A group of miscreants from the notorious Boys Noize Records stable, who are under the musical wing of none other than Boys Noize AKA Alex Rihda himself, will be arriving this weekend to make mayhem across the country, and toplining the bill will be none other than Shadow Dancer. Comprised of Liverpool-born brothers Paul and Alan Farrier, they’re very nearly rivaling their label boss himself in terms of all the noise they’ve been making.

Both lovers of techno from their early years and writing music together since childhood, their start in the music biz came during the late 90s when they built up a reputation in Manchester clubs under the moniker Pinback. Taking a several-year hiatus earlier in the decade (due at least partly to busted equipment, apparently), they were eventually reborn when they started releasing music as ‘Shadow Dancer’. In 2007 they caught the attention of Boys Noize, and the rest was history.

Over the next two weekends, Shadow Dancer will be representing their label on the Boys Noize Records tour around the country. Here the pair talks to ITM about their debut Golden Traxe album, what making noize means to them as well as shaking off all those annoying Justice comparisons…

Where did the name Shadow Dancer come from?

It’s a reference to a character from an old video game. Not the actual ‘Shadow Dancer’ game, though. Just some bad guy you had to fight in a strobelit club, so we thought it was kind of fitting. In truth, there’s loads of other names we’ve thought of since that we’d have preferred to go with.

Being brothers, do you find you both have a very similar way of producing, or do you each have specific parts of the creative process that one of you can do better than the other?

To be honest, we don’t really write together anymore, but when we did, I suppose we did have very different approaches. There were certainly plenty of arguments, caused mainly by complete clashes of ideas. A lot of tracks ended up unfinished because of that, sadly.

Did you find the process of writing your first full-length album daunting, as opposed to writing another EP?

Absolutely. “Dance” music suits the 12” EP far better as there’s a real danger of overkill once you get to a whole hours worth of “bang-bang-bang”. We didn’t want to make 13 tracks you could only appreciate in a club and, at the same time, it was important that we didn’t follow the lazy route so often used: 11 club tracks bookended by beatless, ambient pieces. I think (hope) we got it just about right, but it was a tricky thing to pull off.

Before Golden Traxe was released in February, you’d play a lot of the material live at clubs and festivals. Did the crowds’ reaction to it have an influence on the tracks that made it onto the album and the ones that didn’t?

Sometimes, yes. There were one or two tracks that we tested out and were unsure about. It wasn’t a completely accurate system as we did play something at Fabric that was received incredibly well and then – the following day – died on its arse at another venue. It didn’t make it, anyway. There’s another (unfinished) Roule style one that always did the job but it’s still not quite there. It may yet still see the light of day.

Paul, I saw in an interview from a couple of months ago that you said if you ever owned a record store, you would never stock a Black Eyed Peas record. Did it break your heart when they released a Boys Noize remix of Boom Boom Pow recently?

Er… I don’t remember saying that but yeah, my dislike for the Black Eyed Peas is no secret. I can’t really comment on what happened with Alex as it’s really none of my business and I don’t know the full story. My reaction to it is more one of complete indifference as opposed to anger or sadness. There are far worse things that could happen… so I keep telling myself.

Do you remember the first time you heard an artist you really admire play a Shadow Dancer track in their set?

Not really. The one that comes immediately to mind was Teenage Bad Girl playing Are You Now? at Tryptique in Paris (now the Social). The crowd went a little bit mad and Al and I just had big, stupid smiles on our face.

What are your favourite tracks to open and close a set with?

There’s no real preferred opener but I guess I’ll always consider Vitalic’s La Rock 01 the greatest closer. Although recently we’ve also been using the Black Strobe remix of The Rapture’s Sister Savior. But the former still wins.

What Shadow Dancer remix are you most proud of so far?

Zombie Nation’s Mystery Meat Affair. I’ve been a follower of Turbo for 6 or 7 years and Zombie Nation has been one of my favourite producers for a long time so, it was a real (daunting) honour… Tiga and Thomas Von Party gave really positive feedback straight away and it seems to have been quite popular, which is all we could have asked for.

Does it get on your nerves when people rather lazily compare you to Justice?

Yeah, but we’ve just made it into a little in-joke now. We do have very little in common, image and sound-wise so it’s confusing more than frustrating. The problem is, if you start to get pigeon-holed as sounding like one particular branch of music, there are people who will form an opinion of you based on that alone. And we like the idea of being able to produce all kinds of electronic music, not just “electro”. So…..it’s flattering, but it could hold us back in some ways.

What new producers/electronic artists are you really excited about right now?

I’ve been listening, quite a lot, to In Flagranti, Hugg & Pepp, Len Faki, Tensnake and heard a rough version of Boys Noize’s Power back in March that sounded just incredible. Erol Alkan and Alex’s Death Suite has been fascinating me today, but has given me a bit of a creative boost as it’s similar in essence to some of the new material I’ve been working on: kind of loose feeling, like older acid house stuff. Less rigidly machine-like… “Fun” is probably the best word to describe it.

Boys Noize Records tour dates:

Thurs August 27th – Ruby Tramp, Gold Coast
Fri August 28th – Roxanne Parlour, Melbourne
Sat August 29th – Metro, Sydney
Sun August 30th – Electric Circus, Adelaide
Thur September 3rd – Monastery, Brisbane
Fri September 4th – Academy, Canberra
Sat September 5th – Shape, Perth