Life after bands: an idea with the most negative of implications. But there is indeed much vibrant life, brimming with heart and soul, left for James Ford and Jas Shaw, collectively known as Simian Mobile Disco. The name for their production/DJing outfit sings ballads about their musical history, from the very first word – Simian, a psychedelic indie band that had its moment of taking over the world in the early noughties, with Jas on guitar and James keeping time on drums. Simian celebrated two critically acclaimed albums, globe-encompassing tours, working with Brian Eno (on their second album, “We Are Your Friends,” in ’02), even songs being featured in international adverts (most notably in a Peugeot 1007 advertisement) but, like all good things, an end was inescapable.
James: “With Simian, we were signed to Virgin…”
Jas: “It was actually a small label called Source that was eaten by Virgin, which was part of its downfall. The band kind of split up at the end of a cruel, hot tour in the states, but probably for the best. I think what made Simian interesting was the sort of tensions within, particularly musically – but we were pulling more in an electronic direction, up until the point that it was actually not so productive.”
James: “Jas and I had already started DJing while we were in the band. We started out playing really eclectic sets, because it was more what we wanted to hear – we’d play stuff like Sun Ra, Raymond Scott, really all over the shop. But we really, really enjoyed it, and that was the main thing. Then when the band split up, we sort of carried on DJing. We’d already started doing a few remixes while we were in the band, and we were also making mixtapes that represented our DJ sets at the time; some of them got printed up by the label – mixtapes called Simian Mobile Disco. They were just little promos, but that’s where we made the name up; because we were in Simian, it was just a jokey name. If we’d thought about that band ending and this being a new band, we would’ve made up a new name, but it didn’t work like that.”
Life before the band: Jas and James share a similar upbringing, despite being raised in different parts of the country. In a small town outside of London, Jas grew up in a house that played “pretty straight stuff” – Elvis, The Beatles, David Bowie – so he’d often find himself on a train heading into the city, on a quest for new sounds. Continually adding to his ever-growing collection, on his London record shop adventures, Jas would get beautifully lost in a world of rock ballads, The Cure and Pantera. It was only a matter of time before he picked up a guitar and, likewise, a pair of turntables. Meanwhile, up north, the Stoke-On-Trent native James was wrapped up in piano lessons and began kick-starting bands at the ripe age of 11. Playing bass and singing, and spanning everything from rock to jazz to pop (“I remember covering ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’!”), even from an early age James was en-route to becoming the producing/performing innovator that he’s developed into today (he’s an award-winning producer outside of SMD, working with the likes of the Klaxons, Arctic Monkeys, Mystery Jets and The Last Shadow Puppets). The two musically kindred souls gravitated towards each other at Manchester University when they both decided to start a band and, with Simon William Lord and Alex MacNaghten, created the force that would eventually become Simian.
After the official split in 2005, just as Simian Mobile Disco had really started to come into its own, in 2006 a Simian single was given an unexpected resuscitation, when a submission from a remix competition transformed into one of the biggest anthems of the year.
Jas: “We Are Your Friends’ came up because of a France-only remix competition for one of the singles we did with Simian.”
James: “We picked the one that seemed the furthest away from the track, which was just really noisy and distorted. But also on that CD was the ‘We Are Your Friends’ Justice remix – that was about 4 years before it actually came out. From there, they got signed to Ed Banger and Pedro [Winter] put that out as a 12”, and then it got put on Virgin, and then it kind of just became the club hit that it became. It was just a weird phenomenon, really.”
As a result, perhaps it’s only natural that their eclectic DJ sets often surprise those who expect the electro-heavy sounds of Justice to pour out of the speakers.
James: “We’ve always had a sort of – well, not contrary, but we sort of try to do the opposite…”
Jas: “See, that is contrary.”
James: “Well in that case, I guess we’ve always been quite contrary. (laughs) Maybe people expect us to play Ed Bangers or distorted electro, but we don’t play any of that stuff. We’ve just been DJing in America and I think, there especially, Justice are doing really well – obviously with our association with them, people expect us to play that sort of music. I suppose we play quite minimal stuff, really stripped-out disco. But that’s just the stuff we’re excited about.”
All DJing aside, and considering their music backgrounds, inevitably the duo decided to explore the realms of a live platform. Their blinding (in more ways than one), unpredictable live shows have since become a mainstay on festival stages around the world.
