Scroobius Pip vs. Dan le Sac
October 7th, 2007Scroobius Pip vs. Dan le Sac popped up on our radar here in early 2007 with the excellent ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’, a sort of manifesto for good living and right thinking, raging against herd mentality and pop culture laziness. They followed it up with the stormingly danceable ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ and a string of concert dates across Europe. Not bad for an unsigned duo who make their records in their bedrooms (bit of a cliché by now, I suppose). It remains to be seen if they have the longevity to avoid the old one-hit status. Andrew from Trinity FM caught up with them at the Electric Picnic.
Analogue: We better go back to the start, because not a lot of people over here will have heard of you. Obviously you’ve had a lot of exposure with ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’, and now with the new single ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’, and people are getting to know you. But what’s the back-story for those who haven’t?
Scroobius Pip: There’s not a lot. I mean, this is our first year of our being a band and we did our first gigs in October of 2006, so we’ve just been really lucky in how quick it’s all kind of happened…
Dan le Sac: How many gigs did we do in 2006? Three?
SP: Three in 2006 and it’s all gone from there …
DlS: About four million now!
A: I think I caught you some time in late 2006 on [XFM DJ] John Kennedy’s show …
DlS: That was early 2007.
SP: Again, for ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’, I recorded the vocals in my bedroom, and Dan recorded the stuff at his place. I sent a CDR to John Kennedy the day after we recorded it and he played it like three hours after hearing it and receiving it. It was just amazing that he got on board so quick and really he’s been just a legend for us since with airplay and sorting us out gigs and everything … really, he’s been just amazing. It’s good that there’s still a radio station where the DJs can just get behind something, regardless if it’s playlisted or being pushed by a major label. He just heard it and liked it and went from there.
DlS: But to be honest, XFM is pretty much the last one of them in the UK. With Radio 1, it’s very much the producers. The presenters do have a say, but there’s still very much a committee element about it.
SP: Even on Radio 1, it’s good to see that the DJs can still choose a few tracks outside the playlist. We’ve had Zane Lowe and Rob da Bank very much get behind us and really support us. It means a lot more because it’s not them just choosing it from a list of songs that they’re allowed to play, it’s them kind of saying, “It’s not on our list, but we’re going to play it anyway, ’cause we
like it”.
DlS: It means that unsigned bands can do this. We’ve played Lowlands, Benicassim, Glastonbury, Electric Picnic, Reading and all these festivals. How many unsigned bands can say they’ve played all of those in year?
A: Of course, it didn’t hurt that you had an excellent video…
DlS: It was banging!
SP: Again, it was done, completely for free, by a guy called Nick Frew who’s done our new one as well, on a budget marginally greater than zero. He does an amazing job. For both of the videos, me and him met up a few times and kind of brained ideas. Then he went away and turned them into something far better than I could have imagined each time. He’s just a great director, a great guy.
DlS: I don’t get involved in all that. I’ve got beats to write, things to do…
SP: You see, I’m the poncy arty one.
A: That’s what I was wondering, what’s the group dynamic like? You were saying that you do each your individual bit and then you sort of put them together. Who does what first?
DlS: Either….
SP: It’s always varied …
DlS: I’d write a lot, and I’ll just send him random things, and if he’s got an idea, then he’s got an idea. Like the newest one we’ve been playing live is called ‘Back from Hell’, and the whole track was just my rough idea of what the track would be, and he was like “No, that’s perfect, perfect, that’s exactly what I want, don’t change it…” and I was like “But I want to make it bigger…”
SP: Lyrically, that one is one I wrote a year or two ago and never got round to using, and I never found the right beat for. There are no rules in how we write really … that sounds like we’re trying to be appallingly rock and roll: “There are no rules, we just write”…
A: It’s all just freeform.
SP: It does seem to gel together quite nicely. It works.
A: You both seem to do quite a lot of side projects, or rather just collaborate with other people…
SP: Yeah, a bit here and there.
A: So, are there any particular dream collaborations that you’d like to do?
SP: Prince, I’d love to collaborate with Prince! There’s tons of people. Both of us have worked in music shops, so when you’re into so much music, there’s just so many people you’d love to work with. The ones I’ve got to work with so far have all been quite small acts, but ones that I’m really into and really excited about, so it’s cool. There’s no, “this person is huge, so I want to work with them above this person”. It’s whatever the vibe is at the time.
DlS: Whereas there’s no one I’d want to collaborate with, because there’s no one I’d want to inflict myself on. I’m difficult and I’m not very good at expressing myself, or at expressing what’s wrong with something, so I will just stand there going “It’s not round enough, it’s not round…”
A: Suddenly yelling, “It’s wrong, do it again…”
DlS: … “It’s wrong, make it slightly chubbier” … you know, it’s not very helpful!
