Foto-© Sami Weller

Der Plan des britischen Duos IDER im walisischen Barry in einem Studio in einer ehemaligen Kirche einfach ein bisschen Musik mit Produzent Dann Humm zu machen ging nicht oder zu gut auf: Entstanden ist ein Album, das es in sich hat. Denn ein Plan ging doch auf: Der Schnelllebigkeit der Musikindustrie zu entfliehen und sich Zeit nehmen. Am letzten Freitag erschien ihr drittes Album Late to the World.

Was es eigentlich heißt, zu spät in die Welt zu kommen und warum man das Konzept, einmal verstanden, eigentlich gleich wieder vergessen sollte, erfahren wir im Interview. Wir konnten Anfang Februar mit den beiden via Zoom sprechen. Lily Somerville und Megan Markwick erzählen davon, wie sie verkatert nach einer Reifenpanne, ohne Plattenlabel, ohne Pläne in Wales aufschlugen und den intensivsten kreativen Prozess ihrer Karriere hatten. Wir sprechen über das Gefühl, sich gegenseitig übersetzen zu können und die künstlerische Verarbeitung von patriarchalen Strukturen ohne zu verzweifeln.

Let’s talk about your new record Late to the World. How did you end up with that title and who is late to the world?
Megan Markwick: We were walking together in Margate, on the east coast, where Lily lives. We were talking about how we felt like late bloomers. I think I was like, „Oh yeah, it’s a bit like feeling late to the world“. We decided it would be a great title for a song. So we had it in the back of our minds. And then we wrote the song. I remember when we thought it felt like a really strong name for the album. We decided very early on that it was going to be the opener for the record. It really felt like the mission statement of the album. Therefore, it made sense as a title.
Lily Somerville: We talked about this idea of being a late bloomer and the idea of feeling a bit behind your peers. You’re not hitting the social landmarks that your peer group might be hitting. And there’s this feeling of catching up or not quite being at that level. But actually, what we were getting at was: What does that even mean? The more we talked about it, the more we realised that everybody feels a bit like a late bloomer. And what does it mean to be late to the world? Maybe we’re not late. Maybe the world has created a cultural construction that doesn’t work for us, and we don’t hit those social landmarks because that’s not what we’re trying to do with our lives. We’re trying to create a new world that works.
Megan Markwick: Yeah, exactly. Late to the World, the song. Is about being on your own path and being on your own journey and embracing that. And that’s the tone of the record.

Your music has always been about the female experience in a patriarchal society, but this record really spoke to me in that sense. But not in a bitter way. How did you manage to end up in the space of seeing it, naming it very directly, but not being so angry about it?
Lily Somerville: Yeah, it’s an interesting one, though, isn’t it? Because I think that quite a lot of the lyrics potentially got anger laced through it, or a knowingness. We wanted to create an album that feels uplifting and empowering. So, it’s touching on these subjects of female anger but turning it around. What can we do with it, how can we lift ourselves up out of that?
Megan Markwick: You’re so right. We address these things with a lot of emotion. I mean, our first record is called Emotional Education. Our second was called Shame. We are so emotionally charged through our lyrics. Being vulnerable is a really, really important part of what we do. And I think that is what allows people to connect. I think that that vulnerability is probably what you’re picking up on.

Is it hard for you to be vulnerable? You said that with this album you tried to not overboard things. How did you find clarity in what you wanted to say?
Megan Markwick: One of the great things about working as part of a duo is that we are there to edit and challenge each other. You’ve always got that other person to go, “What do you really mean by that? And how do you say that clearer or better?” But having said that, I also think that we are both quite vulnerable, emotional people. And that’s where a lot of the lyrics and the subjects comes from quite naturally. It’s rooted in our friendship and the conversations we have together, which encourages that kind of honesty.

You can translate each other for each other.
Megan Markwick: That’s quite a nice way of putting it. It’s like, “Well, what do you really mean by that?”

When you started working on the new songs, you weren’t in album mode. What does it mean and how did you end up with an album anyway?
Lily Somerville: We were in a period of transition, between this lockdown record that we released, in terms of our team and who we were working with and where we were living. We had to have a bit of a reset, and we weren’t touring. We needed to go back to the basics and say, „What do you want to do?“ But we were were always coming back to writing music. But we weren’t really sure what it was going to look like. And then we met the producer, Dann Hume, who we worked with on the record. It was by chance really; we were kind of put together. He had just started working out of this church-cum-studio space in Wales. It was all very new. It felt very much like a moment where the stars were aligned in terms of where we were at and where he was at. It was very low pressure, and we just started making music with him. And then we got to the point where we started working with Nettwerk [Music Group] from a label point of view. And we were like, “ Okay, we’re going to make an album“. We’d already started the creative process with Dann. Which is actually the dream. That’s the best way to do it.

Is it the first time you’ve done it this way?
Lily Somerville: Maybe for the first time it felt like we were in control of what we’re doing. It felt very right time, right place and like we could lean back into that and let things fall into place naturally. This is the first time we have had that experience. It’s also the first time we’ve made a record in one place in a residency and the songs have grown together and formed each other in one space, in one environment, with one producer. It was a very special experience.

It also sounds very intense. Did you just go in and develop or did you come with visions? How do we imagine you arriving and leaving?
Megan Markwick: The first time we went there we didn’t have a record deal. We were between managers. I’d just come from a wedding in Madrid. Lily picked me up and drove the car. I had a stinking hangover. We broke down on the way and we arrived in Wales in this church thinking, „Who is this guy? I guess we’ll just see what happens“. We did a three-day stint. There was no pressure. There was no sense of turning up to make an album. And then we did a few more of those sessions where it just felt like we wanted to keep creating together. So, by the time we got to the point where we wanted to put it together and make it an album, we’d already done so many steps and we’d started a number of songs. So, leaving there was different because it was intentional. We had this big whiteboard and we were crossing things off. We had finished all the songs, we had 12 tracks and we were like, „We’re done“. It was like, „Holy shit. We’re drawing a line under this“.

Late to the World is your third record, you’ve been making music together for almost ten years. You have played so many live shows. How does how do these things come into play when you’re trying to make something completely new? Do they give you the sense of control you mentioned?
Lily Somerville: You’re constantly reaching for the next thing, aren’t you? And obviously the years of working together and this kind of second language that we’ve built up together is there and we’re carrying it forward. But I think we wanted to challenge ourselves. And working with this producer was part of that. It was kind of taking the songs in, taking them apart, putting them back together and finding new ways to use our voices together and separately. There is always that part of challenging the patterns that you get into. And as Meg said, it was a very different experience. The first album we did was all over the place. We made it with a lot of different producers in different studios over a period of time. The second album was very DIY in our bedroom studio and this album felt like a very different experience. There’s a lot of experience that we brought to it, but it also felt like a completely different world.

Thank you for the interview!

IDER Tour:
24.03.25 Hamburg, Bahnhof Pauli
25.03.25 Berlin, Lido
26.03.25 Köln, CBE