Ready, Willing And Turntable

At some stage during the last two years Robbie Nelson and Chris Agnelli Agnew must have realised that they weren t in Kansas any more. For Robbie it may have happened in America or Asia, maybe even in Africa take your continent, take your pick. He s been busy chalking up residencies in New York, Miami and Boston, while, for the last 18 months, he s also been periodically swept up by the Gatecrasher twister and plopped down in various longitudes and latitudes throughout the world. Provoking near riots in Korea? Been there. Playing tunes in a massive ice-rink in Dubai? Done that.

The surprising thing, he says, looking, well, surprised, was that everyone seemed to know who I was. Like there were people coming up to me in Egypt with our records and I don t even think there are any record shops over there.
For Chris the epiphany may have occurred just after long-time mate and former collaborator Rich Rainey asked him how he fancied helping him out on a remix. Sure, Chris said, anything cool? How about U2 s crucial comeback single Beautiful Day ? The resulting Quincey and Sonance Mix has been given regular and enthusiastic airings on dance shows ever since. Noticeably, the Paul Oakenfold one hasn t.
I haven t actually met the band yet, Chris admits. The Edge presented us with an award last year, but I haven t met the rest of them. Rich (the in-house engineer for All That You Can t Leave Behind) was saying, though, that they were raving about the mix.
No-matter where the moment of clarity may have happened, there s no doubting that the long and winding roads of jobbing house DJ (Robbie) and full-on rave-crew member (Chris), that the duo have been walking on for the best part of a decade have, since 1998, gone all yellow-bricked on them.
And the reason? Well, a big fuck-off wind at their back called El Niqo hasn t half speeded their journey.
Within six months of Col Hamilton playing the song for the first time at Lush (and, in doing so, ushering in a comically fierce bidding war) Agnelli and Nelson s thudding ode to sand-swept Balearic romanticism was well on its way to becoming phenomenal.
Literally, after one weekend when we sent out 50 white labels, our lives and careers had turned completely round, says Chris. People who we d been ringing up and who d got their secretaries to pretend they weren t in, were chasing us. I felt a bit cynical about it, to be honest. All these fuckers who wouldn t return our calls, suddenly crawled out of the woodwork. But when you hear Pete Tong playing it as record of the week, especially if you ve had a bit of a struggle, you can imagine how great that felt. And then it went really mad.
The song was widely felt to be Ibiza s favourite tune of the summer of 98 and eventually made it into the British Top 10. For some acts, such a huge track can cast the kind of shadow that you can spend a career getting lost in, but, according to Robbie, especially since the subsequent singles Everyday and Embrace have had similar chart success, the legacy of El Niqo has been entirely positive.
When people come up to me and ask for it, we re proud, we re chuffed. There s still a novelty to it and I m just really glad that we ve had a success on that scale. But it s weird as well, and we ve only really discovered this since I ve been DJing around the world - El Niqo is a big Ibiza and UK tune, but Everyday is far more popular around the rest of the world. It s a mad thing to get your head around.
Given the success of all Agnelli and Nelson s singles to date, it was only a matter of time before their thoughts turned towards a weightier piece of work. Hence, after two years of sporadic endeavour at their home studio in Larne and six weeks of concerted attention in the far sexier surroundings of New York, comes the duo s debut album Hudson St. And the first thing that anyone who hears it will notice (even the more suspicious amongst you) is that the boys have come up with a classy, smart and enjoyably modern record, gloriously resisting the temptation to cram together a bunch of day-glo, banging crowd pleasers. Ten pneumatic El Niqo -lites would have represented money in the bank for Robbie and Chris, and, although, Hudson St has its hands in the air moments (the singles Embrace and Everyday are included), there is a looser, cooler vibe to most of the other tracks that seems to show they were looking for more rewarding returns.
If there was one brief for the record, it was to avoid doing an album full of big club records, says Chris. It would just have been boring. We wanted to avoid that like the plague. Basically it was like a DJ set. Build it up gradually, reach a kind of euphoric stage, and then turn the thing on its head towards the end and leave the listener wondering where we re going to go next. The big hits, yeah, that s what we re known for, but let s show people what we re about, show a bit of depth.
Whether it s the classicist House of Let Love Come , or Sidewalk Driller s dirty, nu-skool breaks, Hudson St shows that Agnelli and Nelson s desired constituency stretches well beyond these shores and is a lot more sussed than the snobs would have you believe.
But then, that s hardly a surprise. Northern dance is an incredibly broad church, and, for the past 18 months, its timbers have been rocked by everything from the cinematic funkedelia of David Holmes, to Yomanda s (we-shouldn t-like- em-but-we-do) trance anthems, and the seemingly unstoppable upward momentum of hard house poster boy Fergie. Lots of people have been waiting to see what spin Chris and Robbie put on the unfolding drama and where it will take them next. As far as they re concerned, though, there s no place like home.
We didn t go to London like we were told to do. We made a conscious decision to say: fuck it, we re staying here. And we did. I think if the music is good enough and if you re determined enough, then it doesn t matter where you re from, it can be done. And we did it. We re still here, we still live here and we still hang out here. As far as we re concerned, we re only really starting to move with this thing now.
Singing for the future; indeed.
Hudson St. is out now.