Simian Party Animals

The Age

Friday August 15, 2008

Andrew Drever.

The Simian duo thrive in a club habitat, writes Andrew Drever.

WHEN Brits James Ford and Jas Shaw ditched their band Simian in 2005, one of the first supporters of the duo's new guise and stripped-down electronic sound was London superclub Fabric. The boys were, and still are, regularly invited to spin there, the club subsequently being the scene of many all-night benders.

When I speak to Ford and Shaw, they are reeling from the shock of arriving at Fabric at 9am for interviews, a time they are more accustomed to walking out, not in.

"Yeah, it's certainly surreal!," laughs Shaw as a reversing truck beeps loudly outside the club's office window. "Normally we'd be leaving. It's the wrong way around."

Shaw and Ford, the drums, synths and electronics end of Simian, had been handing out mix-tape CDs and playing hyperactive DJ dates in sweaty basement clubs after Simian shows for quite some time before splitting the band (fronted by brilliant yet erratic singer, Simon Lord, now part of the Black Ghosts with former Wiseguy Theo Keating, aka DJ Touche) during a long US tour.

Returning to London as free agents, Shaw and Ford continued DJing as Simian Mobile Disco.

The gigs at Fabric, with its uninhibited music policy, suited the duo's eclectic party mix of minimal house, noisy rave, techno, electro and acid-house.

"Fabric was one of our main supporters early on," Ford says. "Those were some of the biggest gigs that we did and we ended up playing here most months really - and still do.

"It's definitely one of the better clubs in the world, with the DJ being so well set up, the sound system being so amazing and the crowd always being really up for it. You can't ask for much more, really."

Ford was also creating a strong reputation for his production work with other bands - the Klaxons, Last Shadow Puppets, Arctic Monkeys, Mystery Jets, Bumblebeez and Test Icicles - before Simian Mobile Disco's debut album, Attack Delay Sustain Release, last year. A strong collection of dance tracks, it was studded with low-key guest appearances from Go! Team's MC Ninja, singer-rapper Char Johnson and former Simian mate, Simon Lord.

In further serendipity, they have now mixed the latest edition in the FabricLIVE series. FabricLIVE 41 is a typically bent, yet clubby party blend that pays no heed to the latest hot club tunes.

In the spirit of their early eclectic DJ sets, they drop in the twisted tech of Plastikman's (a guise of techno maverick Richie Hawtin) Spastik, Smith N Hack's Space Warrior, nu-disco darlings Hercules and Love Affair, New York boogie stalwarts Metro Area, Green Velvet's legendary Flash, as well as oddities such as late jazz maverick Moondog, Raymond Scott and the Walker Brothers.

"Our basic remit was to try and put together a set that we would want to play at Fabric," explains Ford, "but also to slip in a few things you definitely wouldn't play at Fabric. For example, people wouldn't normally dance to Moondog at Fabric but we might have managed to get it in there in a way where people could get into it. And I think that's the goal for us always: to try and make people dance and get into stuff that they haven't heard or aren't clued up on in the world of club music."

The album's finale, the Walker Brothers' folky Nite Flights, seems somewhat at odds with the otherwise club-based set, as though Shaw and Ford have allowed themselves one extended moment of self-indulgence.

"Yes, we've got a policy of playing one stupid track at the end of the set," laughs Ford.

"We've got a bag of them, like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Nilsson and Black Sabbath. We always think it's good to end on a different note."

Simian Mobile Disco's FabricLIVE 41 is out now through Fabric/ Inertia.