Elements of danger

>> Services pummel each other
and get chased by tornadoes

BELLES OF THE BRAWL: Services

by JACK OATMON

When the Mirror called up the mobile phone of Trztn, one half of Brooklyn’s thumping electro-trash duo Services, he was busy running from a torrential downpour during a tornado warning, attempting to save props to be used for their upcoming music video. We called back once he’d had enough time to escape the meteorological mayhem and hide in a doorway for the interview. Amidst the climatic confusion, Trztn told us about mud-fights with his bandmate Chris Pravdica and other such creative contusions.

Trztn: We’re shooting a video for a new single that’s coming out. It’s called “Presenter” and it’s going to be on the new album. So we have all this preparation to do. We’re gonna shoot it out in the fields of New Jersey. We’ve got an idea. You’ll see. Basically my partner and I fight, but we don’t fight out of any particular emotion like when people normally fight. We just fight because it’s something that we do. The video is basically a really dirty fight. It’s really stylized, but it’s unexplained. It’s almost as if we do that at a certain time every day. It’s almost like a factory.

Mirror: Like the punch-clock scenes with Wile E. Coyote and the dog? “Hello, George. Hello Sam.”

T: Well, no actually. I’ll explain it to you. My partner and I are extremely dapper in these white suits and we walk up to each other and that walk turns into a run and so on and so forth. The editing goes very much in with every beat of the song. The run turns into a tackle and for a good part of the song we’re fighting in the mud, so the suits get very muddy, dirty and bloody. This is all very unemotional. At one part of the song we pull back from each other and fix ourselves up, comb the hair, put the cuff links back on, then boom! We go back at each other. It’s a dirty, nasty grapple. Then we walk back to our original positions and get washed down by a jet of water. It’s almost as if we do that every day with no explanation.

M: Does that standoffishness have something to do with doing live shows every night or with the music you guys make? It’s kind of jarring and staccato and there are a lot of starts and stops. I don’t know if aggressive is the right word, but it’s definitely high-energy.

T: It’s a metaphor for a lot of things, but as far as performing and creating, for sure there’s a big metaphor there. It’s not as if we do that… but well, we kind of do all the time. It’s not necessarily overt—the video’s not intended to send that message, but I’ll gladly accept it if it adds to the richness of the whole thing. The reality is that the sound is really involving. And I can say that the next record will not sound like the first record. It’s not going to be a complete stylistic 180, but we’re forcing ourselves to evolve. The starts and stops and all those jars and turns, that’s all about the immediacy of the music. We’re just going for urgency and immediacy.

With A Touch of Class DJs and Jordan Dare
at the SAT on Friday, May 25, 10 p.m., $20