Irish electropop darlings Le Galaxie, who blend club rhythms with retro synths and an indie aesthetic, make their UAE debut this weekend with gigs in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Known for high-octane live shows combining party-starting beats with 3-D visuals, iconic film clips and futuristic face make-up, Le Galaxie are at the same time cheekily irreverent and painfully hip.
Last year's major-label debut, Le Club successfully bottled the quartet's frenetic indie-dance-pop sound, earning a nomination for Ireland's influential Choice Music Award.
With summer festival gigs lined up at London’s Lovebox and Spain’s FIB (Festival Internacional de Benicàssim), and an upcoming tour supporting Faithless, the band is clearly on the upswing.
First however, Le Galaxie perform their first gigs of the year – fresh from the studio and promising to debut some brand new material – right here in the UAE, at McGettigan’s in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
We caught up with bassist David McGloughlin to find out what the band have been up to and what we can look forward to.
You are flying thousands of miles from Ireland to the UAE – to play in an Irish pub.
Yeah, we’re going very, very far, to essentially go home again. It should be good fun – we’ve never been quite that far east before, so it’s going to be a weird combination of culture shock and familiarity – being in the UAE, playing to Irish people.
Everyone talks about how mad your live shows are – how hard is that to capture on record?
Initially, we found it more difficult. Our first album [2011's Laserdisc Nights II], we produced pretty much entirely ourselves, and it wasn't until we released an EP called Fade to Forever [the following year] that we started to see how we would approach doing the record, crossing that divide led to Le Club. But they are two different mediums – the live show is very much about creating that atmosphere with that audience in that moment, but on a record you want to give a bit more depth for people to want to come back again and again.
You mixed the album in Los Angeles, with Eric Broucek, who worked extensively with LCD Soundsystem.
The way we work, we would be recording as we write the songs, so some of what ended up on the record was the very first time something was played at the moment of inspiration. So the record was a combination of those recordings with two months of transplants in the studio. Once that was all assembled, we knew we wanted to find someone really high-calibre to work with, and one of the names that came up was Eric, one of DFA’s house engineers. We went over to Los Angeles and spent a week finalising the mixes, which was an absolutely incredible experience.
There’s a sci-fi theme running through a lot of your stuff. Who’s the geek in the band?
We kind of all are. This weekend I've had at least three conversations with members of the band about Star Trek: The Next Generation, something I'm not necessarily proud of. When we first started out, Le Galaxie was the name of a song we'd written and for want of a vocalist, we would just throw in these movie-dialogue samples we liked – so the space theme grew from there.
Despite the dance influences now, you started off playing together as an alt rock band, 66e.
We did get a lot of comparisons to Radiohead. That band was winding down, the singer left, and the rest of us took a little bit of a break and started to write new music. The electronic elements started to creep into the shows more and more – we suddenly realised it was an opportunity. But it was a slow process. If you listen to the stuff we did before, you would be like, “How is this the same people?”
It’s a very trendy sound – was that always the goal?
When we first started out we were a bit more wilfully retro. It’s kind of a cliché now, the throwback synthesiser stuff, but we started off a bit before that had become a trope in culture. As time went by we broadened our influences a lot more, and I think especially with the stuff we’re working on now, we are trying to make it quite contemporary. The next album will be taking a bigger step away from what we’re known for.
• Le Galaxie perform at McGettigan’s AUH, Al Raha Beach Hotel, Thursday, May 26, from 10pm, free entry; and at McGettigan’s JLT, Bonnington Tower, Friday, May 27,from 8.30pm, Dh50 (includes one drink)
rgarratt@thenational.ae
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Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
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Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
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