Back in the olden days of the 1990s, a band would form, gig like crazy, get signed and make a record. But that’s not the way we do things any more. Now one guy will make a tune, stick it on MySpace and maybe iTunes, get it to the DJs and then maybe form a band to promote it. Only problem, someone forgot to tell Transformer. Brighton’s killer electro outfit have earned their stripes with four years of excitable gigs and – up until now – no single to be found.
To be fair, theirs is not a sound that translates easily to CD. Positioned somewhere between the stage and the DJ both, their shows are often made up of just a quartet of drawn out rocket-powered grooves that mingle together. At their best – their destructive performance at Audio’s third birthday, for example – the crowd doesn’t get a chance to catch its breath as A Certain Ratio, Funkadelic, Talking Heads and Mr Oizo crash against each other to form ultra modern dance music with the same music scholar’s knowledge of LCD Soundsystem. With a constant stream of live shows – including a European tour – what happened to the studio. Are they the longest successful band to not even offer up a demo?
“What about Souxsie & The Banshees?” offers Johnny, singer, keyboard player, and wearer of moustaches and bow ties. “They were going for about five years.”
“I think we’re a bit fussy about our recorded sounds,” admits bassist and guitarist Craig, “or at least have been in the past. But I think we’ve almost cracked it. We wanted to try and make it sound like we sound live and in the studio that’s really hard to reproduce.”
Cinema Car, the long awaited first release is a powerhouse – a tightly trimmed version of the rawer and longer live version with production by Cagedbaby – isn’t brand new though. Cramming in melody and movement without being rushed, there’s plenty going on but not everyone liked the house-flavoured edge. Legendary label City Rockers we set to release the track as a single but didn’t like the version that came out of the studio.
“But we liked it and we thought we’d carry on with it,” says Johnny, “and now they’ve turned around and said that they like it.”
“A year later,” exclaims Ben.
“It’s got the energy even though it hasn’t got the live sound,” continues Johnny. “And the Tenth Dan and Riscoteque mix makes it a double whammy.”
Ah, the remix. Pretty much throwing in the kitchen sink, Qemist member Tenth Dan and dubstep future star Riscoteque turn it into The Rapture making a big beat record – but a really good one.
But not releasing singles has done the band no harm so far. As well as never having to hustle for a gig, they’ve also managed to blag their way onto TV. Anyone who made it through most of the series of E4 teen comedy The In-Betweeners would have seen the band play at the characters prom.
“It was quite random because we got there at 8am into a school in west London, dressed up in all our bow ties and stuff,” recalls Johnny. “They started playing the track and then there’s a room full of teenagers dancing around to silence while we mimed the track. We had to keep filming it over and over while the film the dialogue.”
“This one line, ‘John, stop eating the burgers,'” groans Ben, the band copying the line like Pavlov’s dogs. “We heard that 200 times. The cast were quite nice, and interested in us. They all wanted to sing along, so they asked us the lyrics.”
For a band without much in the way of lyrics, or traditional song structure, Transformer seem to have this immediate affect on people. It’s not uncommon to see the same crowd of devotees at their gigs having a great time and then the next gig to be full of newcomers going completely mental.
“I think our stuff is pretty instant,” says Johnny. “It’s quite banging but we also jam out, so it’s got a live edge but also a banging edge. I don’t think there’s many bands that have both.”
“And it’s all a work in progress,” explains Craig. “That’s what we aim to develop, we want to create longer sets where we jamming from one tune into the other – a constant thing, like a DJ that keeps everyone dancing.”
The band say that it takes them a couple of minutes to get into a tune when they’re playing live and the longer they get stuck in the groove the better. In the rehearsal room they’ll keep playing for hours and sometimes on stage it’s not much shorter. With a final song that clocked in at 25 minutes, one gig saw the sound crew literally unplug them while they played.
But if you stick with the long takes and the songs you probably haven’t heard before then you’ll get a nice little treat at the end. Transformer are known for throwing a load of tunes together in a kinda of bootleg-cum-medley. The most famous of these saw Contort Yourself, James Chance’s punk funk classic, get topped with Justice vs Simian’s Never Be Alone and Tears For Fears’ Shout.
“We even hit a bit of Smiths and a bit of Magnum PI the other day,” says Johnny. “It’s like being a party band – you don’t want to be too novelty but at the same time people love to hear tracks they know.”
Well with Cinema Car the first of a handful of planned releases, it won’t be long before the whole set if full of crowd favourites. Albeit stretched to 15 minutes each.
Cinema Car is out now
