DUMMY MAGAZINE

From the Dummy Magazine Archive: Justice Interview

2008-01-09T11:41:00.000Z

With Justice having just announced a huge US tour with a headline show at Madison Square Garden we thought we would re-print our Justice cover feature from Dummy's Summer 2007 issue. Enjoy...

French duo JUSTICE make hard’n’heavy dance music. They also make pop tunes. If
that sounds like Daft Punk, they’re flattered, but unconvinced. Anyone could have
done it, they reckon. Don’t believe a word of it. John Burgess meets the future of dance music…

Saturday 28 April, Coachella. In two hours, Justice are due
to play in front of 12,000 people in the Californian desert.
Things aren’t going according to plan. The paint is still
drying on their stage set, built in LA for this, their first
appearance at the festival. In a hotel room nearby, Gaspard
Auge and Xavier de Rosnay are hunched over their computers
working on their music with furrowed brows and trying to get
to grips with a new software package. The young Parisiens often
leave things to the last minute, but this is ridiculous. Has
anyone seen the manual?

Their stage set, nicknamed Valentine, is a model of a huge,
60s-style synth. It spews forth a mess of wires and is festooned
with flashing lights. It looks like it needs men in white coats to
operate it.Valentine is flanked by Marshall amps, nine per side,
in huge stacks that even Mötley Crüe would regard as perhaps a
little too much. In the middle is “the third member of Justice”,
a crucifix beaming out white light.

When Justice take to the stage, the set seems to overwhelm
Xavier, who is all but invisible on account of his short stature.
Later, he confesses to being worried throughout the gig. “We
were in such a panic state. I think there were two or three
mistakes, but no one noticed. It was like a big rehearsal in the
end.What else did we learn? That maybe I will need to wear
stilettos if I want to be seen.”

If it’s a big rehearsal, it goes very well indeed. The crowd
lose it to Justice’s crunching synth rock. A long-haired, shirtless
dude pressed up against the stage is headbanging, kids make
the devil sign with their hands, others cross their glowsticks
together, while some have come better prepared with styrofoam
crucifixes. It looks like a battle of good against evil.Then
someone starts crowdsurfing. Justice may make their music on
laptops, not Flying Vs, but they undoubtedly rock.

“We were not really ready but it was fun,” concludes Xavier,
lighting the umpteenth cigarette of a particularly nerveshredding
day. He’s stick thin, his tight white jeans and tighter
black leather jacket accentuate his pipecleaner frame. Despite
being 24, and sporting simian-like sideboards, he could pass for
a teen and gets asked for his ID every time he tries to buy a
drink in LA. He’s witty and unfeasibly polite. Like his partner
he is the type of well-brought-up young man any girlfriend
would be happy to introduce to her parents. Meanwhile,
Gaspard is shy, quiet, tall, a year older than Xavier and has a
porn-star style handlebar moustache. A dangling crucifix shines
against his jet black shirt making him look more like Tony
Iommi of Black Sabbath than one half of the hottest electronic
band on the planet.

Justice earned that sobriquet with two landmark releases:
2003’s Never Be Alone and 2005’s Waters Of Nazareth. Since
then they’ve been christened the ‘new Daft Punk’ by a hopeful
music press, an accolade that they will have to live up to or
modestly disregard. Does the comparison to one of the most
important dance acts to emerge from the ’90s hold weight?
Like Daft Punk, Justice were conceived in their teens. They
both share the same manager – Pedro Winter, MD of Ed
Banger records. They both released scene-defining early
singles. They both understand the appeal of style, mystique and
spectacle. Are Daft Punk really in those robot suits? Are
Justice’s Marshall amps really plugged in? They both use rock
aesthetics and as a result possess an appeal beyond the
confines of the electronic dance geek. They’re, er, both French
and there’s more than one and less than three of them. Their
debut album, †, is certainly surrounded by the same level of
anticipation that preceded Daft Punk’s 1997 debut Homework.
Meanwhile, Waters Of Nazareth, their first proper single, is as
genre-busting as Da Funk, Daft Punk’s debut single from
1996. In fact, † has more in common with Daft Punk’s second
album, Discovery. It features as many pop moments as it does
gnarly rave, of which Stress and DVNO will find favour with the
thrill seekers. There are as many nods to ’70s soft rockers
Steely Dan and “George Michael white boy funk”, as they
would have it, as there are to acid house. Xavier agrees, “Some
of the tracks are club friendly but there is some late night
music you can listen to with your lady or guy, and there is
some pop. Most tracks are pop, everything is quite short.”

