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| VIEW EVENT INFORMATION: The 2 Bears |
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The 2 Bears In The Boiler Room |
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About the person The 2 Bears:
Art: Music
Genres: Electronic, Turntablism, Indietronica, House, EDM, Alternative Dance, 2-step, Hip Hop, Soulful House, Electronic Dance, Dance, Electronica, Alternative, Club, Techno, Electro, Neo Electro, Leftfield, Hip House, Leftfield House, Leftfield Hip Hop, Deep House, Synthpop, Electronic Dub, Dub, Dub Techno, Dubstep, Tech House, Electro House, Electro-Dub, Disco, Disco House |
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Notable Organizations: YouTube, Boiler Room
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| The 2 Bears are a London-based musical duo formed in 2009 composed of Joe Goddard (of electronic band Hot Chip) and Raf Rundell.
It may seem a strange proposition but perhaps there is a collective consciousness that can leave one club flat and makes one club fly; a presiding force that guides people through the peaks and troughs of a DJs record selection. So, what's the magic that makes one night legendary and another just a bad hangover? It’s a question that The 2 Bears - Raf Daddy and Joe Goddard - have long mulled over in the studio whilst in the extremely commendable pursuit of trying to create the perfect party record.
Raf Daddy: When I first moved to Brixton, Basement Jaxx were doing parties in the pub at the end of my road. Mad nights where people like Thomas Bangalter or DJ Sneak were DJing. Everybody’s there, everybody’s welcome, everybody knows each other and it’s a blast off. That’s the spirit of good dance music - from Aba Shanti to the Heavenly Social to Fabric to Horsemeat... Wherever it works!
So The 2 Bears then. Two men who know enough about house music to make it effortlessly. Two men who – thankfully - still believe in the redemptive power of the communal dancefloor experience. The idea to make music together came after prompting from a mutual friend.
Joe: This is 100% true. It came to a friend of ours one night in a feverish vision. He rang me the next day and said, “You’ve got to start a band with Raf and Joe Mount from Metronomy. All of you are big and hairy. You’ve got to call it the 3 Bears.”
Raf: The thing is, Joe Mount’s lost a bit of weight now though. It would have to be The 2 Bears and an otter.
Raf Daddy – aka Raphael Rundell – met Joe Goddard (taking time out from his day job as one fifth of boundary pushing South London electronic group Hot Chip) through a party scene that saw them share deck duties at the legendary Greco-Roman parties. Upon unassumingly venturing into the studio in an attempt to replicate some of the records that they had found themselves lost in the night before, Raf found himself laying down vocals over Joe’s skipping, bassomatic backing tracks safe in the knowledge that they’d soon be replaced by someone with sweeter, more melodious tones. In the end, it was Raf’s voice that characterized and personalized The 2 Bears.
Raf: It was never my intention to be a singer…
Joe: I could see the a gradual process of Raf thinking, “Am I allowed to do this?” Pretty quickly he kind of grew into the role. On tracks like Be Strong and Take A Look Around, Raf is channelling his love of strong black American diva vocals by almost becoming a character in a way. I always find myself gravitating towards music with personality, with flaws.
Their first forays in the studio produced both the sublime and the ridiculous. In the latter camp, Mercy Time, a frankly berserk re-rub of Mercy Mercy Me. In the former, Be Strong - a paean to everyone from Steely Dan to the Wu Tang Clan via The Beach Boys and the Art of Noise that’s become the symbolic blueprint for The 2 Bears sound. It was also arguably the finest house record the capital has produced since London X-Press back in 1993.
Joe: A massive part of the appeal of making music with Raf has been a deep education in house music. I thought I’d understood house music for a long time until I met Raf. It’s really such a huge part of his life. It’s been a fun thing to learn a new discipline, really getting to the heart of what makes house work.
Inspirational noises came from one-off house and garage records sought out the morning after the night before alongside work by producers
Joe: One of the key things we bonded over was mid ‘90s Masters At Work records. They are the masters of the perfectly swung hi-hat, definitely ones to aspire to.
Raf: Basement Jaxx. The KLF. Saint Etienne. The first Glastonbury I ever went had a huge impact on the way I thought about music. It was the first one that had a dance tent. They had Leftfield and Underworld, the Chemical Brothers… all of those people playing under canvas. Growing up in a time where those people were making albums as opposed to just one off tracks, that’s a massive influence - influential in attitude if not directly in sound.
The duo’s first two EPs - released on one of the most consistently on-the-money labels in dance music, Southern Fried – charted Raf and Joe’s progress from muck-around-in-the-studio to DJ box staple, from the stoned soul cover of Sade’s When Am I Gonna Make a Living? To the joyous sunrise-gospel of Church. With minimal effort and maximum respect from their peers, tracks began to be hammered in clubs and on radio by the likes of Andrew Weatherall, Erol Alkan, Pete Tong and Annie Mac. This summer’s Bear Hug EP cranked things up yet another notch with Chris Moyles giving the track some early morning airings and Elton John and Paul McCartney declaring themselves fans.
Joe: That’s been the most massive shift of scenery for Raf. He was used to doing club promo, to sending out records to all these DJs, trying to get reactions back. Now they’re all playing The 2 Bears records!
Autumn 2011 sees the release of the first The 2 Bears long player, Be Strong. A London record through and through, it ducks and weaves to the myriad sounds of the city. Alongside tracks like Be Strong, Church and the mighty Bear Hug – a pummeling treatise on the benefits of the peak time dancefloor cuddle – Raf and Joe mutate genres into previously unheard territories of dancehall country on the bouncing prison yard lament Time In Mind and garage reggae on Heart Of the Congos, a track that manages to simultaneously channel both Wookie and early ‘80s Madness before placing them each at a system in the heart of Notting Hill Carnival at dusk.
Raf: Heart Of The Congos is very much about living in London, being obsessed with Jamaican music and everything that entails. It’s basically about going to see a Congos gig.
Joe: I think London is the biggest single influence on the record. It’s the nice thing about the relationship we have. We’ve spent the last fifteen years going to the same kinds of clubs, be it Soul Jazz or Basement Jaxx, Twice as Nice… also being in the same venues going to see rock’n’roll bands. When we looked back at things, there wasn’t just similarities in the records we were buying, it was where we were buying them from too.
Over its ten tracks, Be Strong conjures up that elusive spirit of the dancefloor without pretension and with ultimate precision. It’s a soul record in that it’s from the soul, wearing its imperfections with pride. It’s a dance record in that it’ll get you off your seat. It’s a London record in that it couldn’t have come from any other city in 2011, echoing the glorious schizophrenic sound of a late night cab ride listening to a radio with a mind of its own.
A triumph, then. See you when the lights go up. |
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