Introduce Yourself: FAZE ACTION

Brothers Simon and Robin Lee make up the disco outfit Faze Action and truly do deserve the accolade of pioneers of modern disco, having produced some of the genres finest records since 1995. ‘In The Trees’, perhaps their most well received track, was re-released for its 10th year anniversary with remixes by Carl Craig, Jerome Sydenham and Tiger Stripes, and since then they have gone on to produce their third album and tour as a 6 piece live band all over the world.

Would you mind describing yourselves and the music you make?
We are 2 brothers from the UK who are making spacey, cosmic, rocky, disco music

What’s your take on the current renewed interest in disco?
It's common, in any genre of music that the interest comes and goes. This is a passion of ours and we have been doing it since 1995, which is a lot less time than some. So this renewed interest is very welcome.

Who would you recommend as an easy route into understanding and appreciating your type of music, or is it better to dive in at the deep end?
Moroder, Space, Paul Sabu, Donna Summer, Voyage, La Bionda, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Constellation Orchestra, Kiss, Kraftwerk, James Vincent. We listen to all sorts of music.

You’re touring live at the moment - what does your stage setup consist of? And how’s the tour working out for you?
We have Drums, Percussion, Bass Guitar, Keyboards and Zeke Manyika and Mary Moore on Vocals. We are really lucky to have worked with some great players in our time including Nathan Curran who now plays for Basement Jaxx amongst others. This time we are honoured to retain the masterful keyboard playing of Pete Z and on drums we are really lucky to have Adrian Meehan (Cuban Brothers, Wendy House Productions) playing for us. I (Rob) play bass and Simon is on congas and percussion.

The tour is working out beautifully for us and we are really enjoying it. We have just come back from playing in Croatia where we played at the Garden Festival (Zadar). The whole festival was just going nuts all weekend... it was great.



Your have just released your new album ‘Stratus Energy’, what does the title stand for, and could you explain the process you went through to complete the project?
The title of the album came from one of our 12" releases. We wanted something that sounded spacey and positive and we came up with that. That's the upshot of it. We like the sound of it. We started the whole project when we realised we could do the whole thing ourselves, I mean the record label etc and everything (we started FAR back in 2006). We were seeing the success of the 12"'s and we decided to write the album in this style. Some of the tracks just started from lyric ideas or titles.

During the time of your first release back in 1996, you had just moved to Japan to teach English. Does Japanese culture influence your music and if so, how?
I wouldn't say that our music is influenced by Japanese culture. I mean after all we are a couple of English blokes. I guess if you’re talking about modern culture then I suppose we share some aspects. i.e. English people and Japanese people both seem to like dancing in clubs and take pride in activities like DJing and record collecting etc etc.

Also, for some unknown reason, DJ's always end up with Japanese wives or girlfriends.

Who or what inspired you when you were producing your first releases ‘Full Motion’ and ‘In The Trees’ in 1995/96?
Back then Simon was working in a small record shop in Soho and was listening to a wide selection of music from Salsoul to Reggae to Arthur Russell and Philip Glass. Basically as a DJ he couldn't find any new records that he wanted to play. So we decided that we would make some of our own. ‘Full Motion’ was actually the first signing to Nuphonic records (sadly not around anymore). ‘In the Trees’ was written by post and fax while I was living in Japan.

And who or what inspires you in 2009?
We just got back from Brazil and listening to some old Brazilian funk disco records that Simon found. We listen to late 80's house records. We love travelling and we get a lot of inspiration from experiencing different countries and cultures.

Finally, if you could change one thing about your day to day lives, in the studio or on tour or wherever, what would it be?
We wish there was more time to explore the places we find ourselves.

You can catch Faze Action in Room One this Saturday alongside Craig Richards and The Emperor Machine.

P.S. The guys have very kindly made their track ‘Starship’ available to all fabric blog readers as a free download:

Download: Faze Action – Starship (Via YouSendIt)

P.P.S. We ALSO have 2 copies of their latest album ‘Stratus Energy’ up for grabs.

All you have to do to win a copy is send an email to hotdesk@fabriclondon.comwith the words "Beam Me Up Scottie" as the subject.