Sorry you’re not in the picture Chloe, I couldn’t find a high enough quality shot of all 5 of you! Does It Offend You, Yeah? are playing Future Music Festival (event info here), and they’re super excited to be touring again, maybe James will break his leg if we’re lucky?! I think I’m most excited about seeing these guys as I didn’t see them when they played Parklife 2008, and I know they played new material then. Now they have that new material polished and ready to go, with the album finished the day I was talking to Dan. They have had a pretty fun past time, running underground raves, enjoying too much ‘excessive consumption’ and now touring with their idols The Prodigy. You can read the full interview after the jump…

Does It Offend You, Yeah? (Myspace)

In your press release I read you guys ran a club night in Reading, what was that all about?

Yeah we used to break into houses and hire out PAs, so we had the actual club nights and underground raves. That was quite a good few years before we started DIOYY, when we were in our late teens. We were big fans of speakers and amplifiers and ’stuff like that.’

So reading didn’t have much of a music scene?

Surprisingly there was quite a big underground dance music scene. There weren’t that many big clubs, so we tended to try and make our own entertainment. We’d end up hiring out a hall and putting loads of speakers in, or breaking into a warehouse and putting loads of speakers in. All the bigger sort of main clubs were playing chart music, and it wasn’t really our kind of scene as rebellious teenagers!

At the moment are you guys in the studio recording? 

We’re just wrapping up the next album, ah, actually apparently it’s meant to be finished today! James has spent the last couple of weeks doing some additional production work and retaking vocals and stuff. And apparently when I was speaking to Sweeney and James they said it should be done today so hopefully we will be able to send it over to mastering once everyone is happy with it. 

So Sweeney is your main producer?

Sweeney is our manager and James the main writer, (he and I started the band) and James just decided to go back and do some more vocals. That’s why i’ve been out of the loop for the last couple of weeks!

What about singles, I haven’t heard anything in Australia yet?

We’ve been out of the loop for a couple of years to be honest. We did extensive touring but a lot of our stuff came out really early before we played a lot of places. The album was quite a slow burner. When we did manage to push through and to come out to Australia the tunes had already been out for a year, which put us on the back foot for doing new stuff. We had to tour the album and obviously spent the year and a bit doing this album and there isn’t a whole lot of new stuff going around for us, and people will be able to hear it on recorded form and not just the live shows.

With the busy touring did that start to get frustrating being on the road for so long and not doing anything new?

Yeah towards the end of the last world tour we did. The tour of England, Scotland And Wales was at the end, we’d been doing it a year and a half two years we all started to get really sick, we’d been pushing ourselves really hard on stage each night and obviously there was quite a lot of excessive consumption going on so it got a bit grey. As soon as we got into the studio and started knocking out new stuff we started to get excited again about touring. I mean we did one tour of Australia right in the middle of the writing process, it was good because it cemented the direction that we wanted to go in with the new album. We tested quite a few tracks with the audience and we came away seeing which ones worked and which ones didn’t, and we thought this is where we’re at now.

This time it’s going to be the other way round, if you’ve already done it all it should be a bit easier on you.

Yeah we’re going to spend a week in rehearsal making sure everything is nailed down. Last time everything was a bit last minute, we didn’t get much rehearsal time and we weren’t quite sure about the track we were playing and this time it’s peddle to the meddle, these are the tracks we’re playing and are most happy with and this is how it’s going to be from now on. I’m pretty excited to be honest!

Are you going to keep the crazy stage antics? I heard you’re pretty wild on stage!

Yeah I mean we obviously feed off the crowd. If the crowd goes crazy we will tend to go crazy. We don’t often tend to get crowds that just stand there, so we’re quite lucky in that aspect. With plenty of people up for stage dives.

And this time round you’re touring with the Prodigy a lot aren’t you? And they’re you name as a big influence?

Yeah, in the 90s when I was in my teens, they were a huge influence. I bought prodigy experience as one of the first rave/dance music cds I ever bought and it’s strange that I had poster of the wall off, and now I’m on tour with them.

With the last tour around Australia, did you get a good reaction from what you were doing?

Yeah

Well… There are two producers Boys Noize and Mowgli, have you heard of them?

Yeah well I met Boys Noize in the US, but they’re harder electro stuff and I don’t really listen to them anymore. I tend to find if we play a show, all we hear is electro so it’s the last thing I want to hear!

Well… What they were saying was there’s been a real dive for electro in the UK/Europe as a band who has an electro compenent, are you finding there’s less excitement about music related to electro?

Well, umm I dunno. This sounds is definitely electronic, but the new album. But the French electro sound that was popular, with the resurgence of stuff, when Daft Punk came back and did the pyramid shows, and justice etc… but it’s faded away a bit in the last year or so. However, when I go out to a club it’s all I hear haha! Maybe, what I tend to find is if you immerse yourself in a scene long enough you feel like it’s on the decline but actually it isn’t, because you go to a new club and people are listening to it. Of course people get bored of the same old tracks now and again.

They were saying it revolved around a much younger crowd, do you guys have that too?

In the UK yes, we have a young crowd, mainly between 17-22/23 but you do get some crazy kids as well. There was this thing in the UK called nu-rave, I didn’t really understand it.

I don’t think anyone really does.

It was a whole fashion and culture, there wasn’t actually any substance to it, it was concocted by the media. Plenty of kids cottoned on to it though, wearing the skinny jeans and fluro t-shirts haha. I dunno, wait what am I talking about?! haha

Just a younger crowd listening to your music.

Well I have nothing against younger crowds in England yeah its definitely younger. In the US and Australia, Japan it’s a mixture. In England, I don’t know how they manage to dodge into the clubs!

Do you play any gigs for underages?

Yeah we’ve done a few in England and a couple in America. The main problem is a lot of kids find it hard to go to a show, because of the alcohol problem. They can’t get in, so they send us messages on myspace like ‘I’d really like to see you live but you’re always playing in clubs and I can’t get in.’ I think promoters see there is money to be made there, so you do two shows, a +14 show and then a +18 show. I used to listen to loads of music when I was 14, but I ended up putting speakers in fields because I couldn’t get into the clubs.

Do you get a really different reaction with younger kids, are they more enthusiastic about it?

Yeah, because they don’t get to go to that many shows, they’re more likely to break ankles and limbs and stuff and do crazy stuff!

Didn’t James break a leg or something?

Yeah that was more of a drunken thing, it was in Hollywood, we did a show out there before we came to Australia and he went to stage dive and caught his leg on a speaker and snapped it in half. Yeah he broke his leg just before we did the Parklife shows, he was going round with a broken leg every day, which wasn’t very comfortable.

Yeah I remember that now. He still played though didn’t he?

Yeah he didn’t even have a proper cast on his leg and we had to fly every day. If he had of had a real cast it would have broken his leg again each time because of the air pressure.

Wow no wonder you guys were worn out after the last tour!

Yeah it was pretty crazy.

Well thanks for doing the interview and I’ll see you in Perth in a few weeks.

Yeah cya soon!