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 12 May 2008 13:55 BST

Thou shalt always listen to Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip

Wednesday, 23 Apr 2008 14:39
Dan le Sac and Scroobius Pip - looking for the woman
Midway through their UK headline tour, inthenews.co.uk's Lewis Bazley speaks to the latter half of electro/spoken-word duo Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip.

After their 2007 underground hit Thou Shalt Always Kill - a blazing portion of social commentary and commandments on the dos and don'ts of modern life - was championed by Radio 1's Zane Lowe and XFM's John Kennedy, Essex electro pair Dan le Sac and Scroobius Pip could all-too-easily have rush-released an underwhelming album and made light of the anticipation surrounding their breakthrough hit.

Instead, the twosome took the road less travelled and embarked on a year of hardcore gigging, continually to build buzz with their grime pastiche Fixed and stunning crowds at festivals across the land.

Now mere weeks from the release of their debut album Angles, the duo are unleashing cracking new single Look for the Woman while on a headline tour of the UK.

inthenews.co.uk's Lewis Bazley spoke to Scroobius Pip - who takes his name from a poem by nonsense laureate Edward Lear - as he enjoyed downtime in between shows.

So last night was the Manchester show - how did that go?
Yeah, it was amazing, the turnout, the reception was just stunning, we couldn't believe it.

Was it nice to have your dad at the Koko gig?
Yeah, yeah, it's always a nice treat. My dad was at the Koko show and my mum's been at a few of the other ones, so it varies which they can attend.

Is the influence of Edward Lear solely in the name or also lyrically?
It's more what the poem meant, as it's about not having to categorise itself and being your own creature. I think he's a great poet but his style was to write nonsensical poems whereas I'm very much about it having a meaning and an end goal.

Would it also be fair to say Saul Williams is an influence?
Yeah, definitely, Saul Williams and Sage Francis have both been huge influences on me as a writer and generally in terms of how I work.

When did you first start writing?
I'd say I first started writing poetry in 2005/2006 but as a youngster and a teen, I was in little punk bands writing lyrics and you realise now that that was as much poetry as anything else. Obviously it's a lot rawer, but that's poetic in a way.

How did you and Dan meet?
It's weird, 'cos me and Dan had known each other as friends of friends and worked together in HMV for ages but it wasn't until Dan lived in Reading and I was in Essex still that we met over MySpace. I put out my solo album and was doing street performances and Dan had booked me for a gig in Reading and when I got there, he'd remixed one of my tracks. And it all went from there, he remixed most of my solo album and then we started to write songs together. And the first song we actually wrote together was Thou Shalt Always Kill.

Be blown away by Thou Shalt Always Kill below:


Having been at Koko, the crowd were repeating the 'just a band' lyric - is that hypocritical?
I find it hilarious. I mean, first of all - the whole song is very tongue in cheek, there's a lot of irony in it. So that's just one of the most perfect ironies. There's a bit later in the song where I say "When I say hip, thou shalt not say hop", a rally against the call-and-response, yet it's the one song in our set that has a huge call-and-response part! It wasn't planned like that but it's hilarious how it's turned out that way.

Did you and Dan fear that Thou Shalt.. could be just a novelty hit?
Definitely. That's why we were adamant as soon as it came out that we'd gig and gig and gig and work out what the next single was going to be because there was more to us than just Thou Shalt… With MySpace, if you've had a single you can instantly have other songs for people to hear. In the year it came out, we did 150 gigs, we just gigged our arses off basically. We've got tracks that personally I feel are stronger as well...

Here's the video for The Beat that My Heart Skipped:


How do generally write together? Is it you suggesting a beat to Dan and him honing it?
Sometimes. Most of the time, Dan'll be plugging away making beats and he'll sling stuff over and some I'll go for and some I won't. He does have the arduous task though of receiving texts from me in the middle of the night saying 'Oh, I need a beat that's a little bit country and... ' and then he has to translate that to a reality, so I don't envy him.

To read the rest of the inthenews.co.uk interview with Scroobius Pip, click here

Lewis BazleyEnd of story


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