Frank Gamble reveal identity with "J'adore" and talk secrets in their first ever interview

Originally working together as part of their respective solo projects, Hannah Yadi and Justin Tailor came together as Frank Gamble once they discovered their unique sound - from there everything just seems to have fallen into place.

Yadi previously worked as YADi making electro pop influenced by her Algerian roots; Tailor is also South London producer Hoost who, as well as working with rising stars Dan Caplen and Rina Sawayama, teamed up with YADi for a now-deleted cover of The Weeknd's "Initiation".

Following a string of singles, including vocal manipulation paradise "Something Wrong" and the explosive summer-ready "Heart Speaks", the pair have found their niche, exploring different sounds through pop structures. "J'adore" tackles some hard-hitting issues, like much of the pair's music, despite its carefree, dream-like soundscape. They explain that it "is about an abuse of power. An abuse of trust. About being duped by someone who was meant to care for you but who instead took advantage of your innocence. It’s about trying to rebuild your life and trust in people after a bad experience and not letting yourself fall back into similarly painful patterns, behaviours and relationships. And battling with the idea that you have to do it alone...”

We caught up with the elusive duo for a quick chat about the project thus far, the new single and their forthcoming Myths EP.

You recently played your first show together, what was that like?

Yadi: It felt like all the emotions from the songs had been boiling up inside our bodies and it was really good to finally play them out and let some of those things go at the same time.

Frank Gamble began anonymously but your faces and names are now attached to the project. Have you noticed any changes since that decision?

Tailor: I haven’t really noticed it too much to be honest. I’m not really too focused on what goes on outside the music to be fair, I’m quite insular.

Y: That’s one of the reasons we used the mask in the first place and for me it was a fresh start. I feel like the music I’ve been doing in the past was me working with lots of different people and then suddenly Justin and I found this sound together and we were so excited by it that we didn’t want to focus to be on another but the music.

Why was "Myths" the first song we heard from Frank Gamble?

Y: For me it was the first moment that I felt we had a sound. Until then we had just been writing songs for my old project, then we stumbled upon this sound and I just wanted to do something really extreme and Justin had that and these amazing Bollywood samples. I’d always wanted to play with more world sounds and it came out pretty Bollywood-tastic. "Myths" was the second song we’d written together and it just felt so us and so wild, we just wanted to lead with that.

You’ve working with PMR now. What was the driving force behind that decision?

T: They just felt like family from the get go. There’s a lot of time wasters when it comes to big, big labels, sometimes they just want to say that they’ve met someone and stuff like that, but PMR were serious from the get go. They really liked the sound and what we represent.

Y: Yeah, they like similar music to use. We both love Two Inch Punch’s music and he’s one of the first people we ever played it to and he loved it. He’d already done that kind of clandestine start to his music and he said that he put something out with none of his friends knowing and we were going to do that anyway, but there was this kind of synchronicity so we already felt a little bit part of that family. We’d been working with other artists on the label too and it just felt like a really natural thing.

Can you tell us about how new single "J'adore" came about?

T: We did that one with a producer called New Machine at his studio. He was playing us some beats and we heard that beat and we were just like "we need that!" So we started working on it together, just building it up and building it up.

Y: He had a sample, which he’d taken from Instagram - from a friend of ours’ Ruben James - and that was another thing that sold it to us, then Justin created more of a soundscape over the top of it and we just wanted to do something French. It was just a bit of an accident really.

You’ve got Abra Cadabra guesting on the track too…

Y: We thought he’d sound really good on it, so we reached out to him and his management and he was up for it, so he came through on a cold winter’s night, very late, with a crew of people and did his thing. I love that he interpreted the lyrics perfectly and just got the song, as it’s quite a contrast.

T: It’s quite exciting as well having Abra on it as most people know him as that drill rapper, if anyone’s really heard his stuff it’s "Robbery" or "Done Talkin’" really.

The Great Escape is coming up, which is kind of a rite of passage for new artists - what have you got planned?

Y: We try not to think about the pressure and just get pumped. We’re just excited about all the shows, we haven’t gigged before so we want people to see who we are and what we do.

T: I’m just excited to get out there now and do our thing on stage, because really that’s what music’s for. It’s for playing. It’s all well and good having it on a record or something, but if you can’t perform the stuff that’s half the battle.

Your debut EP Myths is out soon - what can we expect from the new material?

Y: A bit of a variety of sounds really. The funny thing about Frank Gamble is when we met we were both developing our own sounds individually, but then we found one together so easily - still everyone says every song is completely different, and we think that is what our sound is... a bit of all sorts.

We want to explore pop music and experiment with sound. Justin does a lot of amazing, clever manipulations of my voice and we’re always trying to make everything sound new. There’s four quite different songs on there that explore different parts of our personalities and what we’ve both been through in the last few years. There’s a bit of sadness, letting go, and there’s nostalgic samples - a '90s feel as we’re both '90s kids - so that felt right both melodically and sonically.

We did one of the tunes with Two Inch Punch as well and that has a dancier feel to it and we’re definitely open to collaboration, in a way we kind of want Frank Gamble to have a collective feel to it.