In the last month, London dance duo Audio Bullys have paraded around the pop circuit like they’re vying for the cover of a teen mag. Top Of The Pops is understandable – impressive even – but T4 On The Beach? Inbetween Tony Christie and Akon? What’s going on?
You’d never guess that this type of fame and fortune beckoned from speaking to Tom Dinsdale, the group’s main songwriter, days beforehand. There’s no mention of the impending TV spectaular. Instead, his thoughts are wrapped up in the more leftfield DJ date he has the next day.
“I’m going to play at a new club called Digital in Newcastle tomorrow. I just had a gander at the website and it looks really cool,” he enthuses.
His expression is that of a punter who fluked his way into the DJ box. But that’s definitely not the case.
After releasing the highly acclaimed Ego War a couple of years back, Audio Bullys are credited with inventing the ‘hooligan house’ genre. They also DJed to within an inch of their life.
But those who weren’t into clubbing heard nothing for the intervening two years – until the seductive sounds of Nancy Sinatra reached the airwaves.
However, the mainstream isn’t something that the Bullys are afraid of.
“Doing Top Of The Pops was weird, very different from playing a club,” Dinsdale reflects. “But I loved being asked to do it because it’s Top Of The Pops. It’s an institution, isn’t it?”
As a taster for the forthcoming album, Generation, the single is suprisingly misleading.
A step away from the ‘dance beat over well-known sample’ formula, the collection fuses a host of funky influences, from hip-hop to hard house.
Play it back-to-back in a club and the dancefloor would be hard-pushed to recognise it’s the same band.
Furthermore, said dancefloor is likely to remain packed throughout. So it seems a shame that it'll be released in October, after their many festival dates which include the Electric Picnic.
“The set we’re playing is filled with a couple of the old classics and the rest is the new shit,” Dinsdale explains, his London-boy dialect aiding the description of the material. “But it’s so instant that people don’t need to hear it beforehand. It’s all good.”
He speaks with the pride of someone who knows his hard work has paid off.
“It really is bangin’! We’re pleased with how it sounds. It’s exactly what we wanted to make. We were really experimenting with that first album – we’d only just bought our equipment.
“Now I’ve been doing it for a long time, it’s all I do and I don’t really go out that much. I feel I can play exactly what I’m hearing in my head. Now it’s, ‘I wanna make that’, and then we make it.”
Brace yourselves, party people…