Metronomy is Joseph Mount’s baby. He was there in its inception when he started twisting music to his own design on an old computer his dad got him. Their sound has warped from electronic instrumentals to electro-pop, with this change culminating into album number three – The English Riviera. Mount talks to inthemix about Metronomy’s evolution and a newfound yearning to collaborate with Britney Spears.

Your new album, The English Riviera, has a very different sound than your first few albums. Was it a conscious change?

Well yeah it was conscious, only not in the sense where we were like, “let’s fuck people up!” but much more just to make stuff I find interesting, and to develop the sound and change it and take little chances. There was no kind of idea that anything before was bad or embarrassing – the idea was just to keep it moving.

You’re from Devon, around the English Riviera the new album is titled after. Was it rewarding to write an album on something so close to your heart?

When I’m writing stuff I find it easier to have a framework or an idea, and I guess yeah if you’re doing something that’s taking influence from a place where you have strong emotional attachments, it kind of makes it a more enjoyable thing, and certainly a lot easier to be inspired by something you know a lot about.

Anna Prior added her vocal talents to this record and your band numbers have jumped from two to four over the last few years. Did this change the way Metronomy makes music?

I’m still writing the songs, and I’m still a little bit of a control…well not a control freak but I guess I still like to be in charge. Having this kind of live setup to write to, imagining the drums and the bass has affected what I’m thinking about when I’m writing stuff. Having other musicians involved is something, which maybe wasn’t fully realised on this record, but I think it has the potential to keep evolving in a way so it definitely has an effect.

Is it likely that future albums will breach a new genre? Or will Metronomy stick to electro-pop?

[Laughs] I dunno really, I suppose it’s because this one is a bit different, it’s not me trying to switch genres or anything like that. I think it’ll just keep changing but I think the reason it’s changed so much for the first three records is because I don’t like to go over the same ground over and over again. I think in the next one I’ll feel a bit more comfortable going back to instrumentals and revisiting old ideas maybe.

Do you attempt to keep live shows close to the experience your listeners get when hearing your albums? Or is there a certain amount of improvisation going on?

I think bands have to make a decision when doing the live thing. You either decide you’re gonna try and totally recreate the record as perfectly as possible and maybe compromise slightly the performance and the feel, or you decide the live thing is gonna be it’s own thing and have a different energy to it. We try and strike a bit of a balance between being really true to the way it sounds on the record and also giving it room for the crowd help pep it up a bit.