Track By Track: Kudu Blue on their Shaded EP

Sugar Lemz

With "Sugar Lemz" we wanted to make a chilled track that you could put on in the early hours when you've had a heavy night. The production was really key to this song from its early days, so we played around with lots of different ideas for a while until we came to the finished track and were satisfied with it. Part of the melody and lyrics came from an idea that Clem originally wrote on piano a year or two ago and they were brought in to it. The track came about after a late night jam around a computer with a few beers and smokes we came up with the chords for it the just messed around with loads of different ideas. The chords that you hear in the track are actually made up of singing an 'ooh' then pitching in to the notes we wanted.

In fact the song uses a lot of resampling, loading previous ideas into samplers and reversing them, slowing them down etc. As a rule we don't use samples from other artists songs, so resampling ourselves is something that really achieves an original sound. There's also a hefty amount of Tibetan singing bowl that Clem got as a gift. The song itself is about new love and the hesitation that can occur when you open yourself up to someone. Clem [Douglas] wanted to write about the way people can put on a front and pretend to be someone they're not in order to try and gain the others affection, and the troubles that hiding your true self can bring. We've tried out a few versions live as well. We just released a stripped back version through Sofar Sounds which lends to a more jazzy/neo-soul flavour. It's probably our favourite track from this EP.

Drink Alone

Drink Alone was written over two years ago, and we've been playing it as part of our set for a good while. It has always gone down well as a live track, so we thought it would translate well to a recording. As we produce and mix from our bedrooms, we've actually had the basis of this track down in Logic for some months now, and kept revisiting it till we got it just right. The sample in the chorus is from a Kora that Tom and Owen recorded for some work they were doing. It gives it a little something different. It's blended in with loads of pads arpeggiators and synth bass, and a mad solo on the Moog that Tom played in the middle 8.

The inspiration for the lyrics came when Clem was working in a pub in Brighton: "We often used to have a drink during our shift, one day I didn't feel like it [and] the girl I was working with said 'please don't make me drink alone!' It stuck in my head and I thought it could be a good song premise, so I wrote it down then had a drink."

Enemy

We wrote this in our rehearsal studios in Brighton one night. It was one of those times where the track just seemed to come together naturally. We had all the lights turned off and set the vibe then just jammed out. It's quite atmospheric, which we really wanted to bring out in the production, a bit darker and moodier. We filtered a whole bunch of Clem's backing vocals so that they follow the bass line to make it a bit spooky.

The lyrics are loosely based around a heated discussion she had once. She'd come out of a bumpy patch and was ready to live in a new way and just enjoy things. Sometimes the people around you find it hard to accept when you've made a purposeful change in your life. Clem explains, "It's the first time I've ever said fuck in a song! I've never said any kind of profanity actually, but that's the feeling. It was that desperate state of pleading with someone who's being really stubborn and doesn't want to hear it."