Call Upon The Author

Forming four years ago 20 miles south of central London, Subsource are a band that doesn’t conform to any genre stereotypes. They play dance music with the intensity of a punk band, throwing in elements of dub, drum and bass and metal to create a sound all of their own. In their own words, they were sick with “so-called live dance acts mincing behind laptops, and rock acts with no more substance than the product in their hair”, and they certainly go a long way to redressing the balance. With a new album, “Tales From The Doombox”, due for release on April 5th, we spoke to the band to see what elements make up their unique composition.

Why throw together such a wide variety of genres as opposed to just going in one direction?
We dig so many things the UK puts out in terms of Dance music, and we wanted to represent as much as we could while staying true to our Rock and Punk roots. It makes us hard to pigeon-hole, but rightly or wrongly we’ve never cared too much about, and on our journey to experiment as much as possible.

You clearly meld together a variety of different genres, what sort of audience does this draw to your live shows?
Everyone’s welcome as long as they’ve prepared to sweat. It’s fairly typical of a festival demographic at our shows. We get metallers, ravers, old hippies back from chewing their lips off in Goa, allsorts. The fans know that we are anti-segregation and no-one will be judged on their appearance or musical persuasion.

There have been many comparisons to The Prodigy, but are there any other bands/musicians you are influence by?
We pull things from different places like the live energy of bands like Rage, Gallows, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Nine Inch Nails, and the fierce accuracy of producers such as Spor, Noisia, Reso to name a few.

If you could perform on the same stage as any other artists, living or dead, who would it be?
We’ve been fortunate to play with some of our favourite artists, but we’ve always said sharing a stage with the original Clash line-up would be heavy. Nine Inch Nails or Rage would be pretty sweet too. Oh and Focus. Check them out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpV5InLw52U

Faith47 has done some amazing artwork, including for your new album, how did you get together with her?
Our guest MC Kimba knows her from South Africa. We tossed around loads of images and ideas for the album artwork, and when we looked at her stuff, one particular image encapsulated a lot of the ideas and concepts that are on the record. It just so happens she was one of the most talented and respected graffiti artists in the South Africa, and was into the project.

What plans have you got after your new album is unleashed?
We are going to be back in the studio right away with plans to get new material out before the end of the year and of course we’ll be touring as much as possible, putting in some solid hours in the van, and our kidneys and livers through their paces.

You’ve got a few festival dates lined up, are the UK going to get see a more intimate tour in the near future?
We will be trekking around the UK playing warm up shows in April and May so keep an eye on the myspace for dates, then we will be taking in as much of the UK as possible post festival season which is going to be our heaviest season yet.