Prinzhorn Dance School

Green Door Store

Trafalgar Arches

Brighton

Monday, June 8

"A Pitchfork review said we were two halves of the same body. Over the years we have got closer – it gets so our text messages cross over and say the same thing at the same time.

“We’re building into some kind of superbeing to take over the world – it’s taking us a while but we’ll get there – we’re slow workers.”

It’s nine years since Tobin Prinz and Suzi Horn signed to New York record label DFA Records – set up by Tim Goldsworthy and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. Now they’re about to release their third album – a tight 22-minute six-track effort called Home Economics.

“We didn’t feel like we needed to add more songs,” says a bleary-eyed Horn on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, admitting she keeps night-owl hours.

“All of our albums tell a story in themselves.”

The album’s recording process was something of a departure for the Brighton-based duo, who generally work together in a Portsmouth studio.

“Pompey is a very different place to Brighton,” she says. “We have chosen to work in one city and live in the other. Over the last ten years we have done a lot of commuting across to Portsmouth.”

The experience has led to the pair developing their skills in sound production – to the point they can now record wherever they land.

“We got used to having a bag with us with all our basic recording gear,” says Horn. “We have learned a bit about the science of recording so we can go into different spaces. It was really good having that controlled environment where we were able to learn about where to move microphones to get different sounds.

“It has made us more confident about being able to capture things – sometimes something special can happen in an instant. I recorded one vocal in my living room with my cats on my lap. We spent a lot of time trying to capture it again, but some moments you can’t recapture.”

They also found they no longer needed to be in the same room to record ideas.

“We were always talking and sharing ideas,” she says. “We were emailing each other stuff, which we have never done before. I would come back from a party and send something to Tobin, who is always up with the lark. He would send something back, and by the time I was up and about there would be something there. It definitely led to a more relaxed approach from us. We gained a lot of colour within the record.”

As with the duo’s previous work Home Economics strips everything down to the basics – motorik drums, deep bass lines, and semi-spoken vocals shared by Prinz and Horn. The shouting and jagged volume is toned down a little from previous albums, their 2007 self-titled debut and 2012’s Clay Class, providing a bit more space and atmosphere.

“Rather than stack stuff up to make it sound better we will take stuff apart to find out why it is sounding wrong,” says Horn. “When there’s two of you it’s easier – if one doesn’t like it then it goes – although it can be extremely difficult at the same time!”

It’s something which has been integral to the band from the very start.

“I had never been in a band before,” she says. “I had always worked in music and loved music. When I was banging and clanging away on all these instruments Tobin had I realised I had never heard the sound of a snare drum properly before – how a single snare can make your body feel. It developed in an organic way from there – ‘What does this sound like when I put it up against this?’ “We have kept that essence of not putting on anything that’s not needed.”

That stripped-back aesthetic has meant the band can now operate live in lots of different set-ups, from a simple duo to a four-piece with live drums and a second guitar.

“It’s good to be able to have that freedom,” says Horn, who will be celebrating her birthday at their Brighton show.

“It would be good fun to work with an orchestra – I could see Prinzhorn Dance School playing somewhere like the Volksbuhne Theatre in Berlin, a big orchestra with lots of instruments, some of them homemade, banging and crashing, with Tobin at the front.”