MySpace.com has been a worldwide phenomenon over the last couple of years. It has helped many a musician and artist market themselves and get their music known without the help of traditional forms of media. Acts such as Artic Monkeys and Lilly Allen have topped the charts with the help of a huge online community and now Australia is catching on to another band that has followed in the similar footsteps.
Infadels are that band and they know how to start a party and like the aforementioned artists they managed to build up a huge fan base before even releasing an album. Their album is out now however and now it’s more than just their online friends standing up to pay attention.
With rave reviews the world over, Infadels are bringing their electro-rock fusion to our shores for a run of live shows and band keyboardist / screamer / mad dancer Ritchie is just as excited as we are.
“We’re just outside of Manchester at the moment and it’s cold, wet and grey so we can’t wait to get to Australia. It might be warm there so it should be great”.
Having spent the last eighteen months touring through Europe on and off the band have seen and done a lot. Their debut album We are not the Infadels was released earlier this year to stunning reviews and the band have successfully created an album that mixes both electro and rock – something often tried but rarely done with great success. However their long player has indeed been a success, consisting of rock, electro, punk, early dance and jungle beats. Strangely enough, it was created almost in protest of what they saw was a stuck-up, over-serious dance scene in their native London.
“Yeah, the dance scene in London a few years ago was a bit serious; we just wanted to make it fun again. The great thing is we’re just playing the music we love and we’re not afraid to just throw in a few different things. We just have fun with it.”
Music nerds through Europe fell in love with them almost instantly and with radio staples ‘Love like Semtex’, ‘Can’t get Enough’ and ‘Jagger 67’ getting plenty of play on our very own Triple J the anticipation has built for their trip here.
“We’ve actually listened to Triple J over the internet from over here (Europe) and we’ve even heard ourselves played which is just brilliant. It’s cool when you here things like that, it’s totally unexpected. We hear some pretty mad things; we’ve just played a Halloween show with the Scissor Sisters and we actually got referred to as the straight Scissor Sisters which was thoroughly amusing. We thought that was great.”
Part of the success of the band has clearly been the genre bending and the fun nature of the music. It seems a mission of the band to start a party and no matter where one’s tastes might lay it seems impossible to imagine that there wouldn’t be something in this music for everyone.
“Mixing the different styles wasn’t too difficult or thought out. We wanted to create an album in two parts – like an old record. That’s the one thing we were conscious of from the start. The first side is more of the party album and the second one is like coming home at the end of a night out. It seemed to work in the end.”
So with the party coming to Australia this month it seems that fans are in for great time. Since the band has done so much touring over the last couple of years one might suspect that they were a well oiled machine with few surprises.
“There will definitely be a few surprises, there always is. We work very hard at what we do. It’s very hard work but very enjoyable work and we don’t mess around. Over the last little while there have been injuries on stage so it gets pretty crazy. There have been black eyes, broken bones and I just got off the crutches myself! So far it’s been a massive adventure full of massive parties but we’ve just been smiling the whole time.”
So MySpace.com might have given them a start but Infadels have taken care of the rest by themselves. The album has spoken for itself and it seems as if there is a rather crazy live show on its way too. So when the party comes to town this month, get along, dance up a storm and make sure not to take yourself too seriously, because the Infadels won’t.
