Jamie Paton and Nigel of Bermondsey, better known as Cage & Aviary, have been feathering their nest with cosmic disco belters for the past 5 years now. Their critically acclaimed back-catalogue, released through a number of influential labels from DFA to Dissident, has secured them high profile fans including Erol Alkan, Andy Blake, James Murphy, Tiga and Prins Thomas.
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Having recently dropped their debut album Migration- a captivating mix of dreamy guitar -laden disco sleaze and cinematic cosmic dystopia, found well at home on Prins Thomas’ Internasjonal label- and now with a 12” Dub Sampler of the album available too, we caught up with the duo for the 411 on the album and what’s next on their flight on fancy.
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One of the major achievements of Migration is that it demonstrates the multifaceted nature of your work. On the one hand there is a lot of humour, groove, and danceability, and yet it doesn’t alienate the knob-twiddling cosmic-geek’s love of a good space journey either. What, ultimately, do you think this balance is attributed to?
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Nigel: Between the two of us we cover a lot of musical territory. Our chemistry is based on a mutual appreciation of Eno, Byrne, Russell, Fingers and Gerald.
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Two songs on the album are re-workings of 2007 Dissident releases, what made you return to these older records instead of focusing on all-new material?
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Jamie: There are actually four previous releases on the album, but in new forms. We just thought that pretty much everyone who’s gonna hear the album will never have heard our stuff before, so it would be silly not to get some of our best work on there. It had to be new versions though, so it’s looking back but moving forwards at the same time. The whole album is a document of our work up until now, so it made sense in that way too.
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The album is very cohesive and plays almost like a film score, there is the feeling of development when listened to as a whole, it even has a chronology- beginning with those new versions of older tracks and ending aptly with ‘Migration’. Did you intend it to have a concept feel or even have a clear idea of how the project would sound as a whole when you were writing it?
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Nigel: When we came up with the name Migration, the record started to cohere around the theme of a musical journey. The tracks were lying in different states until we started to come up with titles. The names of tracks really help us to visualise how they will sound. The final mixes were done altogether in the space of a few weeks on a very nice mixing desk, and then we had the opportunity to finesse the album into a whole.
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You recently remixed Blancmange and supported them at their Bush Hall gig towards the end of last year- that’s quite the honour, how did this come about?
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Jamie: They got in touch with us, said they loved the way we use sound, and would we consider remixing them… ha, can you imagine! Would we consider it? We listened to a few tracks from their new album and ‘The Western’ just stood out as a classic Blancmange track, complete with ‘eastern’ melodies. The Bush Hall gig was great, our first proper live show, and it went pretty well – now we have a solid set in place we can start to push it more.
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Denise Johnson (who features on Primal Scream’s classic ‘Don’t Fight It, Feel It’) adds guest vocals on ‘Lean on Me’, who is singing on ‘Infatuation? Both tracks would lend very well to house remixes, are they lined up to be singles?
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Jamie: It’s Tamara Barnett-Herrin, and I’m actually working on a house version of ‘Infatuation’ today as it happens. We’ve already done a few versions in a dubbed out disco style so that is penciled in as a single, depending how the album goes. ‘Lean On Me’ I would describe as proto house in it’s current state anyway, but Nigel has started a deep, dark remix of it so that may well appear in some format too.
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Aside from the album, what else can we expect from Cage and Aviary in the near future?
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Nigel: Well, we just released the Dub Sampler 12” last week, have been working on a live show involving light and sound, and have a stack of releases by various artists on our own label, The Walls Have Ears.
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Migration Dub sampler 12” is available from Juno.

Following their “Migration” album on Internasjonal, Prins Thomas’s label now drops the first of three exclusive EPs featuring reworked cuts from the LP. Part one includes three dub mixes of LP favourites. “Colourless Plastic (Chromatose Dub)” is up first, a mix of rattling Chi-Town 808s and funky fluid disco-not-disco. Perfect for alt-dance floors. “Good Egg, Bad Apple (Gooder Egg, Badder Apple)” is a low-slung groover with clanking cowbell and treated vox. Again the ‘live’ bassline underpins the whole track. For something more sedate, try the tripped-out Balearic gem “In Todd We Trust (In Dubb We Trust)”. If clubs still had chill-out rooms, then this would be on the stereo.
 
