Le Galaxy at Roisin Dubh's 10th Birthday (8 of 11)

It’s a steamy summer’s evening in Dublin city and Michael from Le Galaxie is trying to guide a very large van into a not-so-large space outside the band’s rehearsal studio. Le Galaxie are about to load their gear so it’s ready for the morning, when they will leave for the UK for a week of shows bookended by festivals, starting with Secret Garden Party.

It’s our first UK festival” says Michael. “It was one of those things. We were walking down the street after a festival last year and a guy comes up to us and says he’s a booking agent for a UK festival and he’d like to have us play. We were initially sceptical as we get that kind of thing a lot, but it turned out to be Secret Garden Party.

The slot we’ve got is after the headline act” adds Anthony, which will clearly echo their performance in the Body and Soul area of Electric Picnic last year. “It’s a good booking”.

If the streets outside are steamy, then Le Galaxie’s subterranean practice space is positively sweltering. A solitary ceiling fan despairingly tries to alleviate the oppressive heat. At this stage the lads don’t even seem to notice but even as I am just standing there I can feel the first beads of sweat forming on my brow.

Having just been announced for Electric Picnic this year and coming off the back of a heralded Longitude performance, are they afraid of being tagged as a festival band? “Well we’ve played pretty much every Irish festival except Knockanstockan and Body & Soul. It was also one of the reasons we had decided against doing Electric Picnic this year. After doing the 2 a.m. show two years ago, which was an incredible experience, we thought ‘well how are we going to top that?’, and then last year we got the opportunity to effectively close out the festival in the Body & Soul area”.

For those of you who weren’t there, last year’s Body & Soul show has since been talked about in the same breath as Arcade Fire’s legendary 2005 Electric Picnic performance. “So we were reluctant to go back again this year without a new record under our arms”. The compromise is ‘Le Galaxie presents: Laser Disco Nights’, a nod to their first album, ‘Laserdisc Nights 2’, and which will effectively be a DJ set with live percussion, vocalists and a “kick-ass laser show”. “We thought, rather than try and top last year, let’s do something fun”, explains Anthony. “Next year we will hopefully be back with the new album and the fans will know the new songs”.

Le Galaxy at Roisin Dubh's 10th Birthday (11 of 11)

Perhaps a measure of Le Galaxie’s rise was last year’s Meeting House Square gig as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival which sold out well in advance. Playing next door in the Button Factory on the same night were Fuck Buttons. I admit to the lads that I was at the Fuck Buttons gig, wondering where the hell everyone was, until, of course, I realised everyone was in Meeting House Square. “Speaking of unfortunate double bookings”, says Michael, not missing a beat, “we went head to head with Disclosure at Longitude. It didn’t seem to phase our fans but we saw on twitter that some people were not happy about the clash”.

Having their pick of Irish festivals and having packed out the Olympia last year, Le Galaxie find themselves in that same, slightly awkward place as many popular Irish acts, where you wonder where they can go from here. The ladder in Ireland has only three or four rungs, and they’re well spaced out. “We’re very conscious of the fact that, for the kind of band we are, we’re about as popular as we’re going to be in Ireland. Our focus now is to take what we’ve done here and try to replicate it in other countries. We’re essentially a band without a record deal. Everything we’ve done has been off our own backs, so for us the next stage would be getting the new record out and ascending to the next level of touring.”

Le Galaxie were recently approached by Absolut Vodka to design and fund the band’s video for their forthcoming single, Carmen, as part of the brand’s ‘Pulse’ campaign. As former sponsors of Dublin’s Fringe Festival they are no strangers to the arts in Ireland. “The demos we’ve seen of what the video is going to be like are far beyond the normal budget of a Le Galaxie video” admits David. Pulse has invited fans of Le Galaxie to be part of the music video which will comprise the fans’ reactions to the new single when they hear it played for the first time, along with loads of digital trickery of course.“It’s amazing to be involved in a project like this.

We are very careful about who we get involved with in terms of the use of our music” adds Michael, “but this was very much a collaboration which was what appealed to us”.

I think fair play to Absolut for taking a chance with an Irish band” says Anthony. “I mean, I think they did a Pulse video for Jay-Z too.” Not to mention Lenny Kravitz, Swedish House Mafia and Icona Pop. Quite the company they are keeping.

The single itself will feature none other than MayKay of Fight Like Apes. With one of their most popular songs, Love System also featuring a guest vocalist (Elaine Mai), do they have to resist the temptation to invite singers to guest on more tracks? “We’re very particular actually. We asked Jimmy Somerville once but he never even replied. We’d always wanted to work with Mary (MayKay) and we knew the new song would be perfect for her. She came into the studio and totally blew us away”.

Carmen, Anthony reveals, is a duet with Michael. “No one does duets anymore, it’s always ‘featuring’. We wanted an old-fashioned duet. Along the lines of Bryan Adams and Sporty Spice.” (Cue collective laughter). “Actually, Michael really stepped forward and has really come into his own as a vocalist on this record” Alasdair elaborates. “I think we were all surprised by that”.

As the self-proclaimed “Dance-floor Tear-jerkers” begin packing up their gear, I can’t help but wish I was going to be at Secret Garden Party for their inaugural UK festival appearance. The Brits won’t know what’s hit them.