Monday 7 May, Paris.

We are sat in a restaurant near
Justice’s studio. Or rather in a small room adjacent to
the kitchen, the sort of exclusive space Jack Nicholson
would be whisked straight to were he to appear unannounced at
the door. “That would be unlikely,” says Xavier. “This is a
restaurant for straight-to-DVD actors.” He gestures to the
signed photos of the city’s C-list on the walls.Why do Justice
get the special treatment? “Maybe they think we are pop stars.
They shake our hands when we come in now. And they will
really think we are after this.” He points his steak knife to my
microphone. Gaspard is quiet, pondering a huge plate piled
high with crustaceons. Xavier makes fun of his pencil case-style
man-purse. “He loves cheap things from the flea market. His
room is like a ’70s museum. It’s full of video games that don’t
work.” Gaspard responds: “Sometimes when I go to bed I speak
to them and ask, ‘How was your day?’” If Xavier has a quirk, it
is his love for red meat.We met for a breakfast interview in
December 2005 and I counted five different kinds of flesh on
his plate, including black pudding. “I also like horse,” he grins
sheepishly. “But I know it’s repulsive to mention in the
company of people you don’t know too well.” He steers his gaze
well away from Dummy’s vegetarian photographer.
Xavier and Gaspard grew up in middle class Parisian
suburbs. Xavier’s Mum is a dentist, his father works in a
hospital “finding practical solutions to make people happy” he
says failing to find the English word for the profession. Gaspard
comes from a more artful background. His mother is a curator
for an art museum, his father an actor. Neither’s parents are
music lovers. “They maybe buy an album a year.” Heavy metal
lover Gaspard, whose love for electronic music stems from early
Warp releases, plays drums and piano. Xavier grew up with
pop, hip hop and the first wave of French house and favours
guitar and bass though neither are adept enough at any of their
instruments to consider performing with them live.
They met briefly at a party in 2003. They struggle to find
anything interesting to say about this. Their second meeting is
somewhat funnier and “perhaps a bit gay”. Gaspard went to
meet a girl at his old school gates. Instead he left with Xavier,
who emerged first, and they went to a pawn shop and began
rooting through vintage records. “It was a really depressing
place, where people go to sell their wedding rings.We had no
money but went to buy classical music on vinyl and cheap
synths. This was the beginning of our friendship.” And what
happened to the girl? “I think she waited for half an hour
outside the school gates.”

They moved in together soon after and claim to only argue
about small things; “What are you doing leaving your socks on
the ground? That kind of thing.” They also share an addiction
to cigarettes and coffee. They worked for 350 days on the
album and after doing some quick maths concluded that they
had smoked over 30,000 cigarettes and drank 25,000 expressos
in that time.

Justice initially formed for a French concept album.They
were asked by a friend at Poplane Records to contribute a song
to a compilation called Musclorvision: Hits Up ToYou! The
concept? The bands had to pretend they were taking part in the
Eurovision song contest. Their effort, Sure You Will, sounds like
The Doobie Brothers crossed with early Prince. Either that or a
bad Phoenix. Their second record was rather better. The band
Simian, about to flounder and split after their second album,
threw a competition from their website to remix the title track,
We Are Your Friends. Justice’s effort revolved around the chorus –
a call to arms if ever there was one – and they gave it the
French house treatment: prominent bassline, melodic hook.
Their entry failed to win – Simian can’t remember who did –
but it caught the attention of Daft Punk’s manager, Pedro
Winter who was about to launch his own label, Ed Banger. He
signed their Simian remix, called Never Be Alone. It was Ed
Banger’s second release and was subsequently licensed to
International Deejay Gigolos and remixed by DJ Hell. Still, it
remained a cult hit until 2005, when it took on a life of its own,
becoming an anthem for a new wave of indie dance clubs
spreading across the UK and capturing the imagination of
hipster promoters and DJs who wanted someone to go beyond the dance flirtations of Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand. If ever
there was a record waiting for a club scene to happen, then this
was it.

