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Media: PressHere's a brief tasting menu into the UK press we have got over the few years whilst promoting the first LP. Stay tuned for new press updates as, when and if they happen...keep reading these illustrious organs.Murder on the Dancefloor Interview with Bizarre Keep It Surreal Our Friends Electric Shock To The System Ire In The Disco Chancers in the nicest possible way |
Time Out, 8th January 2003
Barely a week into 2003 and a prime contender for Single Of The Year is already flying off your local record shop’s shelves. Electric Six’s ‘Danger! High Voltage!’ is incendiary sexed-up disco-rock; a floor-filling romp with the sparkiest sax since the ’80s; and a super-camp blast that’ll leave you crying ‘Danger! Danger! High Voltage!’. It also has a laugh-out-loud video, set in an opulent mansion, featuring lit-up crotches and copious snogging between frontman Dick Valentine and a crazed-looking woman. ‘We wanted a low-key kind of affair,’ says Valentine of the video, on the phone from his native Detroit. ‘So we just set up some cameras in my house.’ Right. And the woman? ‘That was somebody I was dating at the time,’ he deadpans, ‘but we didn’t really connect on a lot of levels.’ Valentine, as you’ll understand, can be somewhat creative with the truth. Especially when discussing the single’s backing vocals. The word on the street (and the radio and the music press) has it the person shrieking along with Valentine is The White Stripes’ Jack White. It certainly sounds like him. But the band insist it’s John S O’Leary, a Cleveland mechanic. ‘We had a contest on the internet,’ claims guitarist Surge Joebot, who’s also on the line. ‘First prize was a night out with us, second prize was performing on a recording of ours and third prize was a T-shirt. We only got two entries and one was from O’Leary. So he got first and second prize.’ Seems harsh for the other entrant to only get a T-shirt. ‘There are a lot of stains on our history,’ admits Valentine, ‘and that’s one of them. I think we could’ve handled that a lot better…’ They didn’t even keep O’Leary happy. ‘I don’t know if he had the best time on the night out,’ says Joebot. ‘We made him drive and buy everything.’ Such is the creativeness of their banter, it’s hard to know when Electric Six are telling the truth. They claim to be Detroit’s youngest band (the pictures say otherwise), but seem genuine when they explain that ‘Danger! High Voltage!’ originated in 1993 when Joebot mistakenly discovered that his guitar pedal’s sampling function and created the song’s distinctive riff. The lyrics weren’t added for years and the song finally got a low-key US release in 2001. ‘We’re not the quickest moving guys,’ he admits. What we know for sure is that ‘Danger! High Voltage!’ was picked up in the UK by XL recordings (home to The White Stripes, hmm…). Once people heard it, the track was unstoppable. Having been on the radio for weeks, Electric Six have a bona fide hit on their hands. The label expect the single to go Top Ten on Sunday. But the band are staying cool. ‘It’s unhealthy to expect anything in life,’ says Joebot sagely. Still, they were confident enough of UK success to change their name from The Wild Bunch to avoid confusion with Massive Attack’s early moniker. They’re not especially pleased with their new name. ‘When you’ve got five people trying to reach a democratic conclusion you don’t necessarily get the best name,’ explains Valentine. ‘You get the one most people hate the least.’ Still virtually unknown Stateside, the band will ‘practically move’ to the UK this year. And despite their pride in Detroit’s music scene, they don’t mind leaving for a while. ‘I’ve always said Detroit is a good place to live,’ he quips, ‘because everywhere you go is better.’ Success does mean Valentine might have to leave his day job for a while – he says he’s spent the last ten years as a bus driver, ferrying students around in Ann Arbor (a college town outside Detroit). So has he told the students about his impending rock star success? ‘No, not at all,’ he says. ‘They wouldn’t believe me.’ Thanks to a no music rule, he can’t even play them the song. ‘But I do a lot of my songwriting on the bus,’ he says. ‘I do enjoy the job and I think I’ll continue it no matter how busy we are and how much money we make.’ Of course, Electric Six may well never match the three and a half minutes of thrusting genius that is ‘Danger! High Voltage!’. The single’s B-sides don’t come close. But the genial pair seem genuinely unconcerned. ‘We don’t really think in terms of follow-ups,’ says Valentine brightly. The phrase one-hit wonder has come up. ‘If that happens, y’know, whatever,’ says Joebot. They sound like they’re just happy to enjoy their unexpected success for as long (or short) as it lasts. As Valentine says: ‘After years of being a zero hit wonder, this is much better.’ |
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