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George Reid casts a vaguely pained expression in the direction of Aluna Francis. "I guess," he frowns, "we're in training as pop stars now." That's certainly one way of describing the past 12 months in AlunaGeorge's career, which Francis describes as "like starting a new job every other day", and which culminated in the duo being shortlisted for both the Brits Critics' Choice award and the BBC's Sound of 2013 poll.
They met when Reid contacted Francis's previous band, My Toys Like Me, with a view to remixing them: the result, which sounds remarkably like AlunaGeorge, can still be heard on his old MySpace page. They ended up working together, eventually putting a solitary track up on Soundcloud with "very little expectation".
"There wasn't a plan or anything," notes Francis. "It was just to see if we existed in other people's ears." By the end of last year, they had signed a record deal and put out a handful of tracks: in particular You Know You Like It – on which Francis's cooing vocal rubs against a stuttering rhythm track that one critic compared with the work of experimental electronic producer Flying Lotus – served notice that the pair had hit on something spectacular, as did their early live performances. "We played a show in Sweden quite early on, in the festival season," remembers Reid. "We got off stage and we were congratulating each other and then we realised: they're still cheering."
"It turned slightly angry towards the end, didn't it?" nods Francis. "We have a no-encore rule at the moment."
"It would feel slightly arrogant to assume that people would want an encore," says Reid, despite the fact that at one recent gig, the audience became so rowdy that Francis "had to shout at everyone" ("in a nice way," she adds).
AlunaGeorge - Your Drums, Your Love on MUZU.TV.
They are an archetypical pop odd couple: Francis looks like a star ("When I met her, my immediate thought was: 'Why aren't you a pop star?'" offers Reid, not unreasonably), while Reid has the slightly boffinish air of a bedroom producer. Their sound alchemises their eclectic musical passions – Reid is a fan of the visionary early-noughties R&B productions of Timbaland and the Neptunes when, as he puts it, "people weren't afraid to try something a bit weird". Meanwhile, Francis has namechecked esoteric talents such as the Knife, CocoRosie and PJ Harvey as influences on her vocals – into what Francis succinctly describes as "fat beats with songs on top".
"If a sound makes us laugh, it normally stays in the track," she says. "Just something that makes you go 'oh'." It's worth noting that the result sounds like something that's been noticeable by its absence from the charts in recent years: genuinely adventurous, forward-thinking pop.
"You're sitting in front of a computer keyboard, thinking: 'In theory, I could produce something completely original if I worked hard enough, so I may as well just try,' although that sounds slightly ridiculous," Reid says. "As much as it can be tricky to make an original-sounding thing, something that's new to people's ears, there's also a huge art in writing something that connects with thousands and thousands of people."
Their debut album is due later this year. "Do the record label have big expectations for it?" muses Reid. "I don't know. You don't really ask: 'How many units do you think you're going to do?' because you fear the answer." So does he see a glittering future ahead of them as a pop band? "It's yet to be seen isn't it? I mean, there's definitely pop sensibilities there, but it's down to whether people like us: if they do, we're a pop band. We'll have to wait and see."
