Summer is a season rife with album releases from up-and-coming pop acts, but Studio Killers' self-titled debut is interesting for a few reasons — the big one being that no one knows the true identities of the animated band's mostly non-human members.
"I'm sure that one day we'll all come out, and I don't think there will be any great surprises," producer Dyna Mink says cryptically over the phone. "[But] if it's not broken, we're not trying to fix anything right now. For the minute, I think it's going to stay that way."
The band's enigmatic lyricist and visual designer Cherry is a bit more blunt. "Only drooling idiots like publicity," she says in an email. "This kind of funky art collective is the best thing on the planet."
Their first album, more than two years in the making, is due out June 14. But Cherry, Dyna Mink and Goldie Foxx made their first appearance in the video for their 2011 single, "Ode to the Bouncer."
The song began as a tune Dyna Mink and Goldie Foxx had written for a girl band in the U.K., but the band was dropped from their label. The mink and the fox were left with a tune they knew was good, but no lyrics and no outlet to release it. While looking for someone to write a top line, they were put in touch with Cherry and, soon after, Studio Killers was born. "Ode to the Bouncer" was a radio hit in Europe, and the video now has more than five million views on YouTube.
The band members are based in a number of different places — Dyna Mink and Goldie Foxx in the U.K. and Cherry in northern Europe and the United States — and, as a result, do much of their work by exchanging tracks over the internet.
"We didn't actually meet face to face for a year, and we'd already written about three or four songs [by then]," says Dyna Mink. "I'm pretty glad that we liked [Cherry] when we met her, that was good," he adds with a laugh.
"When I saw them I thought, 'Oh f--k, it's too late to run now,'" Cherry jokes.
The internet has also been where the band has found most of its audience. Dyna Mink points to their active presence on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — where they frequently interact with fans — as a key part of their success.
"I mean, what are kids doing these days? They're on their iPads and they're in their rooms and they're on social media," he says. "I was looking at some stats on YouTube, and I think about 75 per cent of our audience [there] are 13- to 21-year-olds."
As an animated band, Dyna Mink knows that comparisons to acts like Gorillaz are inevitable, but he says Gorillaz are in a whole different ballpark than Studio Killers.
"We just make fun pop records," he says. "Look at the people [Gorillaz masterminds Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett] have worked with, like De La Soul and Bobby Womack — you know, that's a very serious musical project."
In a summer music release season where the most anticipated releases include a rapper comparing himself to Jesus, a pop act that doesn't take itself too seriously may prove a welcome reprieve. If the album does well, Studio Killers are keen to take their act on the road, but they're characteristically coy about what that would look like.
"I can't give you that information now — that would ruin the surprise, wouldn't it?" Dyna Mink says, laughing mischievously. He promises that a Studio Killers show would be "a visual extravaganza."
"Visceral," Cherry adds. "Blow-your-mind kind of shit with a lot of fun mixed in."
Of course, all of this depends on how the album does, but the band is optimistic. They've released four singles already, but the album is a signal to the world that they've truly arrived. And Dyna Mink, for one, believes that they're bringing a breath of much needed fresh air with them.
"I like to think that we stand out," he says. "I think it all adds up to something a little bit different."
by Matt Meuse via Electronic RSS
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