The music world is always experiencing the trend of the supergroup, designed for artists to spread their creative wings and keep that spark alive. Some are more likeable (and listenable) while more will fall flat in their intentions.
For fans of either UK group The Music or The Streets, those with their ears to the ground couldn’t have been more surprised when whispers of a collaboration between the frontmen of the two acts began surfacing well over a year ago.
And for fans of both? Well, they were positively frothing.
“We haven’t really done a big push of the material,” explains Mike Skinner, the man behind The Streets and arguably one of the most genre-defying albums released in the new millennium, Original Pirate Material. “But there were definitely those fans at the beginning,” continues Skinner, “who are really into what we’d been doing individually before; those are who tend to be most vocal.”
Skinner is talking about his new partner in crime: the distinguished pipes of Rob Harvey, frontman of alternative rockers The Music. While The Streets toured Australia one last time for the Parklife Festival in 2011, The Music – creators of the instantly recognisable track “The People” – had just announced their hiatus.
Despite the two of them sharing the same manager, Skinner suspects the initial seed for their coming together now as The D.O.T was planted while being right here in Australia.
It was back in 2005 and both The Streets and The Music were on the bill for touring festival. “We were very much in our own camps at the time, but the Big Day Out tour is probably the most unique festival in the world,” explains Skinner.
“It’s actually been going on now for so long online. A lot of the fans have had over a year now to get to know it.” – Mike Skinner
“Everyone travels from such a long way away; the Australian festival tour scene is the place where you really meet a lot of people who you might not usually come into contact with.”
Cut to the present day and The D.O.T have released their first album, And That. However, the approach taken to this point has certainly taken the use of the internet to another level.
Skinner explains the process: “It’s actually been going on now for so long online. A lot of the fans have had over a year now to get to know it,” says Skinner of their debut album.
“So for them, it’s sort of an old story. It’s the rest of the world who didn’t necessarily like what we did before anyway or weren’t major fans – they’re the people who have sort of been pleasantly surprised that there’s something new that we’re doing.”
Articulate, gracious – and with lots of friendly ‘you know’s, and modest ‘sort of’s scattered in his speech – it’s hard to remember the days when Mike Skinner had his film clip for “Blinded By the Lights” banned from numerous television stations for its explicit scenes depicting sex, drugs, and violence.
One thing that hasn’t changed in the London resident however: his tenacity.
“I think without realising it, most music you hear is signed to a label. There’s not actually that much music that is completely unsigned,” Skinner says frankly. “The old world is the whole trying to sell people a load of CDs. Now, even in the world of Spotify and stuff, there’s just no money in that. It’s not really a business. That side of things is more just giving it all away.”
The D.O.T have found themselves in the position that many would relish – cutting out the middle man bullshit that often comes with the fickle side of the industry and Skinner could not be happier.
“The D.O.T is completely unsigned and because we do everything ourselves, you don’t have to have the big release date where you do all the interviews and have the big launch and suddenly it’s all happening quite quickly. We can just do it really slowly and we really believe in doing it this way because that’s the modern world,” he stresses.
So a website was created in 2011 and slowly but surely, dribs and drabs of brand new, highly anticipated music – some complete with film clips – became available from the underground and the men behind it even asked their online audience which tracks they’d like to see on the official release.
Skinner agrees that since then it’s all been, “quite gentle and slow and I think that’s just how it will continue. It will hopefully just creep up on people.”
Despite calling off the project that gave him a career spanning 10 years and five albums, The Streets creator has his reasons, and it becomes clear how important artistic inspiration is to him.
“After you’ve been doing it for a few years, it all becomes quite an oiled machine,” the performer and producer describes patiently.
“With The Streets, you’re doing shows and you end up with this team who all know what they’re doing. I didn’t necessarily think that that was the most creative space and I think it’s important to put it all down and start again. If you’re a creative person, you need a different structure to really bring that something different out of you,” he clarifies.
Continuing his train of thought, “I think for as long as possible it should feel like you don’t know what the hell you’re doing or where the hell you’re going because after a few albums, you feel like you know what people want or you know what people expect.”
“The old world [trying] to sell people a load of CDs. Now, even in the world of Spotify… there’s just no money in that. It’s not really a business.”
Skinner is able to relate from his own experience as The Streets and he agrees before adding, “Every band has it when they go into the studio to make a new album. As they make more and more music it all gets quite solidified.”
Using the Killers as an example, Skinner says, “even if they listen to A$AP Rocky or Grimes, you know when they go into the studio they need to make a Killers album. If they didn’t, it would freak people out.”
When you start something new, you don’t have such a problem. “Exactly,” you can hear the Birmingham native nod. “You can just do whatever the hell you like! And weirdly enough, I think people get turned on by that as well,” Skinner quips.
Although there will always be those listeners who aren’t turned on by The D.O.T; a fact Skinner says both he and Harvey accept easily. “Because there’s Twitter and stuff, we have a relationship with The Streets fans, where we sort of know them because they’ve been to so many shows. There were a lot of people who were into what The Streets was,” he humbly skims, “and just wanted more of that.”
“But that’s really gone now,” he states firmly, “and the psychotic core has either moved on or they’ve taken to The D.O.T.”
For the Australian fans who have “taken to The D.O.T”, will there be a visit for them soon? Skinner chuckles, agreeing him and Harvey need to visit the shores from whence the new duo was born.
“I think we’ll probably come out and do a few club shows, hopefully early 2013. That’s the aim and it’s all going on now, we’re just trying to sort it out!”
And That is out now through , read the Tone Deaf review here. For new material from The D.O.T. head to their official website.
