Analog ancestors

>> Simian Mobile Disco retrace the
evolution of boogying down

FUNKY MONKEYS: Simian Mobile Disco

by JACK OATMON

With the ever-mushrooming variety and volume of portable digital technology available to producers these days, the use of computers has become something of a foregone conclusion in the performance of electronic music. But James Ford and James Shaw of Simian Mobile Disco, one of several projects to spring forth from the now-defunct band Simian, are flying in the face of recent conventions and boldly lugging a veritable truckload of drum machines, effects processors, synthesizers and samplers across the pond to recreate their compositional experience in the live setting.

The use of venerable equipment preserves an element of chance within their music, most of which is the product of studio serendipity and impromptu jamming. It also underlines the music’s classic influences, from Motown R&B to psychedelic prog and early hip hop.

“As much as anything, we got bored of the laptop format,” says Ford. “We do embrace that technology as well, we just get more excitement from those old machines. The great thing about them is, you try to do something with them and they give you something different back. There’s a sort of dialogue and a humanness that you get out of those kinds of machines. When you’re moving blocks around on a screen in a totally neutral environment, it can get a little sterile.”

Ford’s humanization of the chunky gear also weaves into the iconic name of their new album Attack Decay Sustain Release, borrowed from the instruments themselves.

“The actual title was taken from the kind of analog synths that we have lying around and that we used pretty much exclusively on the record—but that’s pretty mundane. The thing we liked about it is they’re quite strong words individually, and when you put them together, they make a weird kind of sense, especially when you take it out of context. People that might not know where those words come from or what they relate to, they kind of put their own meanings onto things. We’ve had a lot of weird and wonderful explanations that people have put onto the series of words. People thought that it was a way we had structured the album or that it relates to a life experience or a drug experience.”

Of course, SMD’s album title isn’t the only thing Ford has laid hands on that people are speculating about. The recent announcement that the Klaxons album Myths of the Near Future had won the U.K.’s Mercury prize has drawn attention to Ford, who produced it.

“I wasn’t really expecting the Klaxons to win it, but obviously I’m very pleased they did. The main thing is that it lends them a bit of gravitas beyond the ‘new rave’ nonsense and hyperbole that’s all around them. They were and are a very hyped band and it would make a lot of people, including me if I wasn’t involved in the project, write them off before they even heard it. But they have themselves to blame because they did cultivate that. They invented the ‘new rave’ tag and they party like animals. I’m going to go to a party tonight in celebration of the Mercury, and I was informed today that they do actually have dwarves that they’re going to have at the party, which is the most ridiculous and un-PC thing that could happen.”

With JDH & Dave P at la Sala Rossa
on Sunday, Sept. 16, 9 p.m., $18