Story By: Jennyfer J. Walker
Gita Langley was just five years old when she started making music with her sister Edie. Their father, an ocarina-maker by trade, would take them to craft shows where he’d sell the wood wind instruments, and the girls would put on performances.
While Gita reserves her ocarina playing strictly for birthdays and weddings these days, she’s forged a successful career as a violinist, having played with everyone from Beyoncé to Kano to Serj Tankian over the years.
It was two years ago, though, that she created dark pop duo Lock with her sister.
“I was just writing all these songs and I could just hear two voices,” says Gita. “It just made sense to get Edie involved and we’d always talked about being in a band together anyway.”
A year on, they met their manager Sammy Andrews, who went to see them play a show in Camden and approached the pair about working together.
“It’s been great,” says the singer. “She’s making waves in the music industry herself, and she just really knows what she’s doing. It was an instant connection – we went and had some drinks and she told us what she thought she could do for us, had a bit of a plan in place, and it just seemed to make sense really.”
It did make a lot of sense, since Andrews also hooked the band up with their label, Platoon.
“Because it’s a start up label, they’re gonna be putting a lot of thought into it,” says Gita of the deal. “We’re just excited to be on it and to be releasing music through them, and I think the feeling’s mutual.”
Another relationship featuring plenty of mutual appreciation is between Lock and Sophie Ellis-Bexter. “I’ve played with her and sung with her and I very much admire her as an artist,” says Gita. “And she is genuinely a fan, that’s what she says anyway!”
The Murder On The Dance Floor singer has also been kind enough to impart some advice from her 15 or so years in the business.
“She once said, ‘I think Edie should smile more!’” laughs Gita. “I was like, ‘I’m sorry Sophie, we just don’t smile in our band...’ But I thought it was quite cute advice. Maybe we should smile more?” Gita ponders for a second. “Nah!”
Excessive grinning really wouldn’t fit the duo’s vibe – which can be heard on new EP Everlasting Road (released September 23).
“I’m a big fan of [French house artist] Kavinsky, and those themes of loneliness and darkness, and an overwhelming sense of wanting to run away, and I guess that’s what I’m trying to convey,” says Gita of the title-track specifically. “I wouldn’t say I’m a morose person,” she adds with a laugh.
“But maybe I’m not very good at writing happy songs? It’s just that’s the music I write.”
The duo are already working on a follow-up EP and their debut album, most of the melodies of which were written in chief songwriter Gita’s car – the place she’s most likely to get inspired.
“I don’t know what it is, whether it’s one part of your brain that opens up when you’re driving or something like that, but a lot of my voice memos have got windscreen wipers in the background,” she laughs.
“I’m constantly writing, so we’ve got an album’s worth of songs, I just wanna get an album out there now! In a sense I’m sort of thinking album two already.”