During 2005, Winter busied Justice with some high profile
remixes for Britney Spears and Daft Punk and, further
endearing themselves to the indie kids, Franz Ferdinand,
Soulwax and Mystery Jets. It was in the summer that Ed Banger
sent the first ‘proper’ Justice release to DJs. Waters Of Nazareth
was a shock for fans of Never Be Alone. Musically it was rough,
noisy and distorted, lacking Never Be Alone’s melodic sheen and
agreeable funkiness. Even Winter was unsure when he first
heard it. “We played Waters of Nazareth at Fabric,” Xavier
recalls. “And we turned to Pedro and said, This is it. It wasn’t
until the organ came in and everyone’s hands went up in the air
that he seemed to like it.” The church organ part, which cuts
through the noise and floats across the wayward bass half way
through, provides a thrilling moment but also inspired an image
for the band. On their MySpace in late 2005 they described
themselves as “electro-Christian-club” and used a crucifix as a
logo. Have they ever received any flak? Xavier takes another bite
of steak and looks thoughtful. “Eighty percent of France is
Christian. My Dad was a bit uncertain and thought it was bad
taste, but I was like, This is what I want to do Dad. It’s odd
because in America we have received support from Christian
groups thanking us for spreading the word.We do not invert the
cross and I suppose they think we look like nice guys so there
has not been a problem.”

In an interview I did for Dummy in 2005, Justice said that
they wanted a strong concept for each record they put out and
with this one they wanted to keep people guessing, Are they
Christian? Are they Satanist? “Bowie and the Beatles always
changed their faces. If we’d just put out a record that was
electro with some rock influences then people would not think
it particularly interesting.”They were wrong. Waters of Nazareth
influenced a new generation of producers keener to use a laptop
than guitars to make a racket. “Every week our friends in
London would point us to another MySpace site with a track
on their player that sounded a bit like us, a bit distorted.”
Xavier laughs. But he’s being too modest when he says: “It’s not
difficult. Anyone can just push the distortion button as we did.”
We leave the restaurant and make for their studio,
situated in a nightclub basement.We have to walk
through a maze of rooms and corridors poorly lit by
strip lights. One area looks like a serial killer’s lair – old
clippings of naked girls from 70s Playboy magazines are
peeling from a wall and Blair Witch like hand prints cover an
area of another. There are disgarded sofas and what looks like
a meeting area for international terrorists – a circular table lit
by a shade-less bulb with mismatched chairs surrounding it.
We reach our destination. Inside, the brickwork is painted
white, there’s a sofa-bed strewn with international magazines,
an overused coffee maker and the MTV award they won for
the video for the 2006 re-release of Never Be Alone, which was
re-named We Are Your Friends. (KanyeWest turned the spotlight
on the band when he stormed the stage in a huff claiming the
MTV award was rightfully his because his Touch The Sky video
“cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it and I was
jumping across canyons.”) It’s close to midnight and Xavier
and Gaspard start tinkering away on their live set for a secret
show they have planned for London’s Fabric the following
week. They will work through until 7am. An Emo doll from
Sesame Street watches over them. Perhaps this was the
inspiration for their new single, D.A.N.C.E, which features the
vocals by an eight-year-old and sounds like something from
The Muppet Show.

