Simian Mobile Disco

Simian Mobile Disco is an electronic dance project initiated by two musicians, James Ellis Ford and James Anthony Shaw. They posses a strong experience in DJing, song-writing and producing and have been working together since the late nineties. The lads started their music collaboration when they were students and began giving their private gigs at the place they were renting. Finally, they found two more young men and formed a band called Simian. It all seemed to evolve into a huge project with many venues to conquer and many records to sell. The musicians seemed to know what they were doing as the following of Simian was growing daily. The group fused electronic with rock, which, in those times, was one of the most potential tendencies. However, both James, the founders of Simian, realized it was not exactly what they had expected. The two left the group and decided to move from stages to clubs with a new kind of music.

They named the duet Simian Mobile Disco and had good foundation to build on relying on the fan base they had established with their previous project. The first sound recording companies to work with the fresh act were the independent Kitsunе, and I’m A Cliche owned by the good old friends of the musicians. These labels released the debut single of Simian Mobile Disco, electronica tracks entirely executed at the home studio, which, despite the drawbacks of the recording, did not affect the content of the material. James Ford also continued to work as a producer and reached acclaims in this field, too, as the long player by Klaxons named Myths of the Near Future won a Mercury Music Prize. Meanwhile, recording their own studio albums was not at all a primary goal for Simian Mobile Disco as they preferred to perform live and create separate tracks working with different artists. Participation in the Club NME Tour significantly widened the audience of the duet. Finally, the two musicians managed to find a big label to release a full-length record.

This was Wichita Recordings that issued the first Simian Mobile Disco in the summer of 2007. The album received the title Attack Decay Sustain Release. Both members of the duet were committed to making a raw type of material with deliberately made little mistakes to produce an effect of improvisation. Although, the promotion of this effort was on the weak side and it failed to reach as many listeners as it could, the critics praised this work. It brought back the memories of the eighties and nineties with enthusiastic and emotional dance hits made from the top of the head just at once. Feeling they chose the right way, the participants of Simian Mobile Disco reappeared in the studio very soon. In 2008, they presented a collection of remixes based on the material of the debut effort, Hold And Sample: Attack Decay Sustain Release Remixed. Around the same time, Ford teamed up with Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys) and Miles Kane (The Rascals) to form The Last Shadow Puppets project. Their debut was one of the nominees to Mercury Music Prize. In the winter of 2009 Simian Mobile Disco began the preparation of their second long player. It arrived in summer under the title Temporary Pleasure. In a year the musicians again pleased their fans by a strong long play Delicacies (2010), which tracks match its title pretty well: they were entitled after various foods and delicacies that had been tasted by the musicians during their world tours. That time the influence of techno is stronger; however Simian Mobile Disco’s sound still can be hardly mixed up with someone else’s.