Aussies are known for their laidback attitude and their penchant for partying. They’re also pretty mad for their dance music. It’s no surprise, then, that Australia’s latest export, Sneaky Sound System, are causing a stir across dancefloors far and wide. Their unaffected, confident attitude and playfully boisterous melodies have garnered them 2 Aria Awards and the impressive accolade of ‘longest charting song in Australian history’ for their single ‘I Love It’.
After conquering their homeland, the trio consisting of vocalist Miss Connie Mitchell, producer ‘Black Angus’ McDonald and MC Daimon ‘Double D’ Downey have set their sights further afield and their self-titled UK & Ireland debut is due for release on our shores on April 17th. Totally Dublin met with Sneaky Sound System for a pre-show pint to quiz them on their burgeoning careers, working with Kanye West, getting your kit off, UFOs and the appropriate usage of vocoders. As you do.
Where were you playing before you jetted in?
Our last gig was in London. We’ve just basically finished a lap around the UK. Normally we have a bit of a break when we land but this time we said ‘fuck it, let’s just smash it’. It’s fine, it’s a good way to wake up, doing shows.
So how did Sneaky Sound System come to be?
Daimon: Me and Angus set up a club night called Sneaky Sundays. We just met the week before; he was playing records and I MC’d and we thought “that’s great, let’s try the night.”
Connie: I met the boys singing in the park.
Daimon & Angus: We liked the sound of her and the look of her, she’s quite pretty! She’s got the pipes… We liked her pipes!
That sounds a bit dirty…
C: It does, doesn’t it!
Connie, you were formerly with a band called Primary. Were they more rock based than Sneaky Sound System?
C: They were very rock, yeah.
D: Connie had never walked into a nightclub before she met us.
So how does the club scene compare to playing in bars and traditional gig venues?
C: Playing at a venue is a lot harder because the crowd are there to see a band and they’re like “well OK, what’re you gonna do? I’ve paid money to see this so it’d better be good.” If you’re playing in a club, everyone’s there to have a good time, they go there with the intention of having fun, so it’s like a walk in the park. It’s so much easier.
Your music is really fun and pop-orientated, how do you think it fits in with some of the more ‘serious’ electro and dance music that’s floating around at the moment? A lot of acts seem to be going for really epic, complicated soundscapes.
C: (Laughs) We’re complicated!
A: Yeah, people like that aren’t complicated, they’re just up their arse, y’know? We could do that tomorrow in a heartbeat. In fact we could make a whole record of that today. Writing a ‘pop song’, or a song that’s lyrics and melody; to be able to cut that down to three and a half minutes is a lot harder to do. It’s very easy to get a load of eight minute, one note tracks that everyone thinks is cool. I like some of that stuff too but it’s a bit tedious to continually produce and make. They (pop songs) stand the test of time. All this minimal electro stuff, how much of it are you going to remember? How much do you remember after the first time you’ve heard it, let alone beyond the next week, until the next new minimal nothing comes along?
D: Nah, it’s all a bit serious.
A: Well I think a lot of those people stand around and hide behind the facade of it being brilliant when it’s actually crap! They talk it up and it’s like ‘you don’t understand it, you don’t get it’ and there’s only a handful of people talking it up.
So where do you see yourselves in relation to this?
A: Well there’s stuff that’s just total throwaway, cheesy, pure sugar. I’d like to think we’re somewhere in the middle. Certainly we have a good time and it’s thought out but it’s not like it’s all sugar. There’s a little bit of slickness in there as well.
C: Honey and lemon!
You’ve been hugely successful in Australia; you hold the title for the longest charting single in history. That’s some accomplishment.
C: It’s been such a whirlwind the past couple of years that we just don’t take things like that in. It actually is a very impressive accolade to have.
D: It’s almost embarrassing! It’s weird, they just rang us up the week before and went “you probably don’t know this but next week, if you stay in the top 100, it’ll be the longest a single has ever stayed in the top 100.” Bear in mind that it’s the digital revolution that has enabled us to do that, but still…
A: It was crazy; we had four songs in the top 40.
D: But all this stuff happens and then it ends. You can only really revel in that stuff for a night or two.
Connie, you’ve worked with Kanye West, how did that come about?
C: Yeah, it was amazing; the boys actually set that up. They went to dinner with him.
D: It was through a fashion friend of ours who knew him so we got invited to the dinner and we ended up sitting at the table and Angus got yakking to Kanye about music.
A: When that happened, I said y’know, “you must meet our singer and he was kind of a little bit off-hand at the time but one thing I said to Connie was “you gotta meet this guy” because out of all those lot, he’s the top… except he’s found vocoder recently.
I have a pet hate of vocoders.
A: Anyone can sing with one of those things y’know? I love vocoders but when you’ve got it on every song that’s just a bit like….
D: A mosquito!
C: But you should still totally listen to the new Kanye album. I didn’t really know who he was when the boys said they were at dinner with him.
A: She was like “Google. Google ‘Kanye’!”
Connie, I believe the song ‘UFO’ holds special significance for you.
C: I went to put washing on the line and I lost some time. I got visited and they came and put some stuff in my brain. That sounds really crazy and makes me sound crazy, but I’m not because it did happen because I remember it. And they probably would come again but I’ve just been so lazy, I haven’t got around to doing what they asked me to do. But we’ve been busy so…
D: Give them our CD next time!
The UK video for ‘I Love It’ is pretty risqué, what with all the bondage gear etc. Who came up with the concept for it?
C: It wasn’t as raunchy as we wanted it to be! We wanted it to be seriously raunchy. If you’re gonna do raunch, do it properly!
A: The label wanted it to be raunchier too. I don’t know why, but we could see it getting tamer by the minute.
It’s still pretty sexy though…
C: Yeah but two of those girls were Penthouse and Hustler models so I was like, “if you’re going to be in Penthouse or Hustler then you can get your kit off.”
A: But they wouldn’t get their kits off!
Words by Sheena Madden
