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From left to right: Vito, Luke and Matt.
Photo by Isobel |
When James Murphy and his friends started a record label they didn’t know they would be changing the course of music forever. “We were having these parties at our studio and we were running out of records to play,” he told us from DFA headquarters in New York. “Punk records that you could dance to. You can only put on ‘Radio Clash’ so many times, you know?”
Last year James got together with fellow music producer Tim Goldsworthy and party promoter Jonathan Galkin and they created Death From Above, a bone-crushing superlabel that makes rock sound danceable. They made Six Finger Satellite’s Juan Maclean sound like Miss Kittin (see vol9#3), rescued Black Dice from indie noise obscurity, and catapulted The Rapture into New York critics’ choice (right behind The Strokes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs). When I saw The Rapture play a few years ago, they seemed like a tortured hardcore version of The Minutemen. Today they sound like a cooler, tougher version of The Cure. Could DFA be responsible? The British press is already calling DFA “Rock Doctors Without Borders” who “find a sick rock band and give it a prescription to dance.”
“We always had a more danceable sound in us,” says bassist Matt Safer while listening to The Rapture’s first album Mirror on Gravity Records. “The reason we were so rock and so raw for so long was simply a matter of resources. We didn’t have the money or the technology to do whatever we want.”
The Rapture’s new stuff is everything hardcore and punk should be but it’s as danceable as Joy Division. Luke Jenner’s vocals have the range of an ’80s pop star, but his guitar is as hard as anyone in Victim’s Family. Vito Roccoforte’s drumming is as heavy as anything Dischord‘s ever put out. It has the same rage as Rites of Spring or Gray Matter but, when combined with Matt’s crescendo-hopping basslines, it ends up sounding like a disco version of The Fall. And all this is coming at a time when New York’s electro revival is starting to fall apart at the seams from lack of musical credibility.
Just when we thought the revolution was coming to an end, The Rapture have shown up to give it balls and a brain. All thanks to DFA.
“It’s a sad time when a record label does exactly what it’s supposed to do and everyone starts crying tears of joy and calling them the messiahs,” says James Murphy, rejecting the accolades. “The Rapture were always a good band.”
True, but with DFA giving them free reign, they’re becoming legendary.
MARCIA STERNER
