Keep Dancing Inc. releases A Taste of Possibility

Parisian dance pop trio Keep Dancing Inc first bonded over a shared love of “LCD Soundsystem, Depeche Mode, Palma Violets and synthesisers,” the band’s Louis de Marliave laughs, recalling their formation back in 2015. Bassist Joseph Signoret says soon after getting together, they discovered even more shared musical loves. “Add The Beatles, Hot Chip, New Order and Toro Y Moi to this list,” he smiles, the others nodding in agreement. Gabrielle Cresseaux, the band’s drummer says all of this resulted in their music being heavily rooted in disco, new wave and pop. “And we wear those influences firmly on our sleeves,” she adds.

Indeed, their debut album Embrace was so full of arresting dancefloor bops that it caught the attention of Hot Chip’s Alex Taylor and the band Parquet Courts, with the latter inviting Keep Dancing Inc to play on tour with them. It even found its way to French fashion powerhouse, Saint Laurent, who also invited the band to work with them.

They say touring the first album extensively strengthened their confidence, as did various high-profile radio appearances in England, France and Germany. Collaborations with the likes of Tom Carmichael –who has worked with HAIM – helped this further, as did well-received cover versions they recorded of Joy Division’s ‘Isolation’ and The Dogs’, ‘The Most Forgotten French Boy’.

Once they finally had time to catch their breath, the trio eventually settled into recording album two during the height of the pandemic. “We were working with a more stripped-back sound of just a synth, guitar and drums and found that we were much tighter as a band,” Joseph recalls of the time, when they recorded at his family home in Brittany. “We also recorded the songs live and that gave them a much greater energy.”

The album, A Taste of Possibility, is the first the band have entirely self-produced and the experience has helped them to define their sound more assuredly. “It was a challenge for sure because we’d never done anything like this before and we were kind of learning as we went,” explains Louis. “But the more we did, the better it become and eventually we had a sound that was probably closest to what we’d always imagined making as a band.”

The outcome is a refined and compelling new record, laced with a more mature electronic elements and a richer pop-rock sound. Frenetic track ‘Radio’ is a good example of this distillation. While there are delicate nods to the band’s past via LCD Soundsytem-esque synths, an electric guitar takes centre stage on this poppy, dancefloor-ready track. The excellent ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind’ is made in a similar vein, but this track also showcases a new vocal with Gaby taking the lead for the first time. It’s something she started to experiment with during their recording sessions. “We’re all harmonising a lot more on this record,” she explains. “We’ve spent a lot of time working on these and it’s resulted in a much richer, fuller sound for us – and one you can dance to even more,” she smiles. “We really started harmonising during covid when the only thing we could do to promote our album was to play filmed acoustic sessions” adds Louis. “Vocal harmonies were a way to replace the richness and complexity originally brought by keyboards we would normally have programmed.”

‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind’ is one of the album’s most emotive tracks and the one Gaby says she wrote “completely from scratch.” She began work on the song while isolated during the pandemic and in a long-distance relationship with her girlfriend at the time: they didn’t know when they would see each other again. “That’s certainly where some of this song’s sentimentality comes from,” she explains of the song’s lyrics and themes.

On the flip side, having more time to record together as a band meant they’ve made better songs as they’re usually scrambling to write new material quickly in between gigs during hectic touring schedules. “It’s really made a difference to how polished a sound this is because we’re not just finding bits of time here and there to write. This experience was much more focussed.”

The pandemic also inadvertently influenced some themes on the album too. “Nobody in the world knew if we’d ever get back to any kind of normality after Covid,” explains Joseph. “We couldn’t imagine what the world would be like – it was never going to be completely the same again and I think that nervousness and uncertainty comes across on some of the tracks. Just being in the room with Louis and Gabrielle after so long apart, being able to see each other and write together again after so long away was incredibly special. I think the joy of that comes across on the album.”

The new album has far more personal lyrics than anything they’ve done before too. Across several songs, the band explore autobiographical themes – like when one of them found themselves having feelings for two people at once. “It was hard to know how to write that in a song sensitively,” Louis recalls. “Like not wanting to hurt anyone involved, but also wanting to be true to the personal experience that actually happened. It was on my mind a lot and I kept returning to the theme when it came to writing songs, so in the end it all just tumbled out quite naturally.”

A good example is on the hopeful ‘A Taste Of Possibility’, which, despite its darker lyrical themes (“Don’t be too nice to me baby,” they sing on a song about a partner realising they’re in love with someone else), is another nightclub bop. “A lot of the sound is about dancing through issues and bad times in order to find some catharsis,” Gabrielle says of the 1975-inspired track. “We’ve never wanted to lose that as the band’s central idea.”

Louis continues: “It’s probably the poppiest song on the record. It’s really about the feelings you can develop towards someone, just because of ambiguous looks or attitudes.” Louis spent several months writing the song’s lyrics after coming up with its guitar parts. “I really took my time on this one,” he adds, saying the result was the band’s “most danceable” song yet and the one they’re “most proud of.”

‘GPS’ is another track that took some time to write, not least because of the sensitivity surrounding the song’s themes. Ultimately, there is a positive resolution and again, that catharsis on the dancefloor wins out. Louis says the song began as a house music demo but eventually turned into a glorious burst of synth pop, influenced by Tru Faith’s ‘Let The Beat Hit Them’ two step classic. “It speaks about the tugging and the disorientation one can feel when they start having feelings that are at odds with one’s personal relationship situation, but the feelings are too strong to stop thinking about...Musically, you can really hear that dichotomy on the track.”

Joseph says the band’s writing process varies from song to song with everyone contributing their ideas in different ways. “What’s special about it is just how collaborative it is,” he explains. “We’re a really tight unit and everyone brings ideas to the table that we work on together.”

The band says one of the most enjoyable songs to write on the album was ‘Murderer Mourns Again.’ “Our former bandmate, Charles, found this title in a bar in Hull when we were touring the UK,” Louis laughs. “I like the title because it was very absurd but weirdly evocative, and we tried to figure out what the fuck it could mean. In the end, it's about western hypocrisy regarding extreme poverty and atrocities in other parts of the world, but in reality, most of the lyrics were first taken from the summary at the back of a video game box.”

The band say the album feels like “a big milestone” in their careers. “And we’re already thinking about what’s next now, like maybe developing a more minimalist sound for the dancefloor,” Gabrielle and Louis say the idea of “working with more producers” in the future is attractive to the band too, as are further collaborators. “If James Murphy is available, well, that would be the dream,” Joseph laughs. “But for now, we’re just happy to continue defining what Keep Dancing Inc is all about,” he continues – “and that is about keeping your head up through hard times and of course, the unadulterated joy of being on the dancefloor.”