Popping Up: Gorgon City
Popping Up is our recurring look at new artists making noise on the music landscape. Because, hey — Madonna and Britney were once unknown, too.
For our latest installment of Popping Up, we turn our eyes and ears to London, where rising dance duo Kye Gibbon and Matt Robson-Scott, better known as Gorgon City, have been not-so-quietly carving out their impressive platform on the house music scene over the past year. The pair’s irresistible club cuts like “Ready For Your Love” and “Here For You” have elevated the status of singer-songwriters like MNEK and Laura Welsh, and they even recorded a song last year with their contemporaries Clean Bandit and produced “Rather Be” songbird Jess Glynne‘s latest single.
Ahead of the duo’s North American festival dates in August and the fall release of their debut album, we gave Matt a call to discuss the pop force that is Gorgon City.
BAND NAME: Gorgon City.
WHERE THEY’RE FROM: North London, United Kingdom.
WHO THEY ARE: Kye “Foamo” Gibbon & Matt “RackNRuin” Robson-Scott.
HOW YOU KNOW THEM: Gorgon City’s breakthrough single “Ready For Your Love” features Idolator favorite MNEK on vocals and landed at #2 on the UK chart earlier this year.
Gorgon City featuring MNEK — “Ready For Your Love”
HOW THEY CELEBRATED THEIR FIRST BIG CHART HIT: “I think at the time we’d been kind of gigging quite a lot,” Matt explains to Idolator. “We were celebrating when we were at shows and stuff. I remember the night before it was supposed to come out, and MNEK was with us, and we had a sort of celebration because obviously we’re really happy with the song and stuff. It was a fun time when we made that.”
BEFORE ALL THAT, THE PAIR DID A LITTLE SONG CALLED “REAL” WITH A SINGER NAMED YASMIN: Matt explains, “Me and Kye hadn’t been working together very long — just kind of making tunes for fun at the time — and then our manager put us in contact with Yasmin. It was the first vocal track we wrote. It was kind of like a new thing, us working together and working with vocalists. It was a turning point in technique and, after, format in how we work in the studio, because we did it in a way where we literally just had nothing. We just literally met up with the vocalists, had no idea what we were going to do and sort of started with a very simple chord progression. Then we started to write the whole song. From that point on, that’s been how we kind of work every time.”
Gorgon City featuring Yasmin — “Real”
MATT AND KYE STARTED OFF DJ-ING/PRODUCING ON THEIR OWN: “Obviously, we never really it would happen,” Matt says. “It was just little collaborations between me and Kye with a lot of different side projects from our solo stuff we were doing back then. So it’s been crazy, being able to do music with great vocalists and great songwriters, getting signed to Virgin in the UK, and just you know touring, doing crazy tours, amazing shows all over the world. It’s been a lot of fun, a bit tiring, but we’ve finally got to the final stage of the album.”
WHEN THEIR ALBUM IS DUE OUT: September. Matt gave us a few hints about the vocalists they worked with for the LP: “Maverick Sabre is on the album. He’s big in the UK and in Europe. He’s an amazing artist, and a really great singer and songwriter. He’s on a couple of songs. Also there are a lot of up-and-coming people like MNEK and Laura Welsh, and loads of other interesting people.”
Gorgon City featuring Laura Welsh — “Here For You”
GORGON CITY ALSO RECORDED A SONG LAST YEAR WITH “RATHER BE” HIT-MAKERS CLEAN BANDIT: Matt tells us, “I think they’re kind of part of the same part of London as me. I think one of them went to school with some friends of mine. We just sort of found out about them. We were fans of their stuff, and then Black Butter put out one of their tracks, and then they asked us to remix it .So we did the remix, and after the remix, we decided to do a collaboration.”
Gorgon City featuring Clean Bandit — “Intentions”
EVEN JESS GLYNNE IS IN WITH GORGON CITY: You know Jess from her featured vocals on Route 94‘s “My Love” and Clean Bandit’s “Rather Be.” And, yep — Matt And Kye co-wrote and produced “Right Here,” her debut single that’s now sitting nicely in the UK Top 10.
Jess Glynne — “Right Here” (produced by Gorgon City)
“We were kind of sitting on [‘Right Here’] for a while,” Matt says. “We didn’t know what was going to happen with it, and then she obviously did quite a lot of features [this year]. It was nice because it came out quicker than it would’ve. Her album will be coming out soon, so it should be well. We’re really happy that people have heard it.”
WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE DUO LIVE: Currently trekking across Europe, Gorgon City hit the West Coast in August for a string of festival dates, including Outside Lands. Full list here.
Check out Gorgon City’s music on iTunes.
Get an eyeful of even more pop music coverage, from artist interviews to exclusive performances, on Idolator’s YouTube channel.