Justice’s pop side is well known to fans who have heard
them DJ.When they first began getting bookings in the UK in
2005 their sets were steeped in cheese – Wham’s Wham! Rap, I
Like To Move It by The Mad Stuntman, Gonna Make You Sweat
by C&C Music Factory and The Ronettes Be My Baby often
featured. “That’s what we like to play,” they say with a shrug.
“We still keep some time at the end of our sets to play pop. It’s
much more fun after seven hours of rave torture to play
something like The Cardigans Love Fool.” The latter’s white
disco groove informs The Party from the album, which features Uffie, but their shot at a top ten single remains D.A.N.C.E.. It’s
both a homage to a gospel song called Stand On The Word by the
Celestial Choir, which legendary disco DJ Larry Levan used to
play at New York nightclub The Paradise Garage in the late’70s,
and to the King Of Pop Michael Jackson – it features titles of
Jackson hits throughout. It’s nothing like Waters Of Nazareth.
When I first heard it, I thought it was too sweet. It has since,
like any good pop record, grown on me.

“Then we have failed. It is supposed to be immediate,”
Xavier says. “We were trying to make a simple tribute to
Michael Jackson. It is not an attack, it is sincere. Most vocal
techno tracks have lyrics like, Can you feel the love? or
something.We wanted to avoid that.”

They received some help from Damian Harris, a friend
from Brighton’s Skint Records, on D.A.N.C.E. He organised a
choir of kids in London. Their vocal coach put forward a 17-
year-old, her best singer and “a genius”. Justice plumped for
“an eight-year-old midget who looked like Macauley Culkin”.
How apt for a tribute to Michael Jackson. “The singers were
technically too perfect.We were in a dining room with all these
kids filing passed singing a weird fast version of our song. Their
skills were actually killing any style and we were thinking of
aborting. Everyone can acquire skills with training, but style is
something you have or you don’t.” The kid they chose, who is
called Felix, sang slightly out of tune, but fitted. The teacher
was shocked and the others were relegated to Felix’s backing
vocalists. “If it was too well done it would have sounded like
Moby. We made the right choice.”

Friday 18 May, London.

It’s just gone 3.30am and in Room 2 of London’s Fabric nightclub, Ed Banger’s
Pedro Winter is gesturing towards the stage which is
cloaked by a black sheet. The crowd are expecting a DJ set from
Justice, but when the sheet is swept aside it reveals Xavier,
Gaspard,Valentine and the Marshalls. Genesis, the album’s
portentous opener, booms forth and the crucifix flickers on to a
huge cheer. Most of the pop tracks from the album are, perhaps
wisely, left out of this set in favour of the histrionic Phantom,
Stress and Let There Be Light. This may only be their second ever
live show, but Justice have already learned what is expected of
them: noisy, distorted, dance music. The stage diving begins in
earnest. Never Be Alone is preceded by the sirens from the
Klaxons’ Atlantis To Interzone. James Righton from the band
happens to be in the audience. He’s here as a fan but soon he
too is being passed across the hands of the throng towards the
white light of the crucifix. It feels like some kind of weird,
religious ceremony, fans whipped into a froth, offering up the
avatar of new rave to sacrifice before their new gods.
A few weeks earlier, days before Coachella, I caught Xavier
in London for half an hour before he joined Gaspard back in
Paris. They had just finished six hours of phone interviews
and Xavier was sat in the lobby of a hotel working on the first
part of the live set from his lap top. I asked what questions
they were being asked most commonly. Apart from laughing
about an interview with a Japanese magazine where neither
the journalist or her interpreter seemed to understand a word
they were saying he said that there were two that kept reappearing.
What do you think of new rave and the return of
dance music? and, Are you the new Daft Punk? Justice are
figureheads for a new dance scene they helped create, and
maybe something more – only time will tell. They’ve earned
their spurs with two stunning singles and though the album is
not epoch making, it’s exciting enough to cement their
standing and catholic enough to prove they are no one-trick
pony. And how did Xavier answer the questions? “If anyone
had said we might be called the new Daft Punk when we
started out we would have laughed.”

They’re not laughing anymore.

Justice’s debut album, †, is is out now on Ed Banger/Because.

www.myspace.com/etjusticepourtous

Q Magazine's Tips For 2008

2008-01-08T10:23:00.000Z

Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, Nick Harrison, Cajun Dance Party, The Courteeners, The Ting Tings, The Troubadours, These New Puritans, Vampire Weekend, Glasvegas, Duffy.