Jas: “We actually only intended to do very few live shows. We knew we didn’t want to put a proper live band together, because we’d been down that route with Simian. And although both of us play instruments, we didn’t really feel that represented the record. So the closest thing we could think of is to pretty much build a studio on stage and have loads of room for us to experiment and improvise. Then we kind of realised that people wouldn’t know what we were doing, so we thought we’d get shitloads of lights to make it more interesting for other people to watch.” (laughs)
James: “The main thing is that it is actually something organic. We really didn’t want to be behind laptops, we really like old gear – we like the way it makes you approach making music. We were very keen to have that as part of our live show, so we’ve got old synthesizers and drum machines on there. Really, we’ve made it quite flexible so we can change it every time we do it – and because we’re mixing it all live as well, there are lots of areas where we can mix it up on the spot. Makes it more tied to a moment I suppose.”
Jas: “There are quite a few moments where absolutely nothing is planned, and they don’t always go well! But that’s kind of the beauty of it. Different things are appropriate for different nights: if we’re playing to a bar-type crowd, we’re not going to play tracks really long and stripped-out; we’ll play the shorter, punchier tracks, maybe even more vocal ones. But then quite often we’ll play in a dance venue, like fabric – and at fabric, you can get away with playing a track for ten minutes. Maybe you only play half the tunes you normally would, but you play them different. We’re not that good of showmen; if we’re bored, we look bored. So at least this way it keeps us on our toes.”
Simian Mobile Disco keep all listeners keenly on their toes and, taking a step away from any misguided preconceptions, showcases an exemplary DJ set on FABRICLIVE 41: an arresting, expansive mix that shuffles with 4/4 rarities and gems. At times tough, other times spacey, and riveting throughout, the iridescent collection is an exploratory trip onto a dancefloor commanded by the improvisatory musicians. SMD strips back and lets loose with the thump of Smith N Hack, the disco shine of Metro Area and the proggy sounds of Sisters of Transistors.
“We dug through a lot of stuff that’s not very current. With a lot of mix CDs, you do them and you know it’s just going to go out and do its thing, but we always think a fabric mix is something that sticks around a lot longer. We weren’t aiming to make it the most current mix of tunes; of course there will be a few new things but a lot of it is us digging back into our record collections, just the stuff that people may have forgotten about, or that went overlooked.” – Simian Mobile Disco
Tracklisting:
01. Tomita – The Firebird – Infernal Dance Of King Kastechi [Clean Version] – SonyBMG 02. Sisters Of Transistors – The Don – This Is Music 03. Simian Mobile Disco – Simple – Wichita 04. Hercules And Love Affair – Blind [Serge Santiago Version] – EMI 05. Smith N Hack – Space Warrior – Errorsmith and Soundhack 06. Discodeine – Joystick – Dirty 07. Shit Robot – Chasm – DFA 08. Perc & Fractal – Up Tool – Kompakt 09. Metro Area – Miura – Environ 10. Worthy – Crack EI – Leftroom 11. Moon Dog – Suite Equestria – Roof 12. Fine Cut Bodies – Huncut Hacuka – Chi Recordings 13. Bentobox vs Chordian – Aemono – Imprimé 14. Jelo & DeadMau5 – The Reward Is Cheese – Rising Trax 15. Simian Mobile Disco – Sleep Deprivation [Simon Baker Remix] – Wichita 16. Popof – The Chomper [LSD Version]– Turbo Recordings 17. Raymond Scott – Cindy Electronium – Basta 18. Paul Woolford Presents Bobby Peru – Erotic Discourse – 2020 Vision 19. Moebius Plank Neumeier – Pitch Control – Sky Records 20. Plastikman – Spastik – Mute 21. Green Velvet – Flash – Relief Records 22. The Walker Brothers – Nite Flights [Album Version] – SonyBMGRelease Dates: fabricfirst members: 04/08/08 uk/r.o.w. retail: 11/08/08 usa: 09/16/08
To listen to ‘FABRICLIVE 41′ online visit: http://www.fabriclondon.com/previews/fabriclive41 (password required)
References: http://www.fabriclondon.com/
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Tags: fabric, fabric london, fabriclive 41, fabriclive41, metro area, popof, simian mobile disco, sisters of transistor
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