Phill Honey spent 4 years as the driving force behind local instrumental rock titans The Rock of Travolta, supporting the likes of Rocket From The Crypt, Seafood and Radiohead (at their South Park gig infront of 45,000 people) as well as releasing critically acclaimed records such as ‘Uluru’ which earnt across the board praise from all the usual suspects – NME (8/10) , Q (4/5), Kerrang! (4/5).
The Rock were also championed by Steve Lamacq, John Peel (who they recorded a session for) and John Kennedy at XFM, and ended up with a publishing deal from the legendary Rough Trade.
Lee Christian has spent the previous three years confusing the fans of 80’s Match Box Disaster, The Datsuns, and Jetplane Landing as lead singer with local sleaze misfits Smilex as they blew their better know contempories off stage, quickly becoming the most exciting live act in town. Releasing Smilex singles on his own QuickFix Recordings label, as well as releasing records from the likes of Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies and The Half Rabbits, Lee somehow found the time to produce and present Oxford longest running radio show dedicated to local music – The Fortnightly Fix – on Passion FM.
Then Phill decided something. He wanted to play tunes that people could sing to. At the same time Lee decided he wanted to play tunes that – shock, horror – peope could DANCE to! So their electro-funk project boywithatoy was born.
The first collaboration between Phill and Lee became known as ‘The Killer Species’ and featured on a compilation album compiled by Ann Shenton (Add N to X) called The Electronic Bible along side the likes of Relaxed Muscle (Jarvis Cocker), Pat Riot (Cabaret Voltaire), Large Number (Add N to X) and National Bandit (All Seeing I).
As well as receving rave reviews in Drowned In Sound and two demo of the month awards in music magazine Nightshift, that same publication also made boywithatoy’s ‘The Killer Species’ number 6 in their Top 20 songs of the year.
22/03/09 Bristol, with Vase and the Madrigals 10/04/09 Norwich, with Internet forever 13/04/09 Edinburgh, with Withered Hand 17/04/09 London, with the light sleepers and the Madrigals 25/04/09 Madrid for Abril No tan Cruel festival
Biggerst fan was recorded in a bucket, stowed in a small disused well in the outskirts of Eynsham. I will change the background when it stops amusing me when I am crunked.
hey dude! back tomorrow but thought u may like to know both hoodrat and killer species got played on cruise ship in this cool club amongst outkast and prince and 70's disco classics and sounded great! i sweated my own body weight dancing those nights! dj is taking copy back to jamaica to spread the word out there and try to sort gigs! :-) holla holla playa!
if you're up for some party action this weekend, it's Disco Drive tomorrow!
Bring all your friends, and bring the noise!
cheers
Ady
x
vacuous pop proudly presents
Saturday 5 August Disco Drive, Twisted Charm, Popular Workshop plus vacuous pop / Abort,
Retry, Fail? DJs
The Cellar, Frewin Court, Cornmarket, Oxford
9pm - 3am / £5
... balls, the point of my post was to request a boywithatoy remix for one of my Cheapskate tracks... I've had to make another comment now. Time consuming.
Proper quality tunage BWAT - the Killer Species really is a classic.
Good to have you spin some tunes at Peepshow last year, shame it wasn't quite Peepshow proper but we'll have to do it again once we're up and running again...
