loved doing the course….”

And you also had a musical project going on...

Markwick: “Yeah we were in a couple of different bands together during our first and second year and that coloured our Cornwall period. That’s when we started writing together.”

Somerville: “It was kind of our uni band, that’s where we did all our writing projects. It was always based around this duo that we’d started…it was very folky, banjos and guitars and stuff.”

It’s a very different sound to IDER though...

Somerville: “Definitely. It was very much a thing we did at uni, and very tied to being in Cornwall and that being the [musical] style and lifestyle of the world down there. We finished uni and said ‘okay, it’s time to rethink and see how and where we wanna go’. We had songs kicking about, and as we developed it, it turned into IDER. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision, it more felt like where we were influenced our sound.”

Markwick: “I think it constantly evolves, though. When we first started working together it was very polite and like ‘oh, how about this, how about that…’”

Somerville: “And now it’s like ‘fuck, that’s shit, I don’t like it’ hahaha! But it does change as it goes on, just as our creative relationship changes.”

It’s all about trust I guess, and that comes with time and a relationship developing…

Markwick: “100%. Yes. There’s no formula that we stick to but I guess we do fall into patterns. You know, sometimes Lil starts lyrics or we start with the music and I’ll bring something to it… but we write totally mutually.”

I can hear a difference which comes from geography. You mentioned that the other project was very much in the style of Cornwall, but IDER sounds like London – both the urban and the green spaces…did London shape you?

Somerville: “Yeah! We’d done this uni thing, and we were both floating around a bit – so we decided we wanted to do this properly. We started writing and got rid of all the stuff we’d done before, just got a fresh palette. We listened to a lot of new music, bought a couple of drum pads…it just influenced a new way of writing together. But being in London and that environment was a big factor.”

Do you find it difficult to connect to the previous stuff you were writing? I mean, it’s history but it’s still formative in some ways.

Markwick: “Yeah it’s not like we’re pretending we didn’t meet at uni but we don’t advertise because it doesn’t feel totally relevant to IDER. This is a new project which started on a blank canvas and fresh palette.”

Somerville: “Obviously we met at uni and the project was part of that – and also part of our friendship and bonding, and musical development. But we don’t talk about it, nor do we actively hide it.”

Markwick: “We intentionally cut it off and started from scratch because we needed a new challenge!”

The thing that drew me to IDER in the first place was hearing your voices on the first early mix of “Sorry”. There was something instantly identifiable as being brilliant and unique, and that was your voices and how they work and harmonise together. Did that take long to work out?

Markwick: “There was definitely something straight away, a vocal blend which felt like ‘oh my god this is really cool’ and it felt really great. That’s always been the important feeling for us, if we think it’s great. And that 100% started it – some voices blend well and some don’t. But over time we have married up our voices in certain ways without thinking too much about it actually. We sing a lot in unison as well as in harmony, and we sound like a new voice. It doesn’t sound like Lily and it doesn’t sound like me…it sounds maybe like a third person.”

Somerville: “[in a spoilt US voice] ‘that sounds like IDER’”.

Markwick: “IDER, the old lady hahaha”

When you moved to London, what were you listening to?

Markwick: “There was a lot of Japanese House and Lapsley…”

Somerville: “I remember listening to a lot of Jon Hopkins, Ibeyi, Django Django, Glass Animals….just slightly more electronic stuff….it was a wide range of things, more interesting and electronic.”

I’d separate “King Ruby” from this, but the other three singles have a certain feel to them. I don’t want to say they sound unhappy but there’s a sadness or melancholic feel to “Sorry”, “Pulse” and “Million”, coming from the way your voices work – and the sound of the music – but maybe thematically too. Can you see a thread through the songs?

Somerville: “Definitely. There is a slight melancholic thread….and even to a certain extent that’s in ‘King Ruby’. Even though it’s got a more upbeat energy to it, the whole topic and context of that song comes from a dark and upsetting place.”

Markwick: “With the other three I suppose we talk quite a lot about dark subjects. But it’s stuff that you don’t say or things which….I think we both find that quite interesting, the melancholic side of things. We like things which are haunting, gritty…”

Somerville: “- and real”

Markwick: “Yeah, things which are just a little below the surface.”

Somerville: “Even with ‘Pulse’ it’s not necessarily a dark song….well maybe it is haha!”

Everything seems to have happened quickly for IDER. It was only April when you had the first single, and it was picked up by Radio 1 immediately...

Markwick: “Yeah we were just making eggs in the morning when we found out about Phil Taggart playing it! It’s been really exciting, so exciting”

It must get a bit overwhelming?

Somerville: “We’ve got Georgia [IDER’s manager] who is doing such a good job at filtering information to us so it doesn’t all come at once. But you know, it’s amazing and we just have to realise that this is the best we could have asked for.”

Markwick: “Also, how do solo artists do it. This sounds twee, but when there are two of you in a band you’ve got more shoulders to lean on. You have that person you can unload all your crazy thoughts on to, all those overwhelming feelings. You have an outlet and someone to bounce off, someone to take up the slack.”

You have to work with producers though, so how does it feel bringing someone else into the mix?

Somerville: “We have our set up at home and that’s where we write before taking it into the studio. It’s really interesting working with producers; doing ‘Sorry’ was an incredible experience because we had this song and collaborated with someone who had a much more electronic background. We were such extreme opposites that we learned so much from each other. It was an incredible journey to figure out what to do with it.”

Markwick “We’re hands on, we don’t sit back and we always wanna know what’s going on….we have loads of ideas for production. We’re massively involved and there’s so many sounds that we hear…but we still describe a bass sound in quite stupid terminology that no-one understands but us!”

So you have the Forecast show in January, but what’s next for IDER?

Markwick: “Just writing and recording. We’re going to Sweden in February, we’ll be working on our live set, there’s lots of new material and basically just being creative.”

One last thing I want to touch on…you’re in a band together, you write and record together…and you share a house?

Markwick: “Yeah we share a bedroom!”

How do you keep it on an even keel?

Somerville: “We’re very good at communicating, that’s the key. I think, to be honest, the biggest arguments we have, by the end of the conversation we realise we’re saying the same thing….so it comes from being very compatible I guess. It just works for us, and that’s cool.”