Hot Hot Beat

There’s a refreshing lack of bullshit to Count And Sinden geezer-in-chief Joshua Harvey (aka “The Count”). Canvas his opinion on The xx’s Mercury prize win, for instance, and he’ll tell you straight up that, while he loves the album, he doesn’t go along with the media chatter about it representing a Great Leap Forward for British music.

“Personally, I don’t get the experimental thing at all,” says the bubbling-under remixer, who under his Count and Herve alter-egos, has overhauled artists such as Roisin Murphy and New Young Pony Club. “I love the album, it’s beautiful. However, it sounds like a lot of lo-fi stuff from the late '90s – Arab Strap and what have you. It makes you wonder, well, what is the Mercury for? For weirdness, I don’t think any album matched the Wild Beasts. Maybe it should have been rewarded.”
He’s just as straightforward explaining how Count and Sinden, an unabashed clubland outfit who describe their dance-floor specific sound as ‘global bass’, ended up on indie powerhouse Domino, aka the label that gave the world Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand and Villagers. Plenty of majors were banging on their door on the back of propulsive single ‘Beeper’. But only Domino were prepared to give them all the time they wanted to work on an album.
“They certainly didn’t offer us a lot of money,” says Harvey, who hooked up up with remixer Harry Sinden in 2008. “On the other hand, they offered us the most of everything else – the most freedom, in particular. We spent three and a half years on our album. If we’d been with a major, they would have railroaded us after a while and got us to put out something we weren’t happy with.”
Sitting forward, he elaborates: “They would have got us writing with a lot of top-line songwriters, which can be cool – but sometimes makes you lose your identity, especially on your first record. With a major they have more commercial expectations and less artistic ones. They have a lot of marketing money, which isn’t really possible on an indie. On the plus side, you get to make an album without A&R men interfering.”
Harvey doesn’t sign up to the received wisdom that UK dance is in the midst of a golden period comparable to the '90s heyday of Prodigy, Leftfield, Orbital etc. While he doesn’t want to seem sniffy, it’s evident he regards Dizzee Rascal, Calvin Harris et al as kiddie fodder rather than credible electronica artists.
“I don’t think Dizzee and Calvin are really comparable to Basement Jaxx and The Chemical Brothers. It’s just kind of pop-dance really. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. But it was a different time then. It was easier for an album to have singles and sell more, without having out and out pop songs. Listen to ‘Original’ by Leftfield. That was a hit. Nowadays, it would only be played somewhere obscure like [UK digital channel] Six Music. Unfortunately with the pop charts nowadays you’ve got to be conspicuous.”
Too many modern dance albums consist of a few singles with loads of filler in between, feels Harvey. It was for this very reason that he and Sinden lavished so much time on their own record.
“We didn’t want to concentrate on two or three ‘big tracks’ and cobble the rest together. People aren’t stupid. These days, they don’t go and buy an album because they like a single or two and put up with there not being enough good tracks. They’ll investigate it. We were very conscious of making an album that hangs together. You want it to hold together rather than just being a few memorable bits and a lot of rubbish.”
Among Mega Mega Mega’s most memorable moments are collaborations with Chicago rapper Kid Sister and UK indie urchins Mystery Jets. “The Mystery Jets thing happened because we met [singer] Kai Fish (his actual name, we’re informed) at the Notting Hill Carnival. One day, we went back to his house to discuss a few ideas and I discovered he lived two doors down from me. We’d been neighbours all along. After that, I used to hang out there quite a lot.”
In other words: you bonded over Playstation and curries? “Erm, not really, no. We talked a lot about music. He doesn’t own a Playstation. In fact, I don’t think he even owns a television.”

Mega, Mega, Mega is out now on Domino.