Sneaky Sound System have found the recipe for success, writes Jesse Kuch

WHAT do you get when you take a pinch of dance music, add a healthy dose of pop, blend together for seven years and garnish with some sexy female vocals?

The biggest-selling commercial dance act in Australia, that’s what.

Sydney-based funksters Sneaky Sound System has been dominating the Australian charts (and the ARIA
Awards) for the past few years, with massive singles such as UFO and I Love You leading the charge and firmly establishing them as one of the country’s biggest dance music exports.

Consisting of trio Miss Connie (Connie Mitchell), Black Angus (Angus McDonald), and MC Double D (Daimon Downey), the three very different characters are bonded by a riotous sense of fun, frivolity and, of course, the music.

The group’s origins lie in the hugely successful club night Sneaky Sundays, thus their music is imbued with frolicking nightlife energy, but also flecked with sing-along, radio-friendly ’80s electro-pop.

timeOUT caught up with founding member Angus ahead of its show at the massive Cairns Music Festival at Fogarty Park this Saturday.

"We started out playing at a new club night in Sydney called Sneaky Sundays," McDonald says.

"I met Double D the week before. He had some pretty dexterous MC skills that he hadn’t put to much use. We clicked straight away, so I invited him to come down and do some MC’ing over my DJ sets," he says.

What started as a bit of casual fun ended up being a regular event as the crowds got bigger and bigger and record labels started to take notice.

In 2003, Sony asked them to put together a mix CD. The result was Other People’s Music – a housey affair that ran into edgier territory such as Gonzales and Metro Area, occasionally overlaid with live instrumentation and Daimon’s rapping.

The success of the CD prompted the boys to start hitting the studio to make their own music in the form of an album of original tunes.

About this time, the third piece of the Sneaky jigsaw was about to fall into place, in the shape of Connie Mitchell – ex-vocalist for industrial rock band Primary.

"We stumbled across Connie in a park," Angus says of their fateful meeting.

"She was sitting on a rug with a guitar and she was pretty, so we made small talk.

"She strummed a little and sang with this angelic voice, and then I played her I Love It, which I had just written," he says.

The trio clicked and Connie made her way into the boy’s studio to record their self-titled debut album.

But it wasn’t always plain sailing for the group either – the initial response to their work from record labels was lukewarm at best.

"At that time, dance music was anything but a sure fire bet," Angus says.

But buoyed by strong crowd reactions to live shows and great feedback from people on the street, the group powered on its way, starting its own independent label, Whack Records.

Whack proved the major players wrong, with the first single from the album, I Love It, spending a record 70 weeks in the Top 100 singles chart, breaking the record set by The Living End’s Second Solution/Prisoner of Society.

Despite the almost instant success, Angus says it still took lots of hours in the studio and hundreds of live shows before they made it to the top.

"It’s been a lot of hard work to be honest – anyone in this game knows it takes a long time," he says.

"It took a while to make things happen, but when you get there you are ready for it and you definitely don’t want to go back a notch at all."

Unlike many other groups, which run at the sound of the dreaded "p-word", he isn’t shy about calling their music pop.

"We love pop music, simple as that," he says.

"For us, trying to capture a great song in three-and-a-half minutes is a pretty hard task – it’s not easy writing a great pop song.

"It takes more courage to write a great pop song then it does a 10 second dance loop."

Angus says the trio are looking forward to kick-starting their summer festival season in Cairns before heading on to main stage shows at many of the country’s biggest events, including the Big Day Out.

"Last time both shows in Cairns were really full and everyone was really into it, so we are looking forward to getting back up again."

>> Sneaky Sound System headlines the Cairns Music Festival this weekend at Fogarty Park, along with Dukes of Windsor, TV Rock, TyDi, The Stafford Brothers and many more. Second-round tickets are available for $79+BF at various shops around town and online at www.oztix.com.au

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