Freaky family

>>The Rapture’s members push their beats
into the club with Throne of Blood

REPETITIVE ASPECTS: The Rapture

by JACK OATMON

After nearly a decade of tweaking and modulating their raucous amalgamation of squealing, swaggering punk and contorted house music, the four members of the Rapture have launched their own record label, Throne of Blood. Now they’re on tour showcasing it with a travelling series of parties to follow up their appearances with France’s legendary robot rockers, Daft Punk. The Mirror spoke with Gabriel Andruzzi, Rapture member and co-founder of Throne of Blood, about the tour and the new label.

“All of us had a desire to do a label for quite some time, individually and collectively, even when we were involved with DFA Records,” explains Andruzzi from San Francisco, on the first night of the tour. “What I’m hoping to do with Throne of Blood is to grab some of those people I know in New York who have been doing interesting things or could be doing interesting production projects, and pushing them to get some good records out of them. I want what we do to be a family as much as we can, but I also know that it’s going to be fairly eclectic. That’s the nature of the kind of stuff we like.”

They’ve also buddied up with some ambassadors from two fellow examples of genre jumbling, France’s Kitsuné and Ed Banger Records. The result promises to boil down to something of a subcultural zeitgeist, with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo being both opened for and after-partied by their stylistic progeny in the same evening.

“Ed Banger and Kitsuné—those are examples of the dance-music world translating really easily into the non-dance world. And Daft Punk are also a band that makes it okay to like dance music, for people who can get turned off by the culture surrounding it or the repetitive aspects of some parts of house and techno. Me, in my heart of hearts, as much as I love a lot of the more aggressive elements of it all, I’m really happy listening to groovy house music. And that’s what influenced Daft Punk as well—a lot of Chicago house and funk and disco and soul tracks.”

The Rapture play with Daft Punk, Sebastian and
Kavinsky at Bell Centre on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 7:30 p.m.,
$44.50–$59.50, all ages, and the Throne of Blood crew
join Ed Bangers crew, Gildas and guests at SAT on
Tuesday, Aug. 7, 10 p.m., $10