A: So, is there a central message, or mission that you’re on?
SP: Lyrically, it’s just a case of putting as much content and just… no, there wouldn’t be one specific theme throughout all of it. I try to get storytelling and some views and opinions in, and just try to make sure there’s some meat in the lyrics, and it will just take people on a journey and grab them more than just a catchy hook which everyone will remember, kind of thing…
DlS: For me, it’s just move your body…
SP: Really?
DlS: That’s my central message, no matter what. Even with the slow ones, they make you move. All music should physically make your arse do something at least.
A: I wanted to ask you about your lyrics for ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ … the title and the last line?
SP: Um … a lot of people have come up to me and said like “Is it a Nietzsche type reference, where we have to destroy everything to begin again?”
DlS: Especially with the art work having that little Hitler ballerina figure, because Hitler cynically espoused Nietzsche’s ideas…
SP: … so I generally agree to go with that. Other people have asked if it’s that we, as humans, will always kill and if it’s kind of a statement on that. But literally, it’s a poem I used to end my sets with. It’s kind of from the hip-hop vernacular that if you’ve played a good set, you’ve killed a good set. So, literally at the end of a poem, it would be ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’, and I’d leave the stage. That’s where it’s from, and people just seem to take their own ideas and opinions on it, and that’s perfect and brilliant.
DlS: MTV America don’t put up the “Kill”. It’s called ‘Thou Shalt Always…’
SP: … on the title …
DlS: … they refuse to put up the word “Kill” …
A: Do they leave it in at the end though?
DlS: In the lyrics, it’s fine. But they won’t actually put those words on screen.
SP: It’s pretty dark.
DlS: It was weird around the time of the [Virginia Tech] shootings, ‘cause we’ve got this big banner on our webpage that says “Thou Shalt Always Kill”. We had a few people saying, “You can’t say that” and it was really strange trying to explain it to people. They’re in such an emotional state about something else, and we’re saying “It’s just hip-hop, man” … you just have to be just a little apologetic.
A: So, you’re getting exposure over in America as well?
DlS: Yeah, weirdly, without any actual deliberate intention to.
SP: It’s the power of the Internet for us. YouTube and MySpace have just been great for us. When ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ got on the front page of YouTube internationally, our profile went through the roof ’cause it meant it was being watched by people in America, by people in Holland and just all over the world.
DlS: But there’s a lot of little radio DJs that picked it up and got behind it …
SP: Good people …
DlS: But then there’s some bigger ones like [Breakbeat DJ] Adam Freeland. He was playing it literally within days of John Kennedy, but in LA. If you look at where it gets played in LA, everyone will come back to hearing it on Adam Freeland. It’s amazing how, if you’ve got a good record, one person can actually make a difference, and make it happen for you.
A: Will you be back in Dublin any time soon, or is that dependent on how tomorrow goes?
SP: Yes, we definitely are coming back on October 10th. We’ve been asked to support Rakim, who’s one of the most legendary hip-hop figures ever. That’s in Dublin, and that’s just going to be amazing.
DlS: That’s another Foggy Notions thing … I can remember the words ‘Heineken’ and ‘Green’…
SP: They just asked… and we said, “Yes, definitely, we’ll do it”.
DlS: Is it a day thing?
A: It’s spread over four days
DlS: Right, we’re coming out for the lot!
A: We’re coming to the end of this, and I haven’t got a lot of brain power left … so I’ve got to be really rude and ask, the beard?
SP: Yeah, a lot of people have asked, thinking its religious or something. It’s not. It’s just I fancied having a beard…
DlS: No, see he says that, but he used to cut himself on the face…
A: He has an ugly chin?
DlS: Yeah, he has a really ugly chin and tried to cut it off…
SP: I don’t have a chin…
A: Is it like a Marx thing, that as soon as he could, he grew a philosopher’s beard?
DlS: It’s more of a mathematicians thing … he looks like Pythagoras!
SP: It is known as the Pythagoras look.
A: … you wear the robes round the house …
DlS: Not just round the house. In London generally, he’s in robes, carrying a stone tablet of some kind.
SP: Around the my small town in Stanford I now, having had a small level of success, feel it is appropriate to walk round in a robe.
DlS: … trying to solve problems with triangles…
Scroobius Pip vs. Dan le Sac are supporting Rakim at The Village on October 10th as part of the Heineken Green Synergy Festival. ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’ is out now.
Andrew Booth is an intercontinental dandy. He is co-writing his first novel Jackdaw Fool.
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