After meeting while attending university, James Hatcher and Andy Clutterbuck joined their soulful electronic talents and tendencies to create Honne. Both members write, produce and record their own music, which seems to be growing exponentially in its following. Based in Bow, London, the duo are inspired by their surroundings, aiming to create sounds that accentuate and develop the feel of the city. As their popularity and audience grow, they are given more and more opportunities to showcase their work live and across seas. This past month, we were able to catch the pair mid-week in between this year’s Coachella weekends to hear about their first time performing at the festival, as well as the sights, sounds, and tastes of their home-base in London.

CC: Is this your first time going to Coachella?
Honne: Yes, definitely is.

Who are you looking forward to seeing the most this weekend?
Well we caught the last twenty minutes of Thundercat last weekend so we really want to go and watch the whole thing of that this time around, it was awesome. And he got Michael McDonald on, so hopefully he will be there again this weekend, such a great voice. And maybe Skepta, we’d like to catch a bit of him too.

So I know your first studio album came out a little less than a year ago, and Coachella gets an insane amount of foot traffic, so do you feel like Coachella can push the record to an even wider audience?
Yeah, festivals are always good for that. All festivals in general are great for pushing yourself to new audiences just because you don’t necessarily go just to see one artist, and it’s a great opportunity to wander into a tent or walk to a stage where you don’t know who is playing and just kind of be surprised. So yeah, hopefully the people from the first weekend at Coachella who have not heard of us before will go away thinking wow, that was really good and go look up the album from there. And also festivals are the kind of things where you don’t want to lose your friends [laughs]. So if you’re in a group of ten people and three of them want to go and see Honne, then everybody else will go because they will be like “Well we don’t want to get lost.”

When is your favorite part of the year to be in London and why?
I would say… definitely not winter [laughs]. Well we live quite near to a really nice park, Victoria Park, and actually around this time of year, the sun is coming out more and it gets a bit warmer, and you spend your weekend just walking around, people watching, having a beer and a nice view. I’d say those are some of my favorite days. We also live near an area called Hackney Wick, and it’s on the canal, and there’s a lot of nice places to go.

What aspects about London, or it’s music scene, have spilled over into your writing style?
Well I think it’s quite a historic place. But also just driving around it at night, and we both drive which is kind of rare I think, for London. It’s nice when it’s really late and there’s not many people around, and you put on music with the windows down and it creates a really nice atmosphere when you’re driving around. And we really wanted to re-create the kind of music that suits that and makes you feel like that.

Where is your go-to pub in the city?
Well there’s one that is near our house and it’s called Movell’s, and well I wouldn’t say that is the go-to pub. It’s the sort of pub that you walk into and is full of locals who turn their head and are like “you’re not supposed to be here” [laughs]. But there is one in the area I mentioned before. [Hackney Wick]. It’s called Howling Hops, and it is a proper microbrewery, they make the beer there. They have lots of pale ales, and you literally drink it from the bin they make it in. It is actually truthfully the freshest beer you can get in London. And they already paid us ten pounds for saying that [laughs].

Where can I find the best pasty?
You’ve got to go all the way down south for that to Cornwall [in a Cornish accent]. We are actually from near down there. My grandpa speaks like that, with a real proper country accent. Yeah, Cornwall, that’s where Cornish pasties come from. It’s also the best place in the world for fudge. But also, you should also go to a petrol station for a pasty [laughs]. No, you really shouldn’t, that’s like getting the single worst version of something.

What is your favorite venue to perform at in London?
So far, my favorite was our last gig which was at the Roundhouse. It was about 3,000 people, which is definitely our biggest in London yet. And it’s basically an old place where the trains would come to turn around in London, so it’s actually completely round, it’s quite interesting. They rebuilt it and made it into three levels, it’s amazing. And they fixed LED lights all the way up, on all the pillars and everywhere, so when you’re playing you’re surrounded by just the most beautiful venue, really.