Exit, Stage Left

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday February 15, 2008

Andrew Drever

Why did the rapture quit the hottest record label in the world? Andrew Drever finds out.

When bassist-vocalist Mattie Safer joined the Rapture in 2000, the tempestuous New York band had chewed through five keyboard players and two bassists in a wild 18-month period. Still, there was no hesitation in taking them on.

"When I joined," Safer recalls, "they were a band that was very excited about doing different music and whatever took their fancy musically. They were excited to be trying something new out.

"I think the credo of the band, even before I was in it, was that they were going to cover all bases, as far as they can, without any particular worry for how it was going to be perceived."

Indie-dance anthem House Of Jealous Lovers and subsequent 2003 album Echoes was infamously produced by the then-fledgling production team DFA (LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and partner Tim Goldsworthy). It was one of the DFA label's first releases.

The Rapture controversially split with DFA after Echoes. DFA was then perhaps the hottest record label in the world, so many thought leaving was a big mistake.

"We were all very new at what we were doing," Safer sighs, "and the reason we had to leave was that [DFA] weren't respecting us as a band in the sense of independent thought or independent ideas of how to do things. If we weren't doing exactly what they thought we should be doing, there was a problem."

The slicker and more upbeat Pieces Of The People We Love (2005) was produced by British DJ-remixer Ewan Pearson and indie specialist Paul Epworth (Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys), with a couple of cameos from ultra-cool Gnarls Barkley producer Danger Mouse. Tracks such as the sax-fuelled disco of Get Myself Into It and opener Don Gon Do It's squelchy bass have a sunnier polish and a more pop-oriented approach than the DFA-produced material.

Safer says Pieces Of The People We Love hasn't been the commercial success the band was hoping for but stresses that the Rapture doesn't measure its success by units shifted.

"We can go to Los Angeles now and play to over 3000 people," he says, "and that's not something we could do before. It's so nice to be in a band that some people really feel something for and defines some sense of who they are. I don't think the album was a commercial success anywhere but we can go on tour tomorrow and get a lot of people together having a really good time. That speaks more to us than record sales."

THE RAPTURE

Today, Metro Theatre, Saturday, Good Vibrations, both gigs sold out.

smh.com.au/metro

Hear Don Gon Do It

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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