Friday 4 August 2006 marks a very dark day in music history, for this is when Jesse Keeler announced that the Canadian indie rock/synth duo Death From Above 1979 were officially splitting up.
I may have come to love DFA1979 late in their brief lifespan, but my entree was all the same thanks to a catchy ditty from Brazilian sextet Cansei De Ser Sexy. The song was Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above and intermingling the upbeat synths were bursts of bare drums and gritty guitars that instantly pricked up my ears and left me wondering “what was that?”. It wasn’t until I saw the video, that the chorus made sense as homage to DFA1979 (the elephant noses said it all).
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Cansei De Ser Sexy – Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above from the album CSS [ buy ]
Of the tracks on their studio album You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine the song Romantic Rights is the one that really excited me. It was urgent from the onset, moving along at such a pace I couldn’t help but be carried along. The bass guitar start it off with grit and anger before the drums kick in to propel it along even more forcefully, while Sebastien Grainger’s vocals soar above the noise in that high-pitched whine. There’s a youtube video of DFA1979 performing Romantic Rights on Late Night With Conan O’Brien, and Sebastien is pounding the drums so hard his arms give out halfway through the song and some other guy hops on to finish it off for him. Brilliant.
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Death From Above 1979 – Romantic Rights from the album You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine [ buy ]
Fuck I love that song.
Fuck I miss DFA1979.
All good things come to an end and so it was with DFA1979. Since parting ways, Jesse Keeler and Sebastien Grainger seem to be pursuing the two genres whose combination proved so compelling in DFA1979: Jesse is riding the gritty electro rock wave as one half of MSTRKRFT, and Sebastien has gone downbeat indie with his support band Les Montagnes.
MSTRKRFT emerged soon enough to remix some of DFA1979′s tracks on almost-entirely-brilliant remix album Romance Bloody Romance : Remixes & B-Sides and have since gone on to release their own studio album The Looks. I don’t know that their album excited me much (certainly not as much as DFA1979 had), but the remixes they’ve done of Metric’s Monster Hospital, Wolfmother’s Woman and Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. have helped build a very solid reputation for creating some absolutely stonking club bangers. Although The Looks didn’t entirely float my boat, their remix of Street Justice is a song that rates fairly high on my iTunes, and for good reason too.
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MSTRKRFT – Street Justice (MSTRKRFT Remix) from the album Street Machine 12″ [ buy ]
In comparison to MSTRKRFT’s swift dominance of the dance charts, Sebastien seemed to disappear from sight. My first experiences of his solo work weren’t too good to be honest. I thought he’d gone all soft and folky, when I was hoping for something even vaguely similar to what MSTRKRFT was doing. Thankfully my apprehensions were proved unnecessary as song Are There Ways To Come Home? was released to what seems to be fairly wide appreciation. It’s a beautiful song. A hot song.
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Sebastien Grainger – Are There Ways To Come Home?
I’m sorry if this comes across as complete fanboy geekery but DFA1979 are a band that came out with some fantastic songs and a sound that I haven’t been able to pick up in the bands that have since emerged to take their place in the dance rock space. That and I’m angry I missed out on seeing them live before they retired to Splitsville.
I’m all about the unfinished business.
Cansei De Ser Sexy @ myspace
Death From Above 1979 @ myspace
MSTRKRFT @ myspace
Sebastien Grainger @ myspace
