Hailing from Gothenburg, Sweden, Little Dragon began when singer Yukimi Nagano met drummer Erik Bodin and bassist Fredrik Källgren Wallin in high school and started making music under the moniker “Ava.” When they graduated each tried their hand in the music industry, branching away from each other and pursuing other endeavors. Simultaneously, keyboard player Håkan Wirenstrand—after trying and failing to get into multiple music universities—found himself studying environmental issues alongside Bodin and Wallin.
The trio formed a reggae band and began touring all over the country, opening for famous acts of the day including the Nazareens and Maddox, who the group was fortunate enough to join on tour in Ethiopia and Uganda. All the while, young Nagano was struggling to get into music universities on her own, and accepted an invitation by the outfit Koop to record and tour with them.
As time progressed, the four members realized that they wanted to make their own music, left their respective obligations and moved in together in a collective in their hometown. There, Little Dragon was born.
“We have a studio together,” Nagano said. “Usually, we meet there every day when we’re home. Everyone has their own corner in the studio, and so we all write things and share ideas. I’ll listen to something for a couple hours and come up with lyrics and melodies to it and record it on the spot. We listen to it a day or two after, and if we like it we keep building on it.”
Named for Nagano’s hot temper, Little Dragon signed with Peacefrog Music in 2007 after the label heard a single the band had released the previous year. Immediately following this, the band began a hectic touring schedule. Although the group had enough songs for a second album before the first LP was released, touring helped them realize that they needed more up-tempo music people could dance to, and the group started on their current offering, Machine Dreams.
Released just two months ago, Machine Dreams has already been well received by the synthpop and popular music communities. Having a style that crosses many genres and formats, the band incorporates synthesizers, bass, electronic beats and vocals that sound like a mix between the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O, Billie Holiday and Esthero. Little Dragon runs the spectrum of sound to give quite an eclectic feel to the music. Luckily, the group is able to accomplish this without really alienating electropop or shoegaze fans held over from their self-titled debut.
“Everything is quite spontaneous,” Nagano said. “We make music based on what we feel like at the moment. We don’t decide to do something jazzy or soulful. Everything’s spontaneous. If we like it, we keep it. If we don’t, we just leave it as that.”
The group works fast and often to amass a large catalog of songs that they can keep or dump.
“I’m pretty fast at writing lyrics and getting ideas for melodies,” Nagano said. “You get good at writing things, fast, if you do it a lot. Since there’s three of them, I’m constantly getting ideas, and I’m usually so excited about it I want to do it at once. There’s a lot of material, some of it is great right away, some of it needs work and some of it was just an in-the-moment kind of thing. We don’t spend great amounts of time trying to get a song to work.”
By sticking to this method the group has been able to not only stay fresh but also have multiple albums’ worth of material to play with. Live, they adhere to a strict policy of not singing a backing track,
“Utilizing live music is important to us,” said Nagano. “We don’t want to play to a backing track. We sample our own stuff but we want to be able to take our songs where we want to. We like to inspire ourselves and not play the exact same stuff, every night.”