If we were to apply a lazy label to this new wave it would be indie-dance. Before 1987 indie-dance didn’t really exist, but Ecstasy changed all that. Indie music changed from a monochrome landscape to a vivid technicolour love dream. Suddenly indie music, which had derived its origins from nihilistic punk and new wave became celebratory. Lads who didn’t get the gay grooves of disco or the scientific minimalism of artists like Kraftwerk found themselves loosening up, growing their hair a bit longer, necking bottles of water instead of beer and starting to dance. Everything from the loose grooves of The Happy Mondays to the lurid new rave of the Klaxons owed a debt (sometimes a very large debt) to E.
Which brings us to Bristol’s latest musical export; they’re called The Other Tribe. They make the sort of seizure inducing indie dance that we imagine would sound MDMA-amazing if you were off your face in a club or loved up in the green fields of a summer festival, but it also sounds pretty bloody great listening on a small laptop at home.
The Other Tribe first came to our attention some time ago when we featured one of our blog posts about The Milk, who The Other Tribe had remixed to oblivion and back. At this stage there were two of the bands own tracks floating around - Don’t Need No Melody and the percussive and squelchy Businessman On Diazepam. The former sounds like the motto the above-mentioned Klaxons adopted when recording their rather dismal let down of a second album and the later could have very easily been the sort of title that Shaun Ryder and co. would have used on one of their albums. However let’s not get too fixated with Mr Ryder and his recently reformed Happy Mondays because The Other Tribe certainly don’t sound anything like them and their new-age, psychedelic image certainly is a long way from the casual clobber of that band.
Instead The Other Tribe’s breed of indie dance bears a closer resemblance to something more mystic and slightly bonkers like Friendly Fires dancing round a beach campfire with an edgier Calvin Harris at their heels, whilst sexy sun-kissed boys and girls cavort and rave in their swimming costumes on a nearby terrace. New single Skirts (out September 23) is a perfect example of what the band do; it’s a propulsive sound with summery tubular clanks, falsetto vocals and indie Ibiza vibes. In fact let’s forget this whole word indie, it hasn’t meant anything for years. Let’s just go out and celebrate a golden summer and dance like deranged motherfuckers.
The Other Tribe
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