Plenty of Duffy here but no Adele!? An obvious Q artist surely. No Foals or Late of the Pier either - surely more interesting than some of the indie pretenders in this list...

Drowned in Sound's Picks for 2008

2008-01-07T21:24:00.000Z

Fanfarlo, Abe Vigoda, Telepathe, Banjo or Freakout, Atlas Sound, Beestung Lips, Broken Records, Johnny Foreigner, Eugene McGuiness, Wild Beasts.

Not an Adele or Duffy in sight!?

Full article here.

Apologies

2008-01-07T21:19:00.000Z

...for the Google ad directly above this post. I can't get rid of it. Blogger doesn't seem to like the idea that you might not want any Google ads on your blog!?

Video: British Sea Power 'Waving Flags'

2007-12-18T14:38:00.000Z

Great new single out January 7th on Rough Trade.

Website

Holy Hail: "It's very important to go for a swim"

2007-12-11T17:16:00.001Z

Holy Hail sound like skinnydipping in neon. Born out of New York's surprisingly small new wave scene, rooftop barbecues and girlrap groups, the two-guys, two-girls band bring to mind Fleetwood Mac (without the sexual hatred), Clipse (without the murderraps) and Wire (without the dirge) in equal measure. If that sounds like they've taken away everything to love about those bands, and/or you didn't get round to seeing them when they toured with Bonde Do Role you have to get hold of 'Cool Town Rock', their synapse-tingling new new single on ACTH.

Where works best for songwriting?
Cat:, vocals: We're kind of like a jam band in the practice space! I have to say that we've written, like, three songs since we've been in London. We never write on tour, so there must be something about the place. There's definitely something to be said for the British appreciation of music. We were just chatting to the taxi driver about old punk and reggae songs. You have the best cab drivers here.

Is there something about the greenspace [it's there, somewhere] and the sprawl in London? You guys sound quite outdoorsy.
Kevin, keys: Yeah! London's so sprawling, it just goes on forever! We always listened to rootsy, outdoorsy music, y'know, ol' time Americana. We'd love to live in the country, we were just talking about this earlier actually. As "creatives", you have to be in a city, you have to be surrounded by people, you have to be in city that's constantly moving, but we are a daytripping band. New York County is so beautiful. It's very important to go to a lake for a swim.

What are the plans for next year?
Michelly, bass: We have an album to record. We were going to call it We Love The Government, as a joke, we thought that would be kind of ironic. I really like Kevin and Cat's lyrics, actually. We have this line No tricks, sidekicks, all we have is greatest hits. We could call the record Greatest Hits. That would be cool.

Any other plans?
M: I'd like to be able to play better! It would be great to be more technical in my bass playing. Sometimes it's hard to play what I have in my head, somethings get lost in translation, y'know? But I'm learning to get better, not to judge. Just go for it!

Tour Dates: Radiohead

2007-12-04T10:43:00.000Z

Not exactly club gigs...

Dublin Malahide Castle (June 7)
London Victoria Park (24, 25)
Glasgow Green (27)
Manchester Old Trafford Cricket Ground (29)

Tickets go on sale from 9am on Friday December 7.

Gig: Crystal Castles, The Scala, London - Tonight!

2007-12-04T09:48:00.000Z

Crystal Castles play their biggest London show to date at The Scala tonight plus Brixton Academy this Saturday December 6th with Klaxons and Justice although that one's all sold out.

Their debut album is scheduled for release in February in the US on Last Gang Records but a UK label is yet to be confirmed.

Tracklisting: Untrust Us’, ‘Crimewave’ (Crystal Castles vs. HEALTH), ‘Alice Practice’, ‘Magic Spells’, ‘Xxzxcuzx Me’, ‘Air War’, ‘Courtship Dating’, ‘Vanished’, ‘1983’, ‘Good Time’, ‘Love and Caring’,, ‘Knights’, ‘Through the Hosiery’, ‘Reckless’, ‘Black Panther’, ‘Tell Me What to Swallow’

Scala Tickets

Myspace

New Video: Radiohead 'Jigsaw Falling Into Place'

2007-12-04T09:39:00.000Z

...so who's got their Discbox yet?

