Evil Nine’s new album sounds as startling as the duo look and, as for their supporting live show, well, it has to be seen to be believed. We meet the duo and discover the M-Audio and G-Force kit that is helping out this most outstanding of dance duos…

Pat Pardy and Tom Beaufoy aka Evil Nine have been remixing, producing and DJ-ing for the best part of a decade. They signed to the Brighton dance label Marine Parade in 1998 using the, some would say, ‘traditional’ demo tape route. Their tape was allegedly helped along its way by one Jemma Griffiths who worked at the label. (As Jem, she has since gone onto to release the top 10 hit They and had her music featured on everything from Grey’s Anatomy to OC and as the theme to Celebrity Love Island.) The resulting album, You Can Be Special Too, put the duo very much on the dance music map winning the Breakspoil Award for Album Of The year and eventually led them producing a live album set for Fabric (a club in which they regularly DJ at) and a compilation for the prestigious Y4K label.

However Pat and Tom have been quiet on the actual production side of music making since then, concentrating on their remix and DJ work. But that looks set to change with the release of a new album, They Live!, on Marine Parade. It is, quite simply, a zombie fest with the band adopting the genre for the look and sound of the album. The ‘too catchy’ single of the same name has been ripping up clubs everywhere and the accompanying YouTube video is a cross between The Office and a John Carpenter flick (if you can imagine such a thing!). But if you’re thinking that this combination of hard-edged dance and zombies is a flash in the pan novelty thing then, fear not, because the resulting music is as twisted as it is clever. Pat and Tom have ripped up the rulebook and taken elements from those 70s and 80s gore fests and some of the soundtracks both within the films and in the music of the time to come up with a real melting pot of styles and textures.

They also have a live show that defies expectation to a similar degree. No leaning over a laptop and pressing play as you might find with some dance acts. Oh no. These guys both play bass so will be leading with very much a performance angle and real drums, while samples will be triggered via a synth bass and M-Audio trigger Finger.

“Each track when we play live will have a set of samples from the album which I will be triggering live with my bass and I’ll also be triggering G-Force’s Minimonsta synth for some extra lead lines,” Pat says. “I use the M-Audio Trigger Finger too. I use it with Ableton Live. When we go out DJ-ing I use it with the laptop just for triggering samples and at the moment we are using it to trigger extra loops for the live show.”

But that is not the only M-Audio piece of gear that has a role on stage…

“We use the Fast Track Ultra HR USB interface,” Pat recently told Computer Music magazine. “It’s an 8 in/8 out 19-inch rack-mount card with eight preamps. We’re using it as our main audio card when we play live. It is a nice rack-mount card and it sounds fantastic. I’ve always been impressed with M-Audio stuff. With out first album the whole thing was done with a Delta 1010 interface. We’ve since got a Lynx Aurora converter, made by a US company, and that cost around £2,500. It is fantastic, sounds great, very clean and is very nice but I still prefer the warmth we get from the Delta 1010!”

On the compositional side of things Pat is a big fan of his soft synths as we’ve already seen with his use of G-Force’s MiniMonsta. As you’d expect this also has a role in the studio…

“We are really into that old sound so the G-Force M-Tron and MiniMonsta fit in well with what we’re doing [with the latest album]. We’re big fans.” By that ‘old sound’ Pat is referring to the Tangerine Dream, Prince and other classic references Evil Nine have reproduced for They Live! It’s an album well worth checking out to see a band on top of their game and pushing all sorts of envelopes. And if you wish to see that live act – and two dance heads wielding bass guitars should be enough of an attraction, even aside from all the zombie antics – then get yourself over to one of their live shows which are happening imminently (see list below).

Evil Nine’s They Live! album is out now. 2008 Live dates are as follows

27th September, Wax On, Leeds (DJ set)
3rd October, IBar, Bournmouth (Live set)
4th October, Custard Factory, Birmingham (Live set)
16th October, Fez Club, The Priory, Cambridge (DJ set)
17th October, Stealth, Nottingham, (Live set)
24th October, Urban Gorilla, Sheffield (Live and DJ sets)
27th October, tba, Leeds (DJ set)
31st October, Sugarbeat, Edinburgh, (Live set)
6th November, Digital, Brighton (Live set)
7th November, Fabric, London (Live set)