The Subs

Analogue spoke to The Subs ahead of their Halloween performance at Transmission in Dublin next week.

Your sound has been described as “Boys Noize brutality and Wagnerian rave drama” - how appropriate do you think that description is?

Well, we can live with that. I guess the brutality and rave because we simply cannot leave a sound sweet and cosy, but it’s the contrast of emo-kitch with beats that are pounding like a motherfucker that does the trick for us. But we’ll take any influence and rape it. In fact, our sound is called Belga Trance.

Ghent is home to yourselves, Soulwax, The Glimmers, I Love Techno…. What is it in the water there that such a seemingly quiet place is home to such crazy parties and DJs?

Belgium has always been good at beats. Remember Telex, Front 242, Technotronic, the whole new beat period, cult labels like R&S… Why? Because we’re not the best songwriters, English not being a native language? Because we are good at stealing? Belgium, geographically at the heart, played an important role in bringing dance to Europe. And in Ghent The Glimmers started this eclectic way of DJing, followed by 2 many DJ’s…

The video of Fuck that Shit from Pukkelpop is pretty insane - how did you go about getting all the footage together?

On national radio we asked the audience to film us during the show with whatever cam they had, including cellulars, iphones etc… Then they sent the footage to us. It was a very bumpy road, getting all that different footage into one format. And also, I had a camera glued to my microphone, but during the show I got carried away (as usual) and I constantly blocked the view of the cam with my hand. You can catch a few shots of my mouth delivering the screams though…

Since Pukkelpop takes place so close to your home town, is that a special show to play?

It’s one of the best festivals in Belgium, so it’s special. Great line-up cause it’s a good balance between established and upcoming talent. We always try to come up with something special.

What’s been the craziest thing to happen at one of your shows? Apart from getting a few thousand people to scream “Fuck that shit!” of course…

Life is wonderful and magical, but at the same time it’s so dreadfully banal and full of boring patterns. Live we try to break the rules. This gives you momentarily the feeling of breaking free, which is delightful, but it is only a temporary illusion of course. But it can linger on for a while though… The craziest thing is when you realize thousands of people are feeling the same thing at the same time. A collective musical orgasm so to speak. But having literally more then 200 people from the audience on stage is quite crazy as well, with us in de middle of that turbulent frenzy trying to carry on playing…

I noticed some similarities between From Dusk Till Dawn and the music of Joe and Will Ask? - so it’s funny that they remixed the track. Apart from these guys, who do you see as your musical peers, on the same wavelength as yourselves?

That’s difficult to say, because everyone has his own sound. But Fake Blood, Simian Mobile Disco, Yuksek, Justice, Boy 8-Bit, Crookers… Too many to mention… They all have a few tracks we wouldn’t mind if they were made by us, hahaha!

Trance is a dirty word nowadays, yet you made a hit called Kiss My Trance - which found favour with Tiesto of all people. Do you think, with the right people, that style could be given any respectability? Surely it’s no more cheesy than the disco sound that’s rife at the moment…

Oh man, that whole thing about what’s hot and what’s not, I won’t say I couldn’t be bothered, but it’s a bit tiring if it’s about chewing on styles that have been. You know what I mean? The whole fidget thing was in a way interesting because there was something fresh about it, Africa trying to make club music, and at the same time artists like Santigold, MIA, Buraka Som Sistema in the picture. It was/is something that transcended the pure clubbing genre… So we liked what was happening but didn’t participated because it is simply not our thing. Disco on the other hand is the root of dance music, so for me, everything is disco… I mean, we absolutely adore the old Italo Disco, and Disco will always remain an influence, but we’re not intending to make some really disco sounding thing, unless we, there we are again, find a way to rape it with love.

The video for that track was pretty interesting - for example juxtaposing cooking and DJing was a nice touch. How involved are you guys in the videos for your songs?

We always work closely together with the guys from The MKR, who are really good friends (they also made some videos for Das Pop). But all of a sudden the Kiss My Trance video was just lying in our mailbox so to speak. Some young talent from the southern part of Belgium simply gave it to us. This was particularly pleasing since there’s a lot of political nonsense between the north and the south.

But our video for My Punk we practically made ourselves. We drove on three mopeds from Ghent to Paris with three cameras on our head. After like 10 hours or something, we got so bored we started to drive into shopping malls and stuff and eventually got busted… Well, it’s a long story to tell everything, but if you check out the video, you gotta know everything is 100% real. We even still got a lawsuit pending…

You’ve had a lot of releases on Lektroluv’s label - what’s it like working with such an elusive character?

He eats a lot of spinach.

What are you working on right now? Are you concentrating on shows, or is there new material in the background?

Doing a lot of shows (10 years of Fabric, I Love Techno) but spending a lot of time in the studio as well. We’re releasing a new clubber called Mitsubitchi, which will be available first on Fabric’s label.

The Subs play the Transmission Halloween Party at The Button Factory in Dublin on October 31. See here for tickets.

Joe And Will Ask?

