Posted on: June 18, 2009 Posted by: anfnewsacct Comments: 0

US DATES

June 18 – The Church – Denver, CO
June 19 – Celebrities – Vancouver
June 20 – SPIN – San Diego, CA
June 23 – Cinespace – Los Angeles, CA
June 24 – Abbey Pub – Chicago, IL
June 25 – Tattoo – Toronto
June 26 – Webster Hall (GBH & Webster Hall Presents) – New York, NY

Arguably the biggest band in Australia right now is Sneaky Sound System. Their single ‘I Love It’ had the longest chart run in Oz history, their debut album has gone twice platinum and at one point they had four singles in the Top 40. They played the Antipodean Live Earth concert, supported Robbie Williams, and cleaned up at the Arias, the down-under version of the Brits. Yet Sneaky are not a hard-touring rock band or a manufactured pop act. They’re certainly pop and proud of it, but their background lies in their country’s exploding dance scene.

Sneaky Sound System are Sydney trio Miss Connie (Connie Mitchell), Black Angus (Angus McDonald), and MC Double D (Daimon Downey), three very different characters bonded by a riotous sense of fun. Their origins lie in the hugely successful club night Sneaky Sundays, thus they make music imbued with frolicking nightlife energy but also flecked with sing-along radio-friendly 1980s electro-pop.

Their story began back in 2000 when Daimon met Angus at a fancy dress party and stole the flute from his mariachi costume. They became friends and decided to start a club on the quietest night of the week. Angus spun tunes and Daimon hyped on the mic. It wasn’t some trendy minimal techno joint, but unpretentious hands in the air fun, “no shoe-gazing, no wallflowers,” as Angus describes it. Still going strong seven years later, it packs in around 1000 people each Sunday, and guests have included Tiga, LCD’s James Murphy, Mylo and Hot Chip.

“I got fired from my job after that first Sneaky night,” Daimon recalls, “because we had such a good time I didn’t go to work the next day. Angus was in publishing and was made redundant the next week. We thought, ‘Fuck it, let’s keep doing this and see how far we can go’,”

Angus had long had musical aspirations. He spent time in New York as a singer-songwriter followed by four years in London developing his DJ skills on the club scene. Daimon, meanwhile, was born in South Africa and raised in the tiny rural town of Bellingen on Australia’s east coast. He came to Sydney to be an artist but ended up a barman. Once Sneaky Sundays was up and running, however, everything changed.

In 2003 Sony asked them to put together a mix CD. The result was ‘Other Peoples Music’, a housey affair that ran into edgier territory such as Gonzales and Metro Area, occasionally overlaid with live instrumentation and Daimon’s rapping. It was a success and before long the pair tried their hand at their own music. The third piece of the Sneaky jigsaw was about to fall into place.

For five years since leaving school Connie Mitchell had been in reasonably successful industrial rock band Primary but after they split, she was at a loose end. One day, as she sat in a park playing guitar to a friend, Angus and Daimon happened by and asked her to sing for them.

“I thought they were a bit dodgy,” recollects Connie, “You know, two guys coming up to you, excited, jumping around a bit, saying ‘Come to our studio’.”

They did, however, have a recording set up – Whack Studios – and when Connie sang through what was to be their breakthrough single, the contagious dance-pop of ‘I Love It’, Sneaky Sound System had their vocalist. Within days, they’d laid down vocals to their eponymous debut album which, as Angus says, “has one foot in the clubs and one foot in the pop world.” The industry, however, was not convinced.

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