Base Weight

2007-12-03T12:52:00.000Z

Top talent from the last twenty years singing their hearts out in Maida Vale – with Fearne Cotton refreshingly out of shot. After generating a quiet storm of interweb hype, Nigel Godrich's From The Basement series of hi-def, lo-tech net TV got its first showing on telly proper over the weekend – Sky Arts broadcast the superlative first show, with performances from The Shins, Neil Hammond and The White Stripes. It's a lovely combination boxfresh stars and legendary artists – forthcoming shows include performances from Beck and Envelopes, Free Blood and Sonic Youth, with Thom Yorke (in rainbows, above) heading up this Saturday's edition. Register at fromthebasement.tv for news and behind the scenes bit and bobs.

BONDE DO ROLE AT SCALA, LONDON

2007-12-01T18:49:00.000Z

A strangely muted Bonde De Role bring their mutant mash-up of Baille Funk, early Def Jam Rock-Rap, Electro & Miami Bass to the baying multitudes at The Scala.

"Ten Ways To Make The World A Nicer Place To Live In" by Dan Deacon

2007-11-23T17:02:00.000Z

Dan Deacon has been setting Baltimore basement parties on fire since the days of his MA in Musical Composition with his Venetian Snares-meets-Playmobil piano electronica. His new album, Spiderman of the Rings sounds like a Shostakovich record that makes you want to eat jelly till you feel sick and need to lie down and to celebrate his awesome seventh LP, Deacon came by to drop some science on us fools. Here are the Deacon ten commandments:

1. Get a loop/delay pedal. If as many people who played guitar played loop/delay pedals then music would really evolve at a much more interesting rate.

2. Stop using money. All it does is fuck you over.

3. Book shows in your house. Music, art, dance and theater shows in homes are vital. It creates an atmosphere that no other space can achieve and everyone can do it! There are endless touring artists that are just starting out and would be willing to play anywhere. If you live in a big, dirty house where it can get loud, have big, dirty, loud shows. If you live in a nice, clean place that has to stay quiet, have art shows or quiet shows. Put on plays in your basement. Just about any space is suitable for some sort of awesome shit.

4. Don't be lazy.

5. If you feel there an unbalance, then balance it.

6. Stop having children. We are building our species up to an extinction point. Soon disease and bacteria will re-balance the earth and it will be awesome. So I guess have tons of kids and quicken the process.

7. Listen to Raymond Scott and Conlon Nancarrow everyday.

8. Watch the movies The Apple and Zeitgeist. Make children watch these movies.

9. Stop renting and do all that you can to end the concept of land ownership.

10. Realize that the world is already the nicest place to live, forever.

Spiderman of the Rings is out now on Carpark Records.
Tour dates: 3rd December Edinburgh Cabaret Voltaire, 4th Glasgow Nice and Sleazy, 5th Manchester Ruby Lounge, 6th Liverpool Barfly, 7th London The Dome w. No Age

LIVE PHOTO REVIEW: Hatcham Social at Dirty Bingo

2007-11-21T12:54:00.000Z

Hatcham Social are the distillation of every great band from the post-punk and early indie era - Joseph K, Orange Juice, The Pastels, early Primal Scream... Here they are at their top-button paisley shirt finest performing for Dirty Bingo at Clockwork.

LIVE PHOTO REVIEW: Twee as Fuck featuring Connan & The Mockasins

2007-11-16T04:01:00.000Z

A sold-out Twee As Fuck played host to the post-shoegaze electro-pop of The Bridal Shop, George Pringle's i-pod poetry, country-pop Pavementisms from My Sad Captains and a blistering set from the soon-to-be-huge Connan And The Mockasins (and, my gosh, doesn't he look like Brian Jones?)