Joe And Will Ask? have been making noise across clubland with their melodic yet heavy techno, while at the same time baffling bloggers and writers with their typographically nonsensical name. I recently spoke to them as they found themselves booked between a series of dubstep wizards at Beats of Rage in Preston’s Coda. “It was basically anthem bashing,” said Will. “It was kind of an introduction to techno to a dubstep night.” They were a little uneasy following a DJ playing 140bpm at midnight, so they played harder and faster than usual. “We played at 130bpm which is not normal for us,” said Joe, who dropped a stripped down version of Angello, Ingrosso, Axwell & Laidback Luke’s Leave The World Behind. “I love the Swedish House Mafia attitude to music, fuck it we’ll do what we want, if people think it’s cheesy they can piss off or whatever, but the vocal is too much, so I just scrapped it and made some kind of rearrangement of it. I’m kind of obsessed with that big piano chord thing.”

This euphoric big room house isn’t quite what they’re known for, but that’s not to say they won’t find themselves next to Angello and friends on the next Clubber’s Guide CD. Finding themselves hassled by Ministry of Sound to make something radio-friendly, Joe and Will hooked up with Becky Jones, also known as Saint Saviour of The RGBs. “She’s an awesome dance music writer, she does it in a kind of cool, edgy way, it’s not bland or boring, like let’s just stick a blonde babe singing something about the weekend.” That’s not to say the boys are stepping outside the deep and trippy techno that’s made their name. They’ve also been working on a track with Micachu, something Joe describes as the polar opposite of what they’ve done with Saint Saviour. “The instrumental I gave [Mica], it’s by a long way the most deep thing we’ve ever done, it’s like techno before techno became this kind of minimally, skippy, melodic thing, it’s techno techno. I can imagine someone like Adam Beyer playing it.”

Joe, who got his first set of decks at the age of 16, was already releasing electronica under his own name on the Sound Artillery label when he met Will, who grew up on a diet of Godskitchen and Sundissential. Out of boredom they started DJing together two years ago, and already they’re set to play Ibiza alongside 2manydjs, and Aeroplane. “Neither of us have ever been before,” says Joe. “When we were told we’re playing Ibiza we were like yeah! And when we were told it’s Ibiza Rocks we were like, oh. Cause we’re not really into the whole rock and dance mix.” Not that they are ungrateful by any means: Joe appreciates the stark contrast between the superstar resident DJs of the white island and the tireless blaggers who spend seasons just trying to get one gig. “For us it’s a real promising sign.” It all came about after a remix for Eskimo Twins, an act on the Wax:On label. The Leeds-based outfit were roped in to promote Reclaim The Dancefloor, a weekly night at Eden, and they were so impressed with what Joe and Will did for Eskimo Twins that they invited them along. Following a spate of unofficial remixes for the likes of Marc Houle and Ellen Allien & Apparat, as well as releases on Kitsuné and Gulp Communications, they’ve been approached by acts as diverse as The Subs and Kris Menace. “It’s quite nice to be asked to remix Kris Menace, he’s a fucking legend,” says Will.

Inspired by the current crop of forward thinking techno producers like Popof and Style of Eye, the Joe And Will Ask? signature is a characteristic cheekiness that shines through their melodies and sounds. “I’d like to think it nods to Orbital, people like that, you know the quirkiness, slightly kind of odd and funny,” says Joe, while Will tells of a tribute to their favourite person in the world: “We named one song after our friend Chris, who’s a bit weird, it’s kind of a weird glitchy song, and he kind of has a twitch, so we named it after him.”

They are excited about playing Dublin for the first time, as they headline Transmission at The Button Factory next week. Unlike Will, who spends time in Kilcock every year, Joe has never crossed the Irish Sea so is finally making up for lost time. “It’s actually really embarrassing, I’ve lived in England my whole life and I’ve never been to Ireland or Scotland.” Unlike their techno DJ set in Preston, they will be bringing their live show to The Button Factory, a venue which will no doubt suit their in your face live performance. “I think to do live it has to be amazing or not at all, to showcase your music, throw it everyone else’s face, whether they want it or not, you need an amazing sound system. We’ve got so many songs now we could probably play for two hours. But live we want to leave people wanting more, leave people wanting to see us again.”

And as for their name? “It was meant to be a joke,” says Will. “I think it’s cool cause it’s memorable, and nothing is similar to it. It’s not like a cool word.” Joe meanwhile accepts that there’s nothing they could pick that could top it. “We’re the most cynical, self-judging people in the world, so if we were to ever come up with a dramatic kind of name, we’d just say only a dickhead would have that.”

Joe And Will Ask? play Transmission at The Button Factory, Dublin, on June 13

Busy P/ Dj Mehdi giveaway

The nice guys behind Transmission have given us 3 tickets to give away to Transmission’s Ed Banger Party featuring Busy P & Dj Mehdi this Friday Saturday at 11pm in the Button Factory. Support comes from Arveene. So the first 3 people to leave a comment below will win. (Please include an email address)

If you’re not one of the lucky winners Tickets are 20 blips available from Ticketmaster, Road Records, City Discs, Sound Cellar etc.