Having built a solid reputation for creating killer tunes that ooze electronic goodness, Canadian outfit, MSTRKRFT have yet again served up a tasty selection with the release of Fist Of God. Since their debut The Looks in 2006, the MSTR-chefs Jesse F. Keeler and Al-P have been cooking up a dance degustation under their new label Dim Mak. The pair have refined their skills, experimenting with a more diverse range of collaborations, sounds and flavours; forming the very key ingredients of the new album.

Fist Of God certainly pushes ‘genre’ boundaries, moving from the traditional MSTRKRFT sound of noisy electro mixed with crunchy beats, to a more ‘dance-pop-meets-hip-hop-meets-anything-goes’ style; taking influence from guest vocalists like Ghostface Killah and N.O.R.E. who add their spices into the mix.

MSTRKRFT’s constant evolution could be comparable to the likes of David Bowie. One half of the band, Al-P says that in the spirit of punk rock, they’ll never stop having ideas. “We’ll never stagnate… you do it and make something happen”. Indeed this is the very essence of what has pushed these electro vanguard luminaries into the spotlight and out onto dance floors of every pumping party.

So where to from here? Well, for now, Al-P hopes to indulge in all the finer things in life: playing a few parties, sightseeing in Paris, eating good food, drinking wine… and then finish it all off with a flat white here in Australia. Yes, that’s right, Parklife 2009. The rumours have been confirmed!

How’s everyone digging the new album?

I’ve been getting really positive reports; I think we may have alienated a few of our original fans of The Looks. I think the album itself is a much bigger idea and I think we’re going to get a lot more people on board with this album, I think it has a broader appeal and I think it’s something that’s never been done to this extent before which is always a good thing so I think we succeeded over what we wanted to do for sure.

You’ve obviously nailed the ‘MSTRKRFT’ sound, the vocoders, the big crunchy beats etc, have you found the sound you’re looking for?

We’ll work this album, but we’re producers and we’re music fans and I don’t think we’ll ever be satisfied doing the same thing over and over again. We’ve started work on our next record (not so much in the studio, just mentally and conceptually), so I think it’s going to be the same thing that happened from The Looks to Fist of God, I mean we have to evolve and obviously we never stop having ideas, we’ll never stagnate. I feel we might a have a record career similar to David Bowie where he was a constant evolution from one thing to another. That’s important to us. We never want to be put in a box. We try not to repeat ourselves.

Looking at your history with DFA, then to The Looks and with the impressive list of collaborations on your resume, you’ve definitely evolved…

When we started MSTRKRFT it was a funny thing because we sat down and kind of went “OK, let’s do this, let’s have a group where we can make productions and push the boundaries a little bit with what’s going on and make some fresh things without having to worry about to stand behind a sound for a whole career”. MSTRKRFT is an incorporation so we’re kind of overseers of many different types of interests, we’re free to pursue any one of those at any given time.

Do you think coming from a dance-punk background helped with that, in that you weren’t cemented in dance and electronica?

The spirit of our music, the spirit of punk rock is what guides our approach to producing music in a sense that it’s up to us, it’s DIY, we decide, we do it when we want to do it. We can make it sound as rough as we want, as slick as we want. That’s the spirit of punk rock music; you do it and make something happen. At the beginning of our career, it’s still surprising how much output we had the in the first year and a half, it wasn’t until we started touring around a lot and getting involved in record labels where everything slowed us down.

Does Dim Mak (label three over only two albums) move as fast as you want to move, are they there with you?

Yeah, apologies to all my record labels for what I’ve just said! (laughs) the reason why we went with Dim Mak is they knew how we operated and they knew what we wanted to do. So far so good, we’ll keep pressing forward.

Will you be playing a lot of material from Fist of God when you tour alter this year?

With our DJ sets we have a real concise high energy DJ set with great selection, very musical layovers – we have two albums so we’ll incorporate the best of our productions off those two albums and our collections of samples from our remix catalogue. We try to incorporate our music and also the best of what else is happening.

You’ve got the likes of Ghostface Killah on your new album. Is it because of your label’s influence that you’ve made those collaborations?

Not at all, it was kind of the other way around. We kind of had this big concept since we finished The Looks to make an album that was really American sounding that’s pulling from American club artists. American clubs are R&B and hip hop right now. So we thought, let’s do a whole album where its R&B hip-hop artists over the top of electro tracks and see how far we can take that. We started this album straight after The Looks, the first track on the album was made in 2006, people close to us were aware of what was going on and it maybe influenced where their heads were at in terms of roster, and try to be at the crest of the wave.

MSTRKRFT’s Fist of God is out now in Australia thorugh etcetc, and you can catch them as part of the Parklife tour later this year…

Sat 26th Sep – Botanic Gardens & Riverstage, Brisbane
Sun 27th Sep – Wellington Square, Perth
Sat 3rd Oct – Birrarung Marr, Melbourne
Sun 4th Oct – Kippax Lake, Moore Park, Sydney
Mon 5th Oct – Botanic Park, Adelaide

inthemix is a proud presenting partner of Parklife in 2009! Keep your eyes peeled to our Festival Page at inthemix.com.au/parklife