Cycling + > Highway 61

The Politics of Dancing

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Lazlo Shunt:
Listen.

Exactly six months ago today my band ART MATE started recording our first album. Win Wens, our programmer, tapped his old man (a Dutch shipping magnate or some shit) for the £10,000 the studio was chanting for, and we levied them with a Lidl bag half-stuffed with £20 notes. Cash, yeah? Dashell Karpets had agreed to produce, which was various jams because I celebrate his work with FVKD (2004) and The Lessons Of The White Sea Canal (2008) and was well Apple to get him on board, which was where things started to go wrong.

Dashell Karpets is the man who said no to producing Kasabian’s debut album, calling them a ‘barrow full of bullshit‘ and he famously locked Radiohead in a room and lit rafts of scented candles (they hated that) until they collectively broke down in a weeping mess. Pricks. Anyway, this fellow is a total Linus, and he’s definitely not lacing his Nikes all the way up, if you know what what. He introduced himself to us at the G-Bar one night by beating the data out of Colin Pylon (our drummer) and stealing his iPhone, which Colin still Batmans about to this day.

The first month we set up our equipment while Dashell slept in a wheelie bin he’d hand-crammed with memory foam. The second month we laid down the mental jihad beats for eight songs. The third month we listened to the beats and boshed ketamine all day while Dashell (who was facing a charge of aggravated public nudity) slipped into some half-carlton heroin use. The fourth month we recorded all the keyboard, synthesisers, keytar and electric bass parts in a burst of MDMA fuelled creativity, sweating like well dressed prisoners of war. The fifth month we did all the vocals and were on the stops. It was well nearly finished.  Dashell kicked the horse and got all Nintendo and shit, mixing down the songs at bare high speed, after becoming hopelessly addicted to amphet. Mug. Eventually we had a finished album. 8 songs. Something to show the record label. We went on a 72 hour drug binge across London and out into the countryside, ending up in Reading or some fucking grey town.

We were on the train back to London, laughing like saps (having lifted a load of LSD at the station), when my phone rang. It was Lorenzo Yoon, the owner of the studio, and the first man in London to use the word bussed, as in, ‘I’m proper bussed, yeah?’

“Lazlo, we’ve got a problem…” He drawled in a faux NY accent (like a prick). I’d pinged so much LSD that I could only grumble Devo lyrics in reply. He wasn’t fussed though, and continued talking (luckily in his own accent). “It’s Dashell…oh God…he’s burned the studio down, and we think…Christ…he might have died in the blaze.”

Turns out he hadn’t died in the blaze, but had simply moved back in with his parents in Eastbourne. All our pricey equipment was lost, our recording was lost and we couldn’t remember any of the songs so there was no chance of re-recording them, yeah, but being in a band is sooooo 2012 so we were mad chuffed anyway.

Afterwards, the record label threw more money at us, which we promptly whisked on vintage trainers,  old Russian watches, and French baseball caps, right? After all, who really gives a fuck? And what has this experience taught us?

Absolutely nothing.

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