O n e s t o Wa t c h GET SHAKES
CONFI DENT TO THE CORE TEXT
EMMA MCLELLAN
On the crumbling shores of the lesser known jurassic, English Island the Isle of Wight, the sounds of cutting hi-hats, ebbing, vintage synths and new wave vocals are crashing against the high tides. Award winning, Modular lovies ‘Get Shakes’ (formerly known as The Shakes) consist of brothers Matt and Darren Farrow. A seemingly pre-destined collaboration of musical talent ranging from keys, drums, vocals, guitar and basically anything they can get their hands on. With these boys, you have the feeling that what they are producing electronically is also reassuringly musical, being that they are so, well ... musical! Matt: “We try to be as active as we can on stage, walking around and trying to make the show as exciting as possible, we don’t want to be like some artists, you know especially in the electronic world where they tend to be sat behind their computers almost looking like they could be sending e-mails! We’re actually playing what you’re hearing essentially.” With these strong musical ethics as their backbone, the creative process for the ‘Get Shakes’ is the same as that of a band, even though it’s electronic music. Darren goes onto describe, “For each track we write, the process can be different, for example if Matt’s got an idea then we’ll jam it out together on drums and guitar. We’ve got our own studio in the middle of the house so we can be working on our own stuff and then come together in the middle and reach a happy medium and gel the two tracks together or go in our own direction. I suppose that brother connection kind of helps in a way. It’s not a hinderence. It’s like with people we’ve played with before we’ve had to move our goal posts to fit in theirs, so to work together is kind of the natural thing to do.” That compromise certainly turned up trumps, the trump card being their biggest hit to date, ‘Sister Self Doubt’. Think LCD Soundsystem meets Who Made Who (without moustaches) meets Adam the the Ants tribal ‘ooh waa ohh’ vocals, then you’d be getting somewhat near to the syncopated beauty of this well produced and deliciously textured song. It’s sexy, it’s bassy, it’s everything a good electronic dance song needs to be without having to include the cheesy house-style vocal break-down in the middle. Anyway, their Self Doubting Sister certainly didn’t
go unnoticed when they first started performing live on the London circuit. Darren explains “Modular Records heard ‘Sister Self Doubt’ on the circuit and contacted our gig agent. They said they’d like to include it on their second ‘Leave Them All behind’ compilation album and we were really thrilled about it. We were really big fans of their first compilation album so when they said they wanted us to be on the next one we were really pleased about that.” So that was the first real push and exposure for the Get Shakes and since then the only difficult decisions they have to make are which record company to go too, yes that’s right, they’re still officially unsigned! Darren explains, “We’re not actually tied down to any labels but we’re thinking of putting something out with the Wall of Sound. I think that’s happened because we won the Diesel:U: Music Award for best electronic act, so it’s come off the back of that. We are composing a few tracks now so we’re planning on releasing an EP in the next couple of months.” Ok, so they’re pally with Modular and Wall of Sound, they won a rather impressive prize, what else could possibly be better ... Matt, “We’ve got some exciting stuff coming up, do you know the game Grand Theft Auto? Well, cos we’ve got a few tracks featured on that which is supposed to be coming out next month.” Darren then proudly adds “Yeah and on Kevin Spacey’s new film ‘21’ we’ve got ‘Sister Self Doubt’ featured on that twice and that’s out next month as well.” It looks like these guys aren’t really going to have to do anything for the next few years because they’re going to be loaded! “Well, it’s all quite cool because the shelf life of a game or a film is much longer but we won’t let it go to our heads just yet!”