 |
  
 
 |
|
Does It Offend You, Yeah?
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 05-Aug-08 @ 03:30 PM
HQ: Reading, EnglandNOW PLAYING: You Have No Idea What You Are Getting Yourself Into (ALMOST GOLD; almostgoldrecordings.com) WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW 'EM: Does It Offend You, Yeah? craft tunes for the pre-game, the party and the comedown without missing a beat or descending into chaos. YOU LIKE? YOU'LL LIKE: VHS Or Beta, the Rapture, Daft Punk INTERVIEW: Annie Zaleski U.K. electro-rockers Does It Offend You, Yeah? formed in 2006 for the same reason many bands do: To impress a girl. More specifically, Dan Coop approached his pal James Rushent--an aspiring producer who says he was "just mucking about with tunes, really"--to perfect a mix CD intended to woo a crush. Inspired by the tracks Coop was including from French electronica label Ed Banger, bassist/vocalist Rushent had a better idea. "I said, 'Look, forget giving her a mix CD. Do your own tune. Let's do a tune together! And then give her that!,'" recalls Rushent via phone, while traveling with the band between gigs in Glasgow, Scotland, and Leeds, England. Positive MySpace feedback for the pair's resulting collaboration (a disjointed, 8-bit, electro instrumental called "Battle Royale") quickly led to two more songs: The robotic, electro-punk of "We Are Rockstars" and the Daft Punk-goes-to-Jazzercise "Weird Science." To the surprise of Coop and Rushent, buzz began to grow around their project, which eventually landed them a deal with Virgin Records. DIOY,Y?'s subsequent debut, You Have No Idea What You Are Getting Yourself Into, was cobbled together from these recordings and others completed during the past 18 months, after vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist Morgan Quaintance and drummer Rob Bloomfield joined the band. Unsurprisingly, No Idea is all over the map: Foppish electro-pop ("Dawn of the Dead"), new-wave robot-funk ("Doomed Now") and B-52's-like disco paranoia ("Attack of the 60 Ft. Lesbian Octopus") join dancier songs such as "Let's Make Out." But these disparate styles cohere nicely without devolving into chaos. "We got known for doing the dance music," Rushent says. "[But] we knew that we had more, you know? We decided to branch out, take a bit of a risk, really. It's a risky album, but it's like a band's third album, you know, when they start to experiment. We started experimenting straight away." Such fearlessness comes naturally to Rushent. Growing up in a musical family (his father is Human League producer Martin Rushent), he was encouraged to explore the technological side of music. ("You sometimes hear stories where families are like, 'Oh, you have to get a proper job,' he says. "I never had that.") He was especially inspired when, as a teenager, he saw rave-rockers the Prodigy perform at the annual outdoor Reading Festival. "The thing that really got me about it, was that there was no drums onstage," he recalls. "There was no real guitar and there was no bass player or anything, it was just a guy with some equipment and two other guys running around. But yet everyone was jumping up and down like it was a rock band. "Obviously bands like Orbital and stuff, there were dance bands. But they would always be in the dance tent, and people would dance to them and take drugs to them, blah blah blah. Prodigy was the only dance band playing on the rock stage. That really inspired me. I was like, 'That's really cool.'" Does It Offend You, Yeah? also try to integrate dance music's manic energy into their concerts. Coop pogos madly behind his synthesizer, while Quaintance is even more hyperactive; when he's not climbing on speakers to play cowbell, he's often seen hopping into the audience mid-song. Such actions keep fans on their toes and prevent the band from being pigeonholed, something the boys are very conscious to avoid. For instance, despite their well-received, squelching remixes of Bloc Party and Muse songs, they've decided to bow out of the re-do business--partly because Rushent says they didn't want to be known as merely the go-to-guys for creating "club banger[s]." In the end, DIOY,Y? eventually want to become known for creating their own unique, distinctive sound. "We don't want to become known as, 'Oh, if you want a club banger, go and see thse guys!' " he says. "We're not that group. We're not those sort of guys." What album's had the most influence on you? "I just really admired the way that THE PRODIGY transcended themselves on The Fat Of The Land," says Rushent. "They wrote rave music, and they got known for that. But they were the only band out of that whole scene to break out. Instead of becoming rave music, it became the Prodigy. I like the album because it shows what a band can become." |
