[International Deejay Gigolo Records]

Taken from Hell’s ambitious double album Teufelswerk, “U Can Dance” unapologetically looks back at electroclash with rose tinted glasses, Bryan Ferry lacing the track with his languid, lounge lizard tones. Hell’s original (with help from Peter Kruder and Christian Prommer from Trüby Trio on programming) starts off strong, merging icy cool, arpeggiated synths with Ferry’s equally frosty serenade to a club nymph. Though clocking in at nearly ten minutes, it is in danger of overstaying its welcome after two thirds of the way through. The keyboards start getting a little cheesy and Ferry has long since left the vocal booth, presumably in search for a cigarette or a martini; in any case the magic is over by the six minute mark or so.

Carl Craig provides two typically on point remixes, his first employing pulsing chord stabs, which build slowly for the first couple of minutes before the kick drops, then slowly open and close over the course of the track. With very few other incidental sounds it’s a solid if restrained remix from Craig which still fits the aesthetic of Ferry’s vocal. His second remix fires off arpeggiated synth lines in a very Detroit fashion, slowly bringing in further elements as the track evolves, some so subtle in the mix they’re barely perceptible. The Simian Mobile Disco remix starts off well enough with a deep, simple bass line and well executed drums, but as the track progresses they add too much and steer the promise of a good remix into a completely different direction. By the half way mark things have taken a turn for the worse with progressive house hijacking the remix and taking it off to a land of whooshing, dramatic breakdowns and siren fueled drama. Tim Goldsworthy turns out a distinctly unmemorable remix that fails to ignite throughout its eleven minute duration. The separate elements look good on paper: Goldsworthy takes on Ferry, spacious tom toms, menacing disco overtones, acid tinged madness creeping in around the edges, but thrown together with the vocal it all seems a bit staid, lackluster. With the only highlights coming from Carl Craig it’s a very hit and miss affair for Hell’s “U Can Dance” remixes.

Simian Mobile Disco truly lived up to their middle name in 2007 by relentlessly touring the world, bringing the better portion of their studio and face-burning light rigs on the road to fully indoctrinate audiences. The duo also released their debut album, Attack Decay Sustain Release, which managed to be solid musically while jumping all over the map of genres. It also featured the single “I Believe,” a favorite in the LWE camp. I managed to steal member Jas Shaw away from his studio for a bit to chat about the road, remixes and kids who enjoy nibbling on cables.

I understand you were just finishing up some stuff in the studio. What were you up to?

It’s kind of weird. Before Mobile Disco went full time, producing was part-time thing and we used to fit in bits of messing around between other projects. And now it’s become full time, and we’re actually having to do the same thing in terms of getting in to the studio. It’s been so crazy busy, I’ve only had about two days spare. So I’ve hermited myself away in the studio, got a couple new drum machines, hooked up the synth and just been making wiggly noise.

Do you get to do any producing on the road with a laptop or something?

Exactly. In terms of when we’re traveling, yeah, I’ll take a laptop, which works really well as a sketch pad for ideas. But I don’t really like the sound of anything the gets done on a laptop; something about it makes stuff sound a bit shiny and mechanical. It’s all about making it on the proper gear when you get back to the studio.

James Ford; Photo by Sanchez and Kitahara

While James Ford was producing bands like Klaxons and the Arctic Monkeys, what were you working on? More SMD stuff?

Sort of, yeah. I was working on electronic stuff, quite a lot of which turned into Mobile Disco tunes. Other tunes, there’s a bit of a side project I shelved when Mobile Disco took off. A lot of it is quite a bit weirder than SMD stuff. I’m not it’s something that will see the light of day broadly; maybe I’ll sneak it out on a tiny little label or something like that. It’s kind of weirdo experimentation stuff which informs the other stuff.

Does the project have a name?

No. I try not to name stuff until it’s done. Like when I was a kid, I was in god knows how many bands where we’d meet up and go, ‘Alright, this is gonna be the name of the band’ but we didn’t have any music, you know? I always think it’s bad news if you plan too much stuff ahead of time.

Is this stuff too weird for the dance floor is it still dance floor friendly?

It’s all sorts of stuff, really. I’m not super fast about getting things out there. As with Mobile Disco, things come to fruition as and when; we were at it for quite a while before it was in the air, “This is right now.” We had loads and loads of tunes and all we had to do was write a couple more and we had an album. I’m not going to rush it. Whenever I get the chance I’m always writing new stuff. Some it turns into Mobile Disco, some of it is just totally inappropriate. (Laughs)

Would you ever want to do producing like James Ford has done?

I’ve had a little taste and I really enjoyed it, actually. Especially working with bands again, because I really enjoyed the time in Simian and while doing that we all learned how to mic up drums, put together a song, that kind of stuff. The elements of production we do as Mobile Disco has a slightly indie or band-based aesthetic to it anyway. I definitely want to get into that, but I find myself saying “no” to quite a lot of stuff, because unless I feely really strongly about it I don’t want to do it. I’m not at the level James is at getting off with huge, very successful bands. But there a few things in the pipeline: James and I are going to do some stuff together and I’ve got some things penciled in for on my own as well. I don’t want to do something just for the sake of it, I want to do it because I think I can add something to it and it’s something really good. What I don’t want to do is just another fucking indie band.

