Rarely do I let bands speak for themselves, but there's an air of desperate beauty to the Thieves Like Us bio.
"Thieves Like Us met each other in Berlin in 2002.
We met in Mauer Park.
Two of us are from Sweden. One is from the United States.
We were friends hanging out in a vast foreign city. We struggled with the language and the culture. We we hadn't registered our residencies at the local city hall so we couldn't even get memberships at a videotek. We were fans of rock and pop music and would try to find places to go out drinking and dancing, but all we would hear is techno and electro. The women didn't seem to like us at all. We started deejaying ourselves.
We would play old krautrock (nobody recognized it), italo disco, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Factory Records stuff, and even new hip-hop. Later on we discovered French filter house and added this to our repertoire. Our cross over dj sets really seemed to bother the Berliners. Maybe it was the inconsistency in bpms.
In Berlin, we heard and saw enough electronic music we didn't like. We thought we could do it better so we started our own band.
Unable to gain a label or following in Berlin, we have temporarily relocated to New York City.
Thieves Like Us will soon be seeking asylum in France."
"Drugs In My Body," currently found on Kitsuné's fourth instalment of the Maison Compilation series, is so heavily influenced by basically every word in their bio (hell, the name is a New Order single) that it's astonishing to hear something so beaten and borrowed sound so fresh and so clean. The nursery rhyme chorus - sung in perfect Neil Tennant-like nonchalance - would be sung on schoolyards had the trio not chosen recreational enhancer consumption as its theme. And then there's the combination of a mesmeric winding guitar loop and a clapping house beat, which give it an anthemic greatness fit for aerosol can huffing kids doing kickflips in some forgotten empty pool. I can kinda see the movie now in my head...
It feels like years that I've been sitting on this track, but the timing couldn't be any more perfect as Kitsuné are currently holding a remix contest for this single. Have a go and witness your spin on one of 2007's top tunes get an official digital release.
Click here to download all of the tracks. The deadline for the contest is November 15.
"Thieves Like Us met each other in Berlin in 2002.
We met in Mauer Park.
Two of us are from Sweden. One is from the United States.
We were friends hanging out in a vast foreign city. We struggled with the language and the culture. We we hadn't registered our residencies at the local city hall so we couldn't even get memberships at a videotek. We were fans of rock and pop music and would try to find places to go out drinking and dancing, but all we would hear is techno and electro. The women didn't seem to like us at all. We started deejaying ourselves.
We would play old krautrock (nobody recognized it), italo disco, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Factory Records stuff, and even new hip-hop. Later on we discovered French filter house and added this to our repertoire. Our cross over dj sets really seemed to bother the Berliners. Maybe it was the inconsistency in bpms.
In Berlin, we heard and saw enough electronic music we didn't like. We thought we could do it better so we started our own band.
Unable to gain a label or following in Berlin, we have temporarily relocated to New York City.
Thieves Like Us will soon be seeking asylum in France."
"Drugs In My Body," currently found on Kitsuné's fourth instalment of the Maison Compilation series, is so heavily influenced by basically every word in their bio (hell, the name is a New Order single) that it's astonishing to hear something so beaten and borrowed sound so fresh and so clean. The nursery rhyme chorus - sung in perfect Neil Tennant-like nonchalance - would be sung on schoolyards had the trio not chosen recreational enhancer consumption as its theme. And then there's the combination of a mesmeric winding guitar loop and a clapping house beat, which give it an anthemic greatness fit for aerosol can huffing kids doing kickflips in some forgotten empty pool. I can kinda see the movie now in my head...
It feels like years that I've been sitting on this track, but the timing couldn't be any more perfect as Kitsuné are currently holding a remix contest for this single. Have a go and witness your spin on one of 2007's top tunes get an official digital release.
Click here to download all of the tracks. The deadline for the contest is November 15.