LIVE PHOTO REVIEW: Crystal Castles, These New Puritans, The Teenagers

2007-11-15T12:58:00.000Z

Goldsmiths College Union, Saturday 10th November 2007.
Crystal Castles stormed the stage, dived into the crowd and broke the smoking ban. These New Puritans held the crowd in a concentrated trance and The Teenagers made one girl incredibly happy when they invited her to sing the female part of 'Homecoming'.

SINGLE: SHY CHILD

2007-11-12T17:19:00.000Z

Drop The Phone

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Shy Child that two man, drum kit and keytar combo from NYC (think The White Stripes but without the lady, blues riffs or...actually don't think the White Stripes at all) release the rather good Drop The Phone on November 19th. Check the vid out.

GIG: DIGITALISM IN STORE

2007-11-12T17:16:00.000Z

Digitalism are playing a set in Urban Outfitters, 36 Kensington High St, tomorrow from 6pm. If you don't fancy raving amongst pairs of Lee Jeans and Lyle & Scott jumpers they play the Scala later that night.

GIG: MISS KITTIN & THE HACKER

2007-11-09T14:01:00.000Z

Legendary electro duo Miss Kittin are to play an intimate gig in London on Thursday November 29th at The Hoxton Square Bar. This is their first gig in the capital since they stole the show at a Gigolo records showcase at Heaven in December 2001 at the height of electroclash and around the release of their The First Album. The duo reformed this summer and have been touring Europe showcasing new material and also classics like Stock Exchange, Frank Sinatra and 1982. Tickets from here

THESE NEW PURITANS: “PEOPLE SEEM TO BE DISGUSTED BY US”

2007-11-08T17:40:00.000Z

TNP – the band that brought you Heidi Slimane-approved numerology-obsessed no wave revival and blogs about boiling water and Jacobian tragedies – are playing around the country on the Blyk-backed Unitaur with Crystal Castles, The Teenagers and DJ Mehdi. Their debut album, Beat Pyramid, is out in January.

What was it like recording the album? You did it with Gareth Jones [who produced Wire, Einstrurzenden Neubaten and Liars], didn’t you?
Yeah, he’s a genius; he’s like a professor. A load of this record is made out of sampled bits and pieces, and he really brought that out: things like recording underwater or in a park, or sampling knives cutting. We were having a cigarette on the roof of the studio and we started messing about with these barbecue tongs.

What kind of stuff were you listening to when you were recording it?
We were watching a lot of movies, unrelated to music, I suppose. We were listening to a lot of dancehall, dubstep and ragga and 20th century classical music.

There’s something quite elusive about your “online presence.”
Yeah, we started off as an internet-only band, just doing webcasts and podcasts and stuff.
We do like to keep it quite elusive. I really like the aesthetics of terrorist videos – how grainy and far-off yet immediate they seem – there’s something about the fuzzy screen which let’s you add layers of meaning. So it was weird when we first started playing around and about. Playing live still feels weird – I don’t really know how to react when someone talks to me afterwards.

What’s the reaction been like so far?
It’s going alright, it's interesting to see people responding to our music – and playing it to people who might be into different groups. It’s weird, though. People either seem to really like us or be, like, visibly disgusted. People often seem to get insulted by us.

Blyk tour dates: 8th November Nottingham Stealth, 9th Brighton Digital, 10th London Goldsmiths University Union

CLUB: MYLO GETS BUGGED OUT!

2007-11-06T13:27:00.000Z

Mylo plays London's Canvas and Manchester's Sankeys for Bugged Out this Saturday and next Friday respectively. Isle of Skye's greatest export will be roadtesting tracks for his second album alongside recent club faves. In London he is joined by his band member Williams (who releases on Get Physical and also recently remixed The Knife and Robyn) and prolific Swede John Dahlback who has released something like 20 odd records this year under various guises (which is probably why he doesn't get out much). Further details and tickets from Bugged Out

TOUR: DIGITALISM

2007-10-31T16:33:00.000Z

They rock. They rave. They rock and rave. And if you're into rockin' rave then join Hamburg's finest on their latest tour. Expect Digitalism in Cairo, Idealistic, Zdarlight and all your other fave raves. November 12 - Oxford Zodiac, November 13 - London Scala - SOLD OUT, November 14 - Brighton Concorde 2, November 15 - Birmingham Barfly, November 17- Manchester Warehouse Project, November 18 - Bristol Fleece, November 19 - Newcastle Academy 2, November 21 - London Kings College - Just Added.