Do you ever yearn to be in a band again or has producing electronic music spoiled you to that?

(Laughs) I know what you mean. It’s definitely true. DJing and producing electronic stuff is super fun. You can make so much more stuff very quickly. I wouldn’t say we have a method, but we’ve been very productive. When we get together to write tunes we tend to knock out at least one a day. But equally, I love being in a band, though I don’t know if I’d want to do the whole being in a band touring thing again. I definitely miss the recording side of it.

When you are performing live, do you prefer DJing or a live P.A. style?

The live show’s been going really well, and it’s turned out to be really good fun as well. Simian toured a lot and by the end of it we were a good band but we just wanted to get back to making the music. So it was with a bit of dread that we put together the live show. But taking tips from DJing, we’ve made it so we can change it around a lot, we can totally change the structure. And it’s really made it fun for us: each night there are lots of mistakes. We always say that if you can get three or four moments where everything comes together in a way that it hasn’t done at any other gig, that’s a really good gig. But the live show, as with all proper touring, is hard work, man. We’re taking a massive chunk of our studio out on the road; and it’s always an early sound check, very, very late gig, so it’s pretty grueling. As a foil against that, DJing is just super fun and easy. You just walk up to the club a couple hours before, check out some other DJs, put on some records, get some drinks in, maybe see a band in there. From my point of view, that’s the perfect night out anyway. People have been flying us all over; I’m heading off to Malaysia in a couple weeks, Japan. Maybe the live show is a lot of work but it’s very rewarding, because it’s such a massive production and it’s really, really live – everything could go dead. And DJing is just really good fun. I don’t know if I could choose one, but it’s working out pretty well at the moment. I think if we just did live shows we’d be totally burned out, you know.

Is your Chicago gig a live show?

Yeah, it is. The way we do it is we set up most of the studio on the stage on a road table. We’ve got a modular synth an analog synthesizer and a mixing desk. We try to tailor it to the crowd. We did some shows for NME at the beginning of the year and that was super indie kids, so we played really up-front, short edits of the all tracks, but when we went to Berlin it was no vocals, dubbed out and playing about a quarter of the tracks we normally would. It really depends on the crowd. I’ve only been to Chicago once before, so I can’t really predict what the crowd will be like. We’ll probably start off and just see how it goes. What is the crowd like there in Chicago?

Well, it’s primarily a rock crowd. The club you’re playing at the Empty Bottle, is usually a rock club but it’s had more electronic nights recently which have been fairly popular.

Jas Shaw; Photo by Sanchez and Kitahara

What’s one of the best and worst things about touring at length like you are now?

The best thing is going to other cities, seeing other places. Traveling is kind of cool. You get to see nice people, do nice things. I find it hard to get too fed up with it. But equally, it’s rough not being at home and seeing and of your mates or your girl. It totally does you in when you get back from a long tour, you’re a mess. And you lose contact with people, you don’t get any music done, it’s dangerous. I don’t want to get to the stage where it feels like a job.

I know you had a kid late last year, which can’t make it too easy to be on the road as much as you are.

I think for both me and James it’s got to the stage where we want to go out, tour, meet people and all this stuff, but… Well, that’s what’s cool about DJing. You go out Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and you have a wicked time, then you come back and have a few days at home before doing it again. Whereas with tours you’re out for like, three weeks, and that’s hard for my little boy. You’ve got to look out for people, you know? In the future we’re going to try and sort it so we come out to places for a week and then come back to have a life. It’s very easy to get yourself into a situation where you’re either been on tour for four months and you don’t remember any of it or you’re been locked in a little room for four months and you’ve just been going in circles. A bit of balance is really important.

Has your son shown any affinity for your tunes?

He likes beeps. He’s not into distorted noise at all but he really likes little bleeps. Slightly worryingly, he loves leads – power cables, data cables, anything like that – he’s got his fingers in that stuff, it scares me. My studio is totally off limits to him because a) he’s going to tear it to pieces and b) he’s going to put his fingers somewhere they don’t want to be.

Perhaps you have a future studio engineer on your hands.

Our manager said, “Yeah, we’ll get him engineering for you in five or six months.” (Laughs)

I heard a rumor that Simian Mobile Disco is supposed to work on Madonna’s new record. Any truth to that?

Someone else asked me about that! I don’t know who is putting this rumor about. To be honest, it’s not impossible. They haven’t approached us. Someone else asked us if we would refuse and we said, “Definitely not.” I feel like Madonna’s done some good stuff. But we’re not lined up for it just yet.

Do you feel much connection to the British electronic techno scene of yore, such as LFO and The Black Dog?

That early Warp and Aphex Twin stuff, that’s what got us into electronic music, so I guess it’s deep in our subconscious somewhere. In terms the scene, we’re not really in with those guys, we don’t know them personally or hang out with the Warp crew. I can see sound-wise how people would hook us in with that, because I know most of those old guys used old synths – particularly the old Warp stuff had an avant garde aesthetic to it. But equally you could tell they were half-heads, they were in bands as well and came from a broad musical background.

