Azari & III: Hungry For The Power

Azari & III got some hype after the release of two slices of old school, classic house with a modern sheen, Reckless (With Your Love) and Hungry for the Power. Both songs possess an eerie time warping facility, with big piano chords, handclap assaults and disco tinged vocals, as if someone has transported the group from the 70s and 80s, let them spend a couple of years clubbing to early dance music and then dropped them off in 2009 to brush up on their Pro-Tools skills. The group, made up of two frontmen, Fritz and Starving Yet Full (Cedric), and two producers – Dinamo Azari and Alixander III – released their self titled album in August and are about to embark on their first European tour, including a live show at The Arches as part of Glasgay! 2011. The Skinny caught up with them to talk during a hectic period of pre-tour promotion.

You guys have a really interesting musical backgrounds, can you give a little bit of insight into that and how you ended up as Azari & III?

Dinamo: I had been working on various unique projects, such as PAN-TIKI (Caribbean Techno), Fritz & Hanz Helder (Electro-pop), UNA AVENTURA with Sal Principato (new wave organic punk funk) developing avant garde modern vibrational medicine. All the stars aligned and AZARI & III was born, Toronto 2008 and a local karmic connection was created.  

Alixander III : I was producing artists in my studios and doing some film scoring, I knew Fritz and Ceddy [Cedric] before Azari & III which started when Dinamo and I met DJing.

Fritz: We all met each other through mutual friends years before Azari & III was formed. We all were active players in the Toronto music / art scene.

It seemed a lot more common for the electronic music of that time to have some sort of social message which you have reinvoked with songs like Reckless (With Your Love) and Hungry For The Power. Those songs have almost an innocence that has been lost, that music can address real issues and (maybe) change the way people think. Where does that side of your music come from?

Fritz: The "innocence" comes from the simple fact that we were in the studio creating those tracks without any premeditated intent. It was a free atmosphere where we could just let it all out, and try anything. We all come with our own, different musical references. We invoked the mood of that moment. Maybe times have come full circle again?

 Why do you think you tend to rely on sounds from retro equipment?

Alixander III: It's like old guitars and violins, they just made ‘em better back then and they will always be sought after. With the hands-on nature of analogue instruments and the manipulative capabilities of digital software, there is plenty of room to improvise. 

When people talk about the multiculturalism of cities do you think there that the music that comes out of them, in this case Toronto, is evidence that there is a genuine clash of styles and ideas taking place?

Cedric: Absolutely, and it's a beautiful thing to see! In a city of millions of individuals with multiple cultures and different backgrounds you are bound to see a clash of styles and ideas taking place all the time. And yes, Toronto is a perfect example of that!

Right now there are more clubs than ever playing dubstep or variations of it, which actually makes your album stand out for its reliance on classic house, 4/4 beats. Some clubbers who are more used to your style seem bemused by dubstep, almost as if they can’t find a way to dance to it. What are your thoughts on it?

Fritz: No offense to our dubstep brothers and sisters but...it's hard to ‘dance’ to. I also feel like the definition of dance has changed. I just saw Skrillex play and he had the crowd jumping, it was electric! However it was more of a mosh, a communal ‘up and down’ rather than an individual expression of movement and emotion. 

You will be headed to The Arches in Glasgow this month, with four of you all on stage you don’t fit the usual ‘DJ behind a laptop’ set up. What can we expect your live show to be like?

Alixander III: It looks like Sex Pistols 1978!