Concord Dawn keeps fans on their toes

Concord Dawn's Evan Short and Matt Harvey.

Evan Short is feeling much better now, thanks. Not long ago he was wondering how the new Concord Dawn tracks he wrote with Matt Harvey would fit on one record.

"I was like, this is going to be a weird album," he says, over a coffee at Verona on K Rd. "It's all over the place. But when I put it together it flowed. It practically sequenced itself."

It's just as well after their previous effort, Uprising, achieved gold status and won the pair the kind of acclaim usually reserved in this country for the rock fraternity. Before they won a bNet and a New Zealand music award, Concord Dawn were the hard kids of the dance scene, purveyors of dark, industrial beats that looped for hours.

Then came the track that had dancefloors lighting up at a sensible time of night, and not necessarily in dingy, basement clubs. Morning Light, featuring Short's synthy vocal refrain, "Please don't cry ... " was almost as big a pop song as it was a drum'n'bass hit, and was released on Digital's prestigious Timelesss label.

Scribe pitching in on Get Ready, and Salmonella Dub's Tiki Taane on Don' Tell Me only accelerated their mainstream acceptance. Singing along became the norm at Concord Dawn gigs. So did air-guitaring Slayer-style to Raining Blood.

Chaos By Design, their fourth album, is due early next month. And while they're not about to second-guess the reaction, Short says he and Harvey are quietly expecting it will "scare our fans, challenge our fans and bring in new fans".

Things are off to a promising start, with a cross-section of well-known drum'n'bass labels already cashing in. Goldie's Metalheadz have snapped up the rights to One Night in Reno, Broken Eyes and Say Your Words, the latter the jewel-toothed producer is remixing himself. The track will also provide the ambience for a Fifa video game.

"It doesn't necessarily mean we'll sell that much more but it does give you a certain amount of respect," says Harvey. "It's another boy-scout badge. You can throw it after your name on a party flyer or charge an extra £100 a gig or get another 10 gigs a year, or get another 20 people who don't know much about drum'n'bass to come to a gig because it's the only drum'n'bass they know."

Fans of Uprising will be pleased to know there are just as many epic hooks and climactic breaks on its follow-up. But there are also a few surprises. Never Give Up On Love, which guest vocalist Taane opens with the line, "Now gimme that soul", kicks off with a cruisy R&B guitar lick before the breaks come barrelling in. It's a song with a verse, bridge and chorus, and not, says Harvey, "just bloody techno music going round in circles".

Inevitably though, the more accessible the track, the bigger the backlash. Seasons, a complex, 18-months-in-the-making opus of grandiose strings, ambient synths and vocals care of Gramsci's Paul McLaney, has polarised fans on a local music site. Harvey isn't fazed. If a track is unusual enough to cause such a reaction, those who love it will probably buy it - better than a mediocre one yielding no sales.

"There's a whole drum'n'bass scene on the internet and there's a whole drum'n'bass scene that exists in the real world and they're two really different things," he adds. "You could play an awesome gig and drop all your favourite party tunes and if 10 uber-nerds stand around stroking their chins thinking, 'Oh that was rubbish, it was all cheesy drum'n'bass', and the other 490 people have a good time, those 10 people will post online and say that was a really crap gig. So it gives you a distorted picture of what's really happening."

Concord Dawn have always been media-savvy and business-minded. Before releasing Uprising, they left the Kog stable to start up their own label. Last year Harvey moved to Vienna to expand their market in Europe.

Musically, they have a knack for picking the right vocalists at the right time. On Uprising it was Scribe on Get Ready, just as his success was about to peak; on this album they were looking for "a black soul diva momma who worked in a factory in Chicago for 30 years kind of voice". Taane recommended Wellington's upcoming - and young, fair-skinned - songstress Hollie Smith, to balance out the gritty vibe of Say Your Words.

Chaos By Design is also true to its title, in that Short and Harvey discussed how it should sound before heading into the studio.

"There were a lot of people going, write us a Morning Light for the label, mate! Write us a Don' Tell Me for the label!', " says Harvey. "You don't want to be coughing out the same [stuff] over and over again. Our existing audience, too, are getting older at the same rate that we are, and as you get older you change in what you like. You stop eating KFC and start going to nicer restaurants."

Though still self-managed, Short and Harvey insist their musical savvy always overrides their business nous. Now their body corporate includes an accountant, a PR person and a booking agent. In the meantime, scoffs Harvey, "I know dentists and doctors who write more music than we do."

But it's unlikely we'll be hearing anything as memorable as Broken Eyes or Say Your Words coming out of the medical fraternity any time soon.

Concord Dawn have their rock and jazz backgrounds to thank for that, says Short.

"It's not like we go out of our way to write anthems, you just write something that makes a point. Although it would be stupid not to make them as big and epic as they really need to be."

Harvey: "Those are the ones everyone likes. If you write one or two anthems a year that's enough to keep you touring around the world playing gigs all over the place. The big tunes are what it's all about."

LOWDOWN

WHO: Concord Dawn, aka Matt Harvey and Evan Short

CD RELEASES: Concord Dawn, (2000), Disturbance (2001), Uprising (2003), Chaos By Design out March 20 (2006)

EXTRA-CURRICULAR: Harvey has played drums for hip-hop, ambient and acid jazz groups; Short has played guitar for metallers Day One and bass for punk band Kitsch.

TOUR DATES: Vesbar, Auckland, March 2; Catalyst, Hamilton, March 3; Orientation, Palmerston North, March 4; Fu Bar, Auckland, March 11; Subculture, Queenstown, March 17; Bar Xcel, Timaru, March 18; Babalus, Whangaparoa, March 24; Subnine, Wellington, March 25; Ministry, Christchurch, March 21; Refuel, Dunedin, April 1.