Artist: CAGE & AVIARY 
Title: Migration -Dub Sampler
Label: Internasjonal Norway 
Cat: INTC&A 1
Format: 12″
Released: 16 April, 2012
Renre: Disco/Nu-Disco
 
Migration Dub Sampler 12″ by Cage & Aviary
 
 
Available now at:
 

“When the mighty Blancmange asked us to remix them, to say we were chuffed is a rather glaring understatement! The full vocal remix was released, but us being us we knocked up several dubs as well. So, to celebrate our recent live gig with Blancmange, we’re giving a couple of those dubs away. Starting with the Nothing Is Dub; a version based around the sets I’ve been playing at Nothing Is, a night I do down at The Alibi with Cherrystones, Little Dirty and Rik Motor.”
 
Blancmange – The Western (Cage & Aviary’s Nothing Is Dub) by Cage & Aviary
 
Via Cage & Aviary’s imprint The Wall Have Ears website.

Originally posted on the excellent Legendary Children blog, this was a mix Jamie Paton had been wanting to do for a while, a bit like the b-side mixes he loved doing years back. Here’s what they said about it:
 
“Personally, I can find a lot deep house too white and too boring. More so in the past year, when every man and his dog mac appear to be banging out loopy shite that only sounds remotely interesting 6 spliffs in. When Jamie Paton of Cage & Aviary fame sent over this ‘deep’ mix, I thought I’d be politely declining. On the contrary, this is an absolutely brilliant mix showing off Jamie’s expertise and providing the exact amount of jack and weirdness to make it interesting.”
 
Jamie Paton – Pay For Love Mix by Cage & Aviary

Obviously knowing one or two things about contemporary music and having three or four records at home (i’m sure of that) Nigel of Bermondsey and Jamie Paton as Cage & Aviary put together elements from more than one era of enlightened music. For Migration they heaped up a huge pile of heterogeneous ideas, reminiscences and references, some of them being captivatingly lucid, some of them odd, some of them of unexpected deepness, some of pure entertainment. And then, obviously being aware of the fact that an album should be more than just a big mash-up of stuff carried together by eclectics,  Cage & Aviary had a look on the big picture and took care of the flow.

Not dissimilar to good dj-sets the journey starts smooth with evidently cinematic-influenced instrumental Giorgio Carpenter (Director’s Cut) (which also appeared on Prins Thomas’  Live At Robert Johnson-Mix) and relaxed Friday The 14th, before rhythms accelerate and voices  emerge (Television Train!). Then the fabulous Infatuation brings pop into town and marks the  first peak. It’s a slick disco-soul-hybrid you’ll at first listen file under ‘cover version’  cause the vocal melody is so catchy and irresistible that it simply must have been done before.  But it is not, it’s original, no déjà vu, the matrix is still working. At least from now on the  record is a winner, the following tracks groove in an extraordinarily way, they are tight und far  from being overloaded, there’s funkyness, disco and disco-not-disco, sometimes a touch of kosmische  musik and psychedelica.

It took Cage & Aviary some years to finish Migration and the result shows that they must have as much been thinking about structures as playing around in the studio. If you wanna come up with a good full length you have to know about things like dramaturgy, development and reduction, maybe even self discipline. Some artists fail, Cage & Aviary suceeded with effortless seeming nonchalance and in the end, Migration turns out to be the perfect companion for an hour of indulgence. So do yourself a favour and click the button that says “buy all”. Well done, boys.

Via Whatpeopleplay.

Cage & Aviary – Migration (2 min clips). Released 13.02.2012 by Cage & Aviary

Cage & Aviary “Migration” available  at :