I saw Mikrofisch mentioned on the original indie-pop mailing list some weeks ago. On a whim I decided to check them out and downloaded a song called “The kids are all shite”. What greets me is a decidedly infectous and somewhat familiar drum machine beat, which turns out is actually my own Dr. Rhythm drum machine, a beat I made back in 1995 for a song called “Hunangsdropar” by the band Dýrðin, which Mawe and Silvi, Mikrofisch’ two members, have sampled and re-used. Seeing that the band obviously has good taste a further listen was in good order, and lines such as “each day there is another clone, they all look like Johnny Ramone” and “let’s pretend it’s 1995, and dance to Teenage Fanclub” totally seals the deal; this band ain’t shite!
They certainly like their drum machines, and even better, don’t feel the need to complicate matters overly by uneccessary breaks and crap. Rather the drum beats are deliciously simple, to the point of not changing at all throughout a whole song. They’re proud of their drum machines and even have a song named “Drum machines will save mankind”. The whole of their debut album, Masters of the Universe, can be downloaded from here. Being curious about this drum machine fixation I got this response from Silvi:
We love drum machines; drummers are complicated creatures, drum machines aren’t. They’re your friends. They’re small, they fit into Mawes little Opel Corsa and you can switch them on and off. We also love big 80s drums and have recently taken a beautiful Dynacord with us on tour just to create some wonderfully bouncy toms.
Speaking for myself, they remind me of Sweden’s Strip Squad and Wolfgang the Robot, and that’s, like, pretty cool.
So, here’s a few goodies for your listening enjoyment, and I suggest you keep an eye out for this duo in the near future:
Mikrofisch – Drum machines will save mankind
Mikrofisch – The kids are all shite
Mikrofisch – Let’s kiss and listen to bis
Mikrofisch – Disco fantasy
