Dan's din, Pip's poems

One of them was a laptop-hugging loner, the other a poet who worked in HMV. When they got together and set one of the rhymes to music, it became an underground hit. Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip (now there's a name) tell Jim Carrollwhat happened next

IT'S THE perfect partnership. Dan Le Sac looks after the beats. He's a very pleasant individual who used to make would-be shoegazer anthems. Scroobius Pip looks after the rhymes. He's an extravagantly bearded gentleman named after an Edward Lear poem.

You've probably heard their underground anthem Thou Shalt Always Kill, a sharp track containing a list of mantras and remedies designed to defeat various modern woes. In particular, its clarion call of allegedly seminal bands who were "just a band" is one all the family can enjoy again and again, especially on wet Sunday afternoons. You can even come up with your own redrafts.

Released a little over a year ago, Thou Shalt Always Killwas the tune that brought the band out of the shadows. Since then, everything has gone just a little mad. They've been constantly on the road, moving from jam-packed small rooms to festival stages and on to the US. They've written and recorded a fine debut album, Angles, and negotiated a deal with Rob da Bank's Sunday Best label. And they've slowly come terms with it all.

"The only tracks on the album that existed a year ago are three tracks that are reworkings of Scroob's solo work," notes Dan. "It's crazy, isn't it? But I mean, we didn't really exist before Thou Shalt."

They existed all right, but each was doing his own thing. Dan made tunes with a friend of his and ran a few clubs. He was a bit of a loner. "I've always found it really hard to work with other musicians," he says. "I've preferred to work alone, because then I've only got myself to answer to. If you're dealing with a drummer, he can't achieve what I can achieve on the laptop. It was always a little frustrating."

Meanwhile, Scroobius was working the day shift at HMV and writing spiky poems whenever he had a few spare minutes. He was probably another loner. Rather than perform these poems at a local open-mic gig, he took them out on the streets.

"It made a lot of sense to turn up outside the venue where someone like Buck 65 or Atmosphere were due to play and perform to that crowd," he remembers.

"Buck 65 was actually doing the PR work for me. He'd play in a town, pull together my target audience and literally line them up against a wall. All I had to do was turn up, do a performance and hand out some flyers. People were open to it because I wasn't selling anything or pushing anything. It was all about pre-show entertainment. All I had was a flyer with a MySpace address on it."

After an apprenticeship like that, it's no wonder Scroobius had few fears about the increasingly bigger live shows the duo play these days. "Once you've played gigs to people who are not there to see you or pay attention to you, you just can't be nervous when it comes to playing gigs where people have paid good money to see you. It was invaluable to start off in the hardest of situations because it made everything else easy."

While the pair knew each other for years, they'd never worked together before Dan stuck some beats under one of Scroobius's rhymes. It was clear from the get-go that there was something going on. The enthusiastic response to a couple of radio shows spinning a demo of Thou Shaltconfirmed this and the pair were stuck with each other.

They're amazed how quickly everything has happened. "I don't know a band who've had so much happen so quickly for them," says Dan. "When Scroob was doing his solo thing, he used to play with Kate Nash and Jack Peñate and there's no comparison between how quickly things happened for us and how long it's taken them. It's fairly shocking, to be honest."

Scroobius reckons it can also be attributed to how they're perceived. For a start, the dreaded "UK hip-hop" tag has not been stuck onto their backs. "If we were tagged as UK hip-hop, a lot of indie kids were not going to pay us any attention," he says.

"I mean, this is the first time I worked with someone using rhymes. I never did hip-hop stuff before Scroob came along," says Dan.

"When it's undefined, it's open to a far wider crowd, which really works in our favour because it doesn't put anyone off," reckons Scroobius. "It's tough for the record label though. When you can't be defined as one thing or the other, they can't plug you into an indie template of certain radio or TV shows. It just means they have to work harder."

Dan reckons the next album won't be a bother. "I'm a fast worker," he says. "Like, when I do remixes for bands, they're always surprised at how little time I need. I can get it done and back to them in five hours. With electronic stuff, you could spend forever just going back over things like snare drums, so I've always been really careful not to get sucked into that way of thinking. The quicker I work on something, the better it sounds, because I haven't over-egged the cake as such."

That speed is in marked contrast to some other musicians the pair have come across. "Our American manager works with Kevin Shields," says Dan, "and we were talking to him about getting Kevin to remix some of our stuff. He was 'yeah, yeah, yeah, he'll probably need a good six or seven months'. He's not the quickest of souls, but he does do amazing work."

Dan pauses for a moment. "I suppose I'll get slower as I get older, but right now, what Scroob and me do is all about immediacy."

SEE/HEAR
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip's debut album Anglesis out on May 16th. They play The Limelight, Belfast (May 4), Nerve Centre, Derry (May 5), Button Factory, Dublin (May 7) and The Vic, Galway (May 8). For more, see  www.myspace.com/lesacvspip or  www.youtube.com/user/lesacvspip