Last weekend, Boar Music sent me to Wolverhampton to test the water and see how the Editors are making their transition into the bolder, darker realms of their new album, In This Light and On This Evening. Though they started somewhat prudently with a lineup of their most seductive singles- ‘Blood’, ‘Bullets’, ‘An End Has a Start’, ‘Racing Rats’, ‘Escape the Nest’- their performance culminated in an excellent modern soliloquy, complete with synthesizers, confident tunes, and Tom Smith’s deep, resonating vocals.

Luckily for us, Chris Urbanowicz and Ed Lay took some time in between setting up to talk about their personal take on this new creation.

To what do we owe this new beginning?

We wanted to use different parts of our song writing brains, we tried to use different instruments, to introduce change and just make it interesting for us. We didn’t discuss changing, we just knew that if we were to carry on writing the same way that we used to the results wouldn’t be very good. So we think the change was essentially a necessity.

What inspired you to create this hybrid ‘dramatic-dynamic’ style?

Just because it’s a whole new world isn’t it? It’s all about creating your own sounds. It’s not just the guitar anymore, it’s about manipulating the music to do whatever you want it to do- that gave us a whole new canvas [ pause, after which Chris gets inspired] …to paint this musical painting.

Is it a style that you’re more comfortable with? Can we expect it to be replicated in your future work?

I think so. We’re still learning how to be a band, how to be on stage, in the studio… We’re getting there- we’re not really looking for a formula to write and we don’t want to go back and keep using the same techniques. I’m sure that in a year or so we’ll want to do something else, but I assume the next album will pretty similar to this one.

How have your new singles influenced your live performance?

It has been quite hard because we’re dealing with new instruments and completely new sounds. You always struggle with creating exactly what you want the audience to hear. It definitely looks better on stage; because of the instruments, we’ve got more things to do and move around a lot more on stage. Sometimes I play on four different instruments in the same song, which is quite interesting. We’re still trying to do the same thing, play aggressive sort of music.

Amongst all these changes, what elements will remain and true and unalterable characteristics of Editors’ music?

There’s obviously something that interests us about the music that we make. I think one thing that remains is the darkness that goes through the three albums. There’s something a little bit evil about it which you like. We prefer sounds harsh like death, rather than sounds pretty like flowers, in the same way that we prefer horror movies to romantic comedies, for instance. And that’s what it’s all about.

Editors’ fourth album In This Light and On This Evening is available since October 12th. Check out ‘Papillon’, ‘You Don’t Know Love’, ‘Like Treasure’ and the feature album track ‘In This Light and On This Evening’ to discover Editors with a twist.