Mr. Ford has been quoted saying that bad songs are far easier to remix. That in mind, which tune was the hardest and which was the easiest to remix?

We did a remix for Inner City of “Big Fun” – a classic old electro track – and we really did it just to see how Kevin Saunderson (of Inner City) made it. These were the track we loved as kids and we wanted to get inside. We split up all the parts and each part was so good. So that was one of the… less good remixes we’ve done, because we didn’t tear it to pieces. Whenever we send a track out to be remix and we get it back and it mostly sounds the same, we’re like, “C’mon man, tear it to pieces. We wanted you to do your thing.” Sometimes when we do the same thing people think we’re being disrespectful, but for me, that’s the mark of a good remix – when you tear it to pieces. One of the remixes which was really easy was for Peaches, her track “Downtown,” because her voice fits so easily over electronic stuff, immediately. We usually have a real problem getting voices to fit, because we never want it to sound like an a cappella over a track. But for some reason her voice fits over stuff really well. The tracks that are the most difficult to do are the ones you’ approach with too much reverence. No disrespect to any other track, but I think we learned our lesson: we’re only going to do tracks we feel we can actually add something to.

Simian Mobile Disco; Photo by Sanchez and Kitahara

I just saw the video you did for “I Believe” the other day. Where was it filmed?

It was filmed in Romania, actually. The guy who did is called Romain Gavras de Kourtrajmé, he’s a really well known director in France but not that known in the UK. He’s got an idea for a feature film using gypsies and…. His style in humorous but it’s not taking the piss in an Ali G kind of way. He told them, “I’m not laughing at you, this isn’t going to be a piss-take joke video.” We talked with and said, you know, “We trust you, of you go, do it.” At first the people in the village weren’t happy with him filming because they had heard about “Borat.” Eventually through interpreters he explained himself that what he wanted to do was respectful. I think it’s a really beautiful video.

So besides this long you’re on, what can we expect from Simian Mobile Disco in the next year or so?

Quite a few tours. We’re going around Europe with the Chemical Brothers and Japan with Underworld, both of which I’m pretty excited about. They’re bands that were in that transitional period when I went from listening to Pantera to electronic stuff. We’ve got a couple of really good production things lined up, individually and together. And then we have a bit to come up with some ideas and have a look at the live show, but by that time it’s summer time, so it’s festival season again. We’re pretty busy! (Laughs)

Well, I look forward to seeing you in Chicago.

You know, the last time we were in Chicago I had the best piece of pizza. It was ridiculous, it was literally inches thick.

Yeah, we’re famous for our deep dish pizza. Sometimes I’m amazed we’re not all morbidly obese.

(Laughs) I’m in man, I’m in. Let’s go for a slice.

Epilogue: With Simian Mobile Disco playing right around the corner from one of LWE’s headquarters, it only seemed right to give the guys a proper taste of Chicago: a huge spinach and mushroom deep dish pizza from one of my favorite pizzerias, Pequod’s. As you can see, the Chicago-style reception went right to their stomachs.

Simian Mobile Disco enjoying a slice of Pequod’s Pizza in Chicago; Photo by Sanchez and Kitahara

[Wichita]

Those Simian boys sure know how to call in a favor, eh? So far, their singles have been remixed by Prins Thomas, Switch, Armand Van Helden, Luke Vibert, Riton, Graham Massey of 808 State, and the “Hustler” single extends that to include Kevin Saunderson, Jesse Rose and Shackleton. I didn’t expect to see that last name on the list, but I was instantly intrigued when I did. “Hustler” is a raucous jam of bleeping bluster and boundless sassy energy. S. Shackleton gives off a darker vibe in his aggressively structured and ethnically influenced tracks, oftentimes fitting in the dubstep paradigm. But ever the shapeshifter, his take on “Hustler” is a different beast altogether.

Shackleton rides the rails of a ticking house beat, bittersweet harmonic burbles washing against the sides of vocal samples in pools of reverb. He fires off riffs into empty space and watches as they stretch further and further over hugely expansive bass pulses. His choice of vocal selections and their echo-laden treatment lend gravitas to lyrics like, “Gotta do what’chu gotta do” and “to stay alive.” There’s no romanticism in the Shackleton’s tone. However, the chord progressions and timbres he uses are among some of the most ear-pleasing he’s produced, though far from the pop mayhem of the original. Shackleton held up a mirror to this tune and captured a ragged minimalism befitting of its subject matter. It seems a bit of Ricardo Villalobos (who famously remixed his dystopian tune, “Blood On My Hands,” to epic proportions) has rubbed off on this shadowy producer. I think Ricardo would be proud, if he’s not already spinning this somewhere right now.

Also, I reviewed Martin Buttrich’s new single, “Hunter,” on RA. Some might be surprised that I’m not a bigger fan of it, but it’s a letdown in my book, especially the snoozephonic “Hunted.” I feel like he’s got something better inside of him yet, or at least I hope he does.