The boys east likely to
Their name is full of Oriental promise but, far from growing up in the land of rice-bowls and speaking toilets, retro techno-heads THE JAPANESE POPSTARS hail from the mysterious land of, er, Derry.
The Hot Press Newsdesk, 21 Apr 2009
Northern Irish dance trio The Japanese Popstars have quietly become one of the big success stories of homegrown music in recent times. Their debut album, We Just Are, an inspired mash-up of influences ranging from Orbital and The Chemical Brothers to Vitalic, was one of the best Irish albums of last year.
Their fans include such heavy-hitters as Erol Alkan, Zane Lowe, 2ManyDJs, Steve Lamacq and Pete Tong, and of late they’ve been remixing artists such as The Ting Tings and Beyoncé.
Although serial giggers, the band put most of their burgeoning success down to the internet. “MySpace definitely broke us,” proffers the Popstars’ Decky Hedrock. “It was handy at the time, people were getting into it. My girlfriend basically kept saying to me, ‘Get yourself on MySpace.’ I didn’t believe in anything like that, but when I finally did, I realised it was like an online CV. You could put new music on there, you could attract fans and send it to record labels. It was like a demo just waiting to be discovered.
“People would come along and go, ‘Oh, I like that track there, it’s really good.’ So that helped us, and we got a couple of tracks licensed to Ministry Of Sound through MySpace. Then everything sort of kicked off. I would say Pete Tong was instrumental for us; he took us on last year and basically played the hell out of our tracks on his BBC Radio One show. Then we got a Groove Armada remix and it all just seemed to hit at the same time.”
How did their remix assignments come about?
“The Ting Tings was funny,” Decky reflects. “We were at Oxegen last year, and were chatting to a guy who runs a radio show in the North. The Ting Tings drove past, and we just basically abandoned his interview, and ran over and asked for photographs with them. They were in this wee golf cart, and the three of us were lying on top of it! But they were really nice people, and it was one of these things where we said, ‘Can we remix you? We’d be honoured.’
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