Consisting of one part laptop wizard, one part performance poet, Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip are currently cooking up a juicy medley of treats with their refreshingly imaginative take on breakbeat. hip hop and electronic sound. Surrounded by an aura of excitable anticipation after the huge underground success of marmite tinged début single 'Thou Shalt Always Kill' and a headline tour already in full swing, we talked props, costume changes and new releases.
The newest offering, 'The Beat That My Heart Skipped', is a four minute aural assault fusing simple guitar strumming, bop-along heartbeats and nimble lyrical wanderings about the artificial nature of meeting someone in a bar and becoming infatuated by them. Pip's lyrics verge on observational realism à la Mike Skinner but are infinitely more intellectually arousing, drawing inspiration from poetry and spoken word artistes. Pip notes, " Often I’ll write a lot of little lines over a month or so and then kind of tie them all together...I like to tell stories from other peoples' points of view but then also obviously sandwich in and draw from my own experiences."
Pip explains that the pair work completely independently of one another "which is one of the reasons we’ve maintained the ‘Vs’ in our name because it is very much two separate acts working together to make something. We feel that we manage to keep our two identities...but it just happens to sit together nicely and make something."
They've been letting the creative juices flow for a while now and Dan Le Sac reckons the new album is almost finished, "We've pretty much written it and because of the way we work the writing is a lot of the recording so all that we've gotta do now is just get into the studio, re-record all Pip's vocals so that you can actually hear him, cause some of them sound like he's under water. He records all his vocals in his bedroom on like a four-track thing so you can often hear his mum hoovering or whatever." Apparently the album will be a melting pot of randomness with a country tune and a song about Tommy Cooper. They plan to get into the studio in October to wipe out Pip's mum's input which means the album should be sorted, minus housework samples, early 2008.
But we want some of the new stuff now! Having already embarked on a UK headline tour, electronic maestro Dan Le Sac assures us, "We're pretty much playing ninety percent of what might end up on the album." And, there are even more surprises in store for us, "Pip's got a few costume changes and this big bible that he made that looks quite cool with us on the front that he uses during 'Thou Shalt...' and just various little bits and bobs to make it a little bit more interesting to look at. I think after we've done the tour and got the album out we're gonna put a lot of time into the theatrics of the show." At some point we can expect a lot more optical pleasure and some projected visuals thrown in for good measure.
What about preparation for the live performances? "We, nine times out of ten go, 'Oh we haven't got a set list, what do you wanna play?'...There’s me stressing and Pip just trying not to look like he’s stressing". As long as they don't forget the lyrics...
To finish off, Dan ponders, "Every time we do something else it seems to be an achievement in itself. Like going on tour is an achievement for us...we’re gonna sell out The Scala at the end of the month, you know, that’s an achievement. It is just the growth of what we’ve done. So every time we go somewhere new we’re always surprised by the amount of people who actually turn up."
It looks like these guys are in for an exciting ride.
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