Live: Animal Collective, St George's Church, Brighton, 29th October

2007-10-30T14:57:00.001Z

Here are Animal Collective, born out of time and out of mind, ready to drop the motherfucking cathedral on us maggots. Last night, they played St Georges Church, a lovely old Georgian chapel in Brighton – and filled the space with people and noise. After Swedish support band Islaja (nice, but reminded you of an eighties Turkish Delight advert) finished their dull noodling, Animal Collective opened, glitchy as ‘owt, a single note tapped out over and over again, a raw electronic drone fuzzing away.Glitches, glimpses of melody fuzzed in and out. So far, so inescapably captivating, so what you'd expect from AC. It's not until 'Peacebone'’s irresistible, stuttering hook – the closest Panda and Avey's boys get to a Radio-Friendly – that something clicks into place about them: not only are they one of the most thrillingly experimental bands on the planet, they might also be one of the funnest. And they're alright to dance to. MC Avey Tare can’t keep still and is having the time of his bleedin' life: always silhouetted, but always nodding, bent over his mic or yelling up, over into the balcony's crowds. While their rock is leaves us mortals struggling for words wrapped round our headphones, grabbing at and trying to pick instrumentation (let alone influences) out of the yummy cacophony, when heard live, it comes together. Giving yourself a fake name and drawing pandas in a band with your best friends? That’s fucking awesome, man. Doing tricks like splicing forthcoming single 'Fireworks' into oldie 'Explosions' into a seamless wall of noise in a big church in Brighton while strobes flare around you? Fucking awesome, man. Chopping Carl Craig's elegant piano loops into The Beach Boys' harmonies with drone-era Sabbath blasting away, heavier than gravity? Well, who wouldn't?

As songs get screwed and chopped together, the melodies get lost along the way, fading in and out, touching from a distance. Oh, sod it. Their sonic bombast doesn’t need much explaining. This was Cathedral-sized rock fit to leave the whole world squirming outside. True, there is something that could veer close to prog here, what with all the abstract noise and mass, "conceptual" dynamics of a church. Lester Bangs once said, scathingly, after a coughsyrup-drenched Tangerine Dream concert in a planetarium that the thing about seeing God is that it is really fucking boring. But seeing Animal Collective isn’t like seeing God – it’s like having Him vomit rainbows on you forever. Awesome.

Tour Dates: November 1st London Astoria, 3rd Manchester New Century Hall, 4th Dublin Tripod, 5th Leeds Irish Center, 6th Glasgow Oran Mor

New single Fireworks is out on Domino Nov 5th.

SHOW: THE HORRORS

2007-10-25T17:16:00.000+01:00

Our (back) cover stars from earlier this year The Horrors are touring again. The black hand gang will be joining Arctic Monkeys on their tour of sheds in December but precede this with a special show at London's suitably down at heel Electrowerkz in Islington. The show is called 'all ages' but you have to be over 14 to get in and takes place on Dec 5th. More exciting than this is the news that the band will feature in a forthcoming episode of The Mighty Boosh to be screened in November. Whether Faris Badwan (pictured above) will be getting it on with Old Gregg remains to be seen.

The Horrors, Electrowerkz, Islington, London, Dec 5th

Tickets

Fabric: Another Great Idea

2007-10-24T14:19:00.000+01:00

Having just celebrated their 8th birthday Fabric are still coming up with great ideas...first the club, then the comps, followed by limited edition towels, mugs, oven gloves(!), ice trays and now this...

Fabric Podcast

Photos: Bugged Out Birthday with Boys Noise and Simian Mobile Disco @ The End, London, 20/10/07

2007-10-24T14:03:00.000+01:00

'Like an episode of Skins...'

More pictures at DirtyDirtyDancing.com