good morning! last week this lovely little pop synth duo band called the defence from scotland emailed popbytes asking me to listen to a few of their tracks…i often get flooded with emails to check on this or that – and more times than not i’m disappointed but i actually loved the defence’s style (if you like pet shops boys this is right up your alley) and told them i’d gladly feature it here in my ‘monday .mp3’ column – plus they’ve given me permission to offer up some downloads for y’all to enjoy! the band was also recently featured on the second episode of popjustice‘s awesome podcast – oh i love that site! anyways – it’s only monday – i wonder what will go down this week?!? who will get a warning letter or arrested this week? i swear each & every week is an adventure unto itself! popbytes out for now…xxoo!
» listen to the defence’s frank sinatra (.mp3 5mb)
» listen to the defence’s i’ve seen it all before (.mp3 5.8mb)
The Defence
Keith Kerr, Vocals
Drew Cosgrove, Synthesizers
How we met
In the summer of 1995 Drew placed an advert in the Melody Maker. Keith, who had already been in several bands, responded and our band was born. We sent our first demo to the Human League, asking if we could support them on the tour they were doing at the time. We needed a name and picked “The Defence” – because we wanted a name starting with “The” and “The Accused” sounded too much like an indie guitar band. Although we didn’t get to support the Human League a rep from Harvey Goldsmith was keen on our tunes. In 1997 we asked Heaven 17 if we could support them at their Edinburgh Fringe show. To our delight their manager called us and said we could – only for the whole thing to fall through because the Fringe organisers had already allocated support slots. We had to make do with VIP passes to the show. Ah, the cruel world of show business. It’s a hard life constantly failing to become international pop-stars. Still, spurred on by the success of Electroclash and the thrill we get from producing records we know that world domination is just around the corner.