DDM

Dance Disaster Movement's Debut full length We Are From Nowhere (actually they were from the LA suburbs, which are just landscaped like nowhere) got them intermittent critical acclaim, a lot of way-off-target Gang of Four comparisons, and because they use the word "Dance" in there name, an unfortunate reputation as Rapture/Moving Units/Average White Art-School band fellow travelers. So for this newest EP we have to make things clearer before we can have you listen to Matt Howze and Kevin Litrow: the cocaine and the hairspary has to stay at home from now on because it makes the samplers short out

DDM's Snow On The TV drops instead between New York's loft disco and Dusseldorf's motor-beats, between Yoko Ono's thin ice and Vivien Goldman's private armies and Del-Byzanteens, draft riots. Last time you got the movement; this one's the disaster. Or the dance. One of 'em at least

Dim Mak Releases:
DM038 "We Are From Nowhere" CDEP/12"
DM077 "Snow on the TV" CDEP/12"

Press

"DDM have embraced an entirely new bizarre type of punk rock that is more jarring than accessible, more like performance art than actual songs."

Great interview

"What they were privy to was a performance to rival any avant-garde theater show also happening in town that night."

"this band has more to do with the avant-garde traditions in rock music"

Updated 6/20/05
Indiepulse.com

Disaster Area: Just a Fucking Dance Band
words: Analise Cho photos: T Pleman
Kevin Latriouw is a guitarist who works at a coffee shop. Matt Howze is a drummer and he wordks at a special ed school. They met three to four years ago when Howze was in a hardcore band called Crazy Treadwell, and Latriouw was in a space rocky band called Radar. 18 months ago they realized they were bored with the indie scene in Long Beach, California, where they both live. "There was a malaise," Howze says "No-one would move. Everyone would stand and watch, bored, detached." They needed a plan: "Let's just do a fucking dance band," they said.

And they did. Now they're Dance Disaster Movement, the dance-rock duo who acknowledge that folks will always be comparing them to the Rapure (with some justification) but who prefer to liken themselves to Suicide. When they perform it's all looped live on a Line Six guitar pedal, which is kinda restrictive, as Howze explains: "There's no programs, so if the loop isn't set right we're locked in."

Technology has been something of a bance for DDM; their first show was in Santa Barbara, three hours from where they live, and they'd llined it up so that "some record guy"" from LA would come see them. But when they got there and got set p they found the keyboard wouldn't work, which meant, basically, that they were fucked. They cancelled the ig and determined to buy more and better toys.

Since then they've fixed a few things, got a couple little tours u nder their belt, and the record guy turned out to be Steve Aoki from Dim Mak who put out theiur killer first album We Are From Nowhere.

You still have to catch Latriouw at the coffee shop if you want to talk to him, and Howze's cellphone message tells you his bill's way too high so please call this oher number and leave a message. But they have a guitar, a drumkit, a keyboard that works and a strategy. These guys are going places. It's not looking good for Long Beach lattes and the kids on the short bus.



The New Scheme
Dance Disaster Movment: We are From Nowhere
DDM are a new two piece band Long Beach, and give you a pretty good indication of what they’re all about right in their band name. This is a mixture of chaptic but simple electronica along with some older soul. The combination of an electronic beat and live drums helps a lot to keep this from getting too repetitive. Right on the surface, this sound quite a bit like earlier Faint if the bullshit factor was turned down a bit. The vocals are really snotty, and work well most of the time. There are a few sections where they’re a bit grating, but I think that is a part of the point. "Saturday" is one of the slower and more stripped tracks here, and probably my favorite. All in all this is a solid record, though not a general style I’m terribly into. I have a feeling that seeing this band live might leave me either really hot or cold towards these guys. If you’re a fan of the throwback indie rock bands, or the white belt dance party stuff, you will love DDM.

Rockpile
We Are From Nowhere
by Reed Jackson
You've heard of blue-eyed soul. This is soul with two black, swollen eyes. Dance Disaster Movement have taken Curtis Mayfiel's amaible style and roughed it up. Gangrenous synths and staccato drums are the main aggressors, though the wailing bully of punk blues gets its kicks in too. The vocals sound like they were laid to tape in a garbage can, while the singer indulges perhaps too much in the Jon Spencer (c.Pussy Galore) method of sweaty call-outs, but for the most part, Dance Disaster Movement's ends justify the rather brutal means . Traces of a bizarre electro-experimentalism manifest, imparting a needed sense of depth and a (relatively) soothing respite from the chaos. Somewhere among all the crossed wires, burnt plastic and broken synapses, there lies a bunch of Faust or Can fans struggling to break free. Nowhere, though often bewildering in its rapid veering between jarring noise and spacious harmonies, never provides less than quality shenanigans. Dance Disaster might just be the kid in in reformatory school who is amazingly, dangerously intelligent. Watch out.

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