Sneaky Sound System, the Bondi trio of MC Double D (Daimon Downey), Miss Connie (Connie Mitchell) and Black Angus (Angus McDonald) are riding a wave of success at the moment. Just a few short years after forming, the band has had Top 40 chart success, toured with Jamiroquai, Robbie Williams and Scissor Sisters, been nominated for two Aria’s (Best Dance Release and Breakthrough Artist), and come second in an international song writing competition judged by the likes of Robert Smith of The Cure, Peter Hook of New Order, Tom Waits, and Frank Black of the Pixies just to name a few.
Staring out after McDonald lost his job at a publishing house and a fortuitous meeting with Downey at a Cowboys & Indian costume party at Fox Studios, the duo began a very successful club night in Bondi called Sneaky Sundays which runs to this day. With all their success, McDonald does lament not being at the club as much as he would like. “In the last six months we’ve probably only there half the time,” he says. “We have Ajax (voted Australia’s no 1 DJ in 2007 inthemix DJ poll) as a resident there and another guy Johnny Powell and we have a few regular guests we have when we’re not there, but it is becoming harder to run the night”.
This is because they’ve been touring with the Scissor Sisters, and more recently on their own sell out tour to promote their new single. I was surprised to hear their tours aren’t as debauched as you would think. “On a long tour you don’t party too much because there’s too much work to do. Touring is very well organised. You’re on sensible hours and there’s always food and accommodation – everything’s sorted. It’s a very civilised way of doing it and it sure beats trucking around the country doing 3 DJ gigs a night,” McDonald laughs.
Part of Sneaky Sound System’s rise to fame seems to be their sense of fun and a “do it yourself” attitude. They formed their own label after figuring out the majors weren’t too supportive and they could do more on their own. “When we approached the labels the deals they were offering were so shit we worked out our sums and though “shit, we should just do this ourselves – we can afford it!”.
Likewise with their clever film clip to Pictures, which is a string of digital photographs edited together to make a story. Conceived after looking at the digital shots of a photo shoot and noticing the stop animation feel of it, the band had a few meetings with production companies, “but every time we finished the meeting we walked out thinking it was so basic we could do it ourselves,” McDonald says. “So we got a friend of ours to take the photographs and another to do the editing and that’s all we needed.”
Yet the band has a greater depth to it than most dance bands, as evidenced by being nominated for two Arias mere months after releasing their tunes. This greatly surprised the band. “We were just not in that commercial landscape at the time (of the Arias) and our songs had only come out a month before the cut off. It didn’t even cross our minds, but to be nominated twice was a real surprise. Obviously next year we’re going to be so disappointed if we don’t get nominated,” he chuckles.
Similarly with the song Pictures winning second place in the Dance/Electronica category of the recent International Songwriting Competition. “We didn’t take it too seriously because it’s not really what we’re in it for. Someone had sent our management an email asking them to send some songs, and Pictures made it to the final and another song made it to the semi final as well. It was a bit of a surprise we came second.”
So what makes Sneaky Sound System the band of the moment? They don’t have the support of a major label pushing for radio play, and their do it yourself attitude doesn’t quite gel with what we know of the Arias, and dance music isn’t really in vogue outside of the dance music scene. “The most important part is the song writing process,” McDonald says. “If the song doesn’t stack up it doesn’t matter what production techniques you apply it won’t work. We really make sure the song will work on like an acoustic guitar or piano and then we decide what production values we should apply to it.”
“I think,” he adds “DJing around clubs and at festivals both here and abroad we started to get the feel of how to work crowds. We had been working on the record for two or three years and were really working at refining it to a stage that we were happy with it. The addition of Connie gave it that finishing touch and it’s that perfect balance of the classic pop song and electronic dance music.”
Sneaky Sound System play the Dom Polsky Centre on Fri 19 May.