The boys east likely to

Northern Irish dance trio The Japanese Popstars have quietly become one of the big success stories of homegrown music in recent times. Their debut album, We Just Are, an inspired mash-up of influences ranging from Orbital and The Chemical Brothers to Vitalic, was one of the best Irish albums of last year.

Their fans include such heavy-hitters as Erol Alkan, Zane Lowe, 2ManyDJs, Steve Lamacq and Pete Tong, and of late they’ve been remixing artists such as The Ting Tings and Beyoncé.
Although serial giggers, the band put most of their burgeoning success down to the internet. “MySpace definitely broke us,” proffers the Popstars’ Decky Hedrock. “It was handy at the time, people were getting into it. My girlfriend basically kept saying to me, ‘Get yourself on MySpace.’ I didn’t believe in anything like that, but when I finally did, I realised it was like an online CV. You could put new music on there, you could attract fans and send it to record labels. It was like a demo just waiting to be discovered.
“People would come along and go, ‘Oh, I like that track there, it’s really good.’ So that helped us, and we got a couple of tracks licensed to Ministry Of Sound through MySpace. Then everything sort of kicked off. I would say Pete Tong was instrumental for us; he took us on last year and basically played the hell out of our tracks on his BBC Radio One show. Then we got a Groove Armada remix and it all just seemed to hit at the same time.”
How did their remix assignments come about?
“The Ting Tings was funny,” Decky reflects. “We were at Oxegen last year, and were chatting to a guy who runs a radio show in the North. The Ting Tings drove past, and we just basically abandoned his interview, and ran over and asked for photographs with them. They were in this wee golf cart, and the three of us were lying on top of it! But they were really nice people, and it was one of these things where we said, ‘Can we remix you? We’d be honoured.’
“We got a call from their label about two or three days later. They said they’d been listening to our MySpace, and they’d love for us to remix them. Beyoncé probably came through the same source; Sony’s tied in with The Ting Tings and her. We got a call from the same people to say, ‘Do you fancy remixing Beyoncé?’ and we said, ‘No bother’.
“We couldn’t believe that we were getting the chance to remix somebody so big. We hadn’t heard the track, and the next thing these parts for ‘If I Were A Boy’ came. We ended up doing two mixes – we did this really laidback chillout version. We wanted to do something that sounded like Beyoncé, but with the kind of electronic feel that our own stuff has. We sent that across, and they said, ‘We’d really love you to do a dance mix as well.’ So we ended up doing that too.
“Those remixes got to the Beyoncé camp, and I don’t know whether it was her or her people, but we got a call asking us to remix the next single, ‘Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)’. We couldn’t believe that either – it was sort of like the seal of approval from Beyoncé.”
The group have some more big remixes in the pipeline, though Decky is sworn to secrecy (all he’ll say is that one is for “an iconic ’80s act.”) They will also be busy with live performances and DJ sets over the next few months, with appearances in Ireland, the UK, Austria and, of course, Japan where the band are signed to the same label as Aphex Twin and Underworld.
As if all that wasn’t enough, The Japanese Popstars are also aiming to have their second album finished for the end of June.
“It’s all pressure,” chuckles Decky. “What’s happened is that our Japanese label have said to us, ‘We’ll take you back and tour you around Japan.’ We were blown away by Japan, and that’s our motivation for getting this album finished. They have a plan that they’ve used for the likes of Aphex Twin and Underworld, which we’ll slot into. We’ve got Underworld’s plan for Japan! If it takes off for us the way it did for them, we’ll be flying.”