J-Lo has ‘Glow’, Britney has ‘Curious’ and now it seems UK breakbeat dynamic duo, the Plump DJs, have their own fragrance to flog. In a world first for the dance scene, Lee Rous and Andy Gardner have teamed up with Swedish firm Pherocom to launch their two scents’ worth – ‘Saturday Night Lotion’.
Touted as a “revolutionary new fragrance for the clubbing generation”, the celebrity smell apparently combines a stylish perfume with passion-inducing pheromones designed to make clubbers more attractive. Pre-empting its release in June next year, the Plumps have already issued pheromone-emitting wristbands at some of their events to promote the Lotion. In fact, they love it so much they’ve even named their new album after it.
There’s just one small problem. Saturday Night Lotion by Pherocom doesn’t exist. The Plumps, it seems, are winding us up. Rous though sticks valiantly by his story – “the company already existed and we just wanted to use the name…” After some more probing questions – why is Pherocom’s website always down? Why is it taking a year to come out? – his composure cracks and he bursts out laughing. “No comment. I can’t speak anymore about it.”
Real or not, it’s a masterstroke of marketing heralding the Plumps’ cheeky return. The boys recently launched the follow-up to ‘Eargasm’ at the Saturday Night Lotion Experiment in London with the help of Drumattic Twins, Ali B and a packed house of up-for-it fans armed with the Plumps’ special wristbands. “It was a very raunchy night,” says Rous of the result. “There were a lot of people snogging.”
So does he ever wear a wristband or two? Or is being a DJ enough? ”I wear them on my ankles so no one else can see,” he explains with another mischievous laugh. “If you put them on your wrist, everyone thinks ‘oh, he’s single, he’s after it.’ If they’re on your ankle, they get the full effects without realising.”
Right now, Andy and Lee could probably do with a squirt of their mythical fragrance, having just returned from the muddy mayhem of Glastonbury ‘05. Testament to their calibre these days, they played three times over the weekend, including a primetime spot on the Dance Village stage on Sunday night. The now famous torrential downpour didn’t dampen their sets, although the same couldn’t be said for their poor tent.
“We’ve done the Winnebago VIP thing a couple of years running before, but although it’s superb, it’ expensive and once your friends find out you’ve got an Winnebago, it’s just like party central for the entire weekend. You never get any sleep, your campervan gets wrecked and all your beers get nicked! This year we had an eight man tent, but when we got there, it was literally half a foot deep with water.”
“It was a bit of a depressing sight when we first turned up but after half an hour, you realised why everyone keeps going every year regardless of the weather. The second day, the sun came out and dried out all the mud, so we ended having a really, really good time!”
‘Really good times’ have been a prominent feature of 2005 for the Plumps. ‘Saturday Night Lotion’ comes in the wake of the boys winning ‘Best Producers’ at this year’s Breakspoll Awards in February, in addition to Best Single (‘Soul Vibrates’) and Best Remix (of the Freestylers’ ‘Push Up’). Both tracks appear on the new album, along with a barrage of new dancefloor destroyers like ‘Get Kinky’ and ‘Acid Hustle’. More sonic smackdowns come courtesy of worthy additions from their mates, Soul of Man, Madox, the Drumattic Twins and Sole Claw.
With trademark Plumps’ flare, the new album offers another slip ‘n’ slide of incendiary breakbeats, surging basslines and intergalactic bleeps and squeaks. On tunes like ‘Pressure’, ‘Bullet Train’ and ‘Acid Hustle’, it sounds like the boys have hot-wired ‘80s arcade games like Galaga and Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins into their studio and played them ‘til the buttons broke.
“We’ve been making the music on Lotion for about two years now,” says Rous. “From a DJing perspective, all the tracks on there have been road-tested and work in their own right so it’s quite cool.”
On ‘Eargasm’, the Plumps famously partnered with nu-waver Gary Numan and Louise Rhodes from Lamb on respective tracks, collaborations which Rous still describes as lucky “pipedreams that just came true”. This time around though, the Plumps were happy to go it alone.
“I think the next thing we do is going to be a much more experimental and involve vocal tracks, with a much more diverse body of music. But at the moment, our music is firmly planted on the dancefloor so it’s just representative of where we’re at.”
In addition to slathering ‘Saturday Night Lotion’ all over the world’s sound systems, the Plumps have more pressing matters – like taming a brand new studio. Now where’s that instructional manual? “We’ve just updated it and spent loads of money on it. We’ve got a completely new set of tools now so it’s gonna take a while to get up to speed with them.”
“It’s a little bit daunting, but the potential is there for some really interesting experiments. I hope we’re going to come up with the goods with another album in a year’s time and make some more music to make people smile.”
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves – there’s plenty of things to do before that, including another visit to Australia (Rous tips autumn next year) and more imminently, 17 festival appearances across the UK summer. These include the Tribal Gathering fund-raiser in Luton (the UK dance equivalent of Live 8), the simply massive Global Gathering festival and, er, the Big Gay Out in Finsbury Park, where they’ll share the bill with Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Bananarama.
So will Rous be sporting a few pheromone-infused wristbands at that one?
“Probably not, although you do get a lot of very good looking girls at these gay events. They can go and won’t be hassled by really drunk, sweaty blokes so I might just wear one on my ankle. And if not, I might get talking to some chaps, you never know.”
‘Saturday Night Lotion’ is out now through Fingerlickin’/Inertia.
