Looking for a touch of soul

Jona Ma (left) and Gabriel Winterfield used 60s technology and a studio in France to record their album.

Breakout Aussie duo's influences aren't as British as they sound, writes Lydia Jenkin

Sydney pop wizards Gabriel Winterfield and Jono Ma were in different bands - Ghostwood and Lost Valentinos respectively - when they met. But they were working on solo material, too, and were mutually impressed when they shared their ideas.

Ma needed someone to sing over his studio creations, and Winterfield needed someone to sing with, so they decided to collaborate.

"It just worked," Ma explains. "I'd make an instrumental, he'd come up with a bunch of vocal ideas, we'd record them, and then I'd go away and edit those ideas, choose the best one, chop them up and layer them, rearrange what I'd done prior, bouncing off his vocals."

Before long they'd released their first single, Come Save Me, and it quickly became the most played track on Triple J. Then BBC Radio 1 picked it up, followed by California's KCRW, and they were asked to support Foals and The xx on tour.

The next step was recording their first album, at a studio that Ma and a friend had built on a farm in the Loire Valley in France.

"Before we'd even formed the band, I'd been going to this place for the previous two years in a row, building a studio, because my friend owned it. So once I began the band with Gabriel, it just made sense to ship off to France and make the record there rather than paying $1000 a day to hire a studio in Sydney."

Ma had vintage Neve components from the 60s for the studio, which proved to be the perfect equipment for the album.

"Because they're vintage, they gave it a warmth and an analogue quality, but they also give it a particular power. You can put a flat-sounding beat through them and give it life. Or sometimes I'd thin sounds out and make them quite tinny, but they do tinny in a really beautiful, soft way. Basically, I could shape every sound. It gave me great control."

That vintage warmth and sound of pop perfection, particularly the 50s and 60s sounds coming out of Detroit and Chicago, was a strong source of inspiration for the duo.

"A lot of those hits were perfectly structured pop songs with amazing melodies, but they also had this dance-ability and soulfulness, so those were aspects that definitely attracted me and inspired me.

"And then there was a bunch of garage rock from Chicago and Detroit, which is really interesting because it's essentially white teenagers who were heavily inspired by a lot of R&B, soul and blues, but they filtered it through their own cultural genetics and came out almost sounding like punk."

Ma was also a fan of various Detroit techno and J Dilla, but he didn't immediately realise he was listening to music that had all come out of the same cities in different decades.

"I hadn't made the connection until later, but it's funny because everyone keeps comparing us to Manchester bands and there's a constant comparison to the Madchester scene, but it was definitely more music from Detroit that we were consciously referencing and listening to. But there are links - the Happy Mondays were hugely influenced by Chicago house and the Detroit scene."

The June release of Howlin' coincided with several festival dates in the UK and Europe, including Glastonbury, and has garnered strong reviews and praise from the likes of Noel Gallagher, so Jagwar Ma (the name is a reference to a favourite jaguar painting and Jono's last name), will soon be trying their luck in the US. But first they're popping over for one Auckland show.

Music profile

Who: Australian psych-pop duo Jagwar Ma

What: Debut album Howlin' out now

Where and when: Playing at the Kings Arms, Wednesday August 7