EVIL NINE

They Live!
OUT FEB 24th (marine parade)

DJ TOUR
JAN 29 - TORONTO @ THE SOCIAL
JAN 30 - NEW YORK @ SULLIVAN ROOM
JAN 31 - MONTREAL @ IGLOOFEST AT OLD PORT OF MONTREAL
FEB 05 - BALTIMORE @ BEDROCK
FEB 06 - AUSTIN @ SKY
FEB 07 - NEW ORLEANS @ AMPERSAND
FEB 08 - SALT LAKE CITY @ CLUB SOUND
FEB 09 - CALGARY @ HIFI CLUB
FEB 10 - SEATTLE @ NECTAR LOUNGE
FEB 11 - LA @ VIPER ROOM
FEB 12 - VANCOUVER @ REPUBLIC
FEB 13 - SAN FRANCISCO @ MIGHTY
FEB 14 - CD JUAREZ @ THE HARD POP

www.myspace.com/evilnine

Don't be surprised if Brighton based Evil Nine and their forthcoming album They Live! does for zombies what Daft Punk did for robots. With stomping electro drums, '80s Italian horror-movie synths, dirty punk basslines, and a wanton disregard for genre rules, the infamously subversive dance/electronic duo create an unstoppable soundtrack for the new virtual zombie revolution.

The title track (and first single) They Live! pays irreverent homage to cult director John Carpenter's classic 1988 sci-fi ghoulfest They Live with its ultra-catchy vocoder chorus ("They walk, they lie, they love, they live!/They wake, they fall, they cry, they live!/They fight, they fail, they die, they live!"). "We love that film and the weird, crunchy, stripped-down analog-electronic scores John Carpenter creates," Beaufoy says. "I've had a massive fascination with zombie films since I was a teenager," Pardy adds, which probably explains why they also recruited cult artist Dan Mumford (known for his infamous sicko album art for Gallows and other punk/metal classics) to create the gory horror-show like album art for this particular album.

The album itself features a number of surprising collaborations, foremost is Def Jux's radical mastermind El-P, whose brutal spitting transforms the apocalyptic slammer "All The Cash."

We hooked up with him after our DJ set at Coachella last year and really got along," Pardy says. "If there was one rapper we wanted to work with, it's El-P. And he was up for something different: I don't think he's much of a dance-music fan, but he's very open-minded musically." Elsewhere, Beans (of Anti-Pop Consortium) turns "Set It Off" into a Goth-meets-hip-house burner, while David, vocalist of Kitsuné buzz band Autokratz, adds melodic New Wave melancholy to "The Wait." "I'm not sure what David's singing about," Beaufoy admits. "I think it's about getting laid after a gig and trying to slip away quietly to avoiding any awkwardness." Additionally Seraphim (from Brooklyn indie-electro seditionaries No Surrender) and Bristol scenester Emily Breeze also make crucial cameos. "To us, Emily's the female Danzig," Pardy explains. "It was great having her make ballsy punk-rock-chick noise over us pretending to be a rock band. We always like to push people to do something completely new."

Creating this army of like-minded iconoclasts is all part of Evil Nine's plan to confound expectations. To that end, They Live! features pounding tracks that will work in any club, but filtered through unexpected influences spanning '80s cock rock, The Cure, early Prince, krautrockers Cluster, Can and Tangerine Dream, vintage noise punkers Suicide and Black Flag, and newer sonic saboteurs TV On The Radio and Queens of the Stone Age. As such, "Behemoth" welds Timbaland rhythms to Black Sabbath heaviness; "Feed On You" comes out somewhere between Beverly Hills Cop and a phantom death march; "Dead Man Coming" loops soundtrack composer/Goblin member Fabio Frizzi's theme from Zombie Flesh Eaters with ragga rudeness courtesy Toastie Taylor of U.K. rap crew New Flesh; "The Wait," meanwhile, incorporates the experiments of Paul Lansky, the early synth pioneer whom Radiohead sampled on "Idioteque." "He's a mad Princeton professor who experiments with strange noises," Beaufoy explains. "We're obsessed," Pardy says. "We can usually find something positive and inspiring about most of the music out there, we then fuck it up and twist it into our own thing." Equally individual will be Evil Nine's kinetic new live show: it features Pardy and Beaufoy singing and playing dueling bass guitars, synthesizers, samples onstage, an actual human drummer, fittingly spooky visual phantasmagoria along with group's new full-length They Live!—a worthy successor to their 2005 album debut You Can Be Special Too, one of the most acclaimed electronic albums in recent memory.