Teeth @ Forum
This is a FREE gig at Forum
127-129 Devonshire Street
Sheffield
S3 7SB
/// Teeth
Teeth; they’ve recorded in the same studio as Madonna, successfully cracked Will Self and Lady GaGa’s Twitter account and been reviewed on Pitchfork for a song they’ve played once and will probably never play again. Oh, and they’ve become one of the most exciting and vibrant bands to come out of London in a long time.
The tall blonde guy you’ll see cradling a Mac laptop at their live shows is Ximon Tayki, premier Twitter hacker and lover of chaos. After being introduced to Veronica So by a mutual friend, Ximon asked her to join his then band Little Paper Squares. After a while, the two realised the dynamic had changed since Veronica’s arrival and left to do their own thing.
But with just a guy on laptops and a girl on vocals, the Crystal Castles comparisons came flooding in thick and fast. There was only one way to try and stop the flow. Enter drummer Simon Whybray, found via a MySpace plea for someone who knew their way around a kit and Teeth (or TEETH!!! /T3ETH/T∑∑TH... whatever) was born.
Armed with some old beaten up equipment but plenty of fresh ideas, the gang of three recorded whatever spilled out of rehearsals (although that term can probably only be used in conjunction with Teeth in the loosest sense possible) and whacked it up on the internet for anyone who was interested in hearing it to download. Hip US media outlet Pitchfork soon picked up on the FREE JAMZ FOREVER EP, describing ‘Totally in My Way’ as a “fuzzy mushmouthed rumpshaker” and making associations between it and the work of LCD Soundsystem main man James Murphy.
Since their beginnings in 2008, Teeth have been taking their chaotic dance-punk to the masses, touring the country this year with New Young Pony Club and Is Tropical, bagging after hours slots at Camden Crawl and The Great Escape and playing many a warehouse party in their natural environment of East London. The latter is where they feel more comfortable, enjoying the space warehouses offer to run around and get involved with the audience in. They’ll even go so far as to tell you the best place to see them live is at a “really late night warehouse dance party”.
Pitchfork might have jumped on board fairly quickly but it wasn’t just those across the Atlantic who were intrigued by Teeth’s hard-to-define sound (“Deconstructed dance”? “Thrashing electronic nonchalance”? “Extreme noise-punk terrorism”?). Amongst other offers of one-off releases and DIY collaborations, one of the UK’s finest independent labels Moshi Moshi started courting the trio, with the intention of releasing a 7”. There was just one problem - how to get the live sound down on record. The Dalstonites made various attempts to get it right - using professional studios like Psalm, hiring friend Jacob Cooper (Bark Bark Bark/The Mae Shi/Signals) for production duties - but none of it worked. Not until Rory Brattwell (Test Icicles/Kasms) was brought in and everything clicked.
With See Spaces and Time Changes ready for release and talks of an album in the pipeline, the time for off-the-wall, futuristic noise fun - the time for Teeth - is upon us. Get ready for the most intense, enjoyable brain frying of your life.