autoKratz’s Russell Crank on their latest album, musical influences and how a wild warehouse party in East London resulted in the perfect musical match for him.
| It was musical love at first sight the night that autokratz‘s Russell Crank threw up on his future bandmate David Cox at an East London warehouse party.
“I was like sick all over his shoes,” Crank says, “his fancy new shiny shoes. So he wasn’t very happy and he was about to kick the shit out of me, but then he saw I was wearing a Devo t-shirt. So we started talking about music.” |
LISTEN WHILE YOU READ! Like what you hear? Snag more autoKratz jamz on |
The duo bonded not only over Devo, but realized they were into many of the same types of artists and records — New Order, Depeche Mode, etc. Crank had come of age in Manchester at the height of the Hacienda club scene and had been making annual trips to Glastonbury with his older brothers since the tender age of — gasp! — five.
“It was a massive spiritual part of my upbringing, where I discovered so much of the music that I ended up being exciting about,” he says about the beloved festival. “I saw Daft Punk in the dance tent in 1997 and that’s where I discovered the energy of electronica music and what it can do in the flesh when performed live.”
After that night, Crank and Cox decided to give making music together a go. Initially, they wrote and practiced at the same notorious studio as Pete Doherty‘s Babyshambles. (“Pete had done his worst to it,” Crank says. “There was gear missing all the time and you couldn’t flush the toilet or else you had to leave the building for a whole hour.”)
LEFT TO RIGHT: David Cox & Russell Crank
Both musicians had rock ‘n roll backgrounds, which heavily influenced their songwriting. They’d often start with a riff on a guitar, pass it along to the other to add a vocal or hook, then work it out on “the machines” — laptops and other software elemental for electronica music… After creating a few tracks together at that studio, the two knew they were onto something. “We were on the same wavelength, that was the first time in both of our lives it felt special, something exciting that people were gonna get.” And so it was that autokratz was born.
In 2007, French electronica label released their single “reaKtor,” and soon followed the next year with a mini-compilation of autokratz tracks, Down and Out In Paris and London.” They then decided to take six months to write a whole album of fresh material — their latest release, Animal (not to be confused with records of the same name by Miike Snow and Ke$ha).
“It was hard, but we really worked at it,” Crank says about the creation of Animal. “We were moving towards more song-writing based stuff. It feels like a body of work that works well together as opposed to just a lot of bangers.”
There is plenty of variation on Animal. It is electronica, so there are the aforementioned standard bangers, such as the aggressive, driving “Can’t get Enough” and the dance-tastic “Always More.” But the album also moves into more thoughtful territory and switches vibes on songs like the complex “Human Highway.”
Since the release of Animal, Crank and Cox have stayed busy — touring with The Prodigy in Japan, traveling to Australia with MSTRKRFT and headlining their own six-week trek across Europe. Along the way, they’ve collected critical praise from tastemakers like the BBC’s Pete Tong and worked with acclaimed French DJ Yuksek, who did a re-mix for “Always More.”
But autoKratz isn’t quite ready to rest in 2010. They did some writing over Christmas and have “loads of ideas,” Cranks says. “We wanna get some new music together and get in the studio. We’re really looking forward to doing some shows in the States and getting out there.”