NOSTALGIC FOR THE FUTURESteve first met Brian when he drew up in a white 1969 Pontiac Firebird Convertible. He's dressed head to toe in black leather and has blond hair and looked like a rock star. "Get in, lets move across the Planet". They take off like a rocket. Steve notes Suicide is playing on his cassette. Few people knew of Suicide at the time it bonded them immediately.
They plotted. To form a band like Suicide using the latest technology adding 2 metal guitarists for a full hammer Sonic Attack.
They call themselves Drug Free America after a photograph of Keith Richards. sat in front of a customs poster saying Patience Please A Drug Free America Comes First (ironic) After a couple of line up changes they eventually get guitar slingers Andy and Paul on board, they are full metal; Racket geniuses.
Throughout '87 and '89, they release three singles, in the UK and Europe 'No Solid Ground', 'Day Glo Pussycat, 'Heaven Ain't High Enough' and an album, 'Attitude 50 Cents'. They are all Indie top ten hits. In the New Musical Express, Melody maker and Sounds.. All their vinyl and CDs get great critical acclaim and so do their live shows. They get to the point where they are playing colleges and Venues with audiences of 300 to 500. They also support American noise bands including the Swans, Janes Addiction, Pussy Galore, and play Futurama '89. Also they support Uk acts like Spacemen 3, Birdland, Thee Hypnotics, Gaye Bikers on Acid, Ghost Dance and do sell out headline tours. The reaction is wild and violent. At some shows bottles and cans pour down on the stage. The mosh pit is a cauldron of seething bodies and sweat.
The Press say Drug Free are the first since Joy Division to do everything on their own terms.
The pressure of gigging on little or no money gets to them. The crew get a small amount for each show, the band never take a penny. All the money from shows / record sales go back into the project to cover transport, light show, equipment, recording, CD record pressing and Videos etc. The band and Crew, Fran, Terminator, Kevo, Dave, Mick and Martin all sleep with the equipment in a, Transit 190 van they are also having emotional problems with girlfriends. The burn out gets fierce. Eventually they imploded in a mess of drugs, booze and pure exhaustion. After 3 bright years they start to break up.
Though DFA are breaking up Concrete Inc Records contact them to do a dance re-mix of "Daddys Gun'. Its released as a 12 inch in autumn '89. Its also included on the 1990 compilation 'Funky Alternatives 5', along with acts like 'A Guy Called Gerald', ' Nitzer Ebb', 'Thrill Kill Kult' and 'KMFDM'. . When the band split Steve went on a round the world trip, going firstly to Thailand and an island called Ko Pang Yang. He stays on Haad Rin beach for a month, attends the Full moon parties and gets into acid and house music. He then goes to live in Australia and stays a year living at Bondi Beach On his return from Bondi refreshed and having been trying Ecstasy during '89/'90 his head had tuned into dance/techno. He was listening to Belgium trance like Cosmic Trigger/Cosmic Baby. So when he meet up with Brian he found he had lots in common. During the '90s Brian was working at Dance Events with Pecker (PX Effects) doing lighting. Using the old DFA lights, strobe, dry ice machine and camo back drop, The two played the Trades in Chapeltown Leeds at the famous/infamous Dream events. Steve starts to help out and they get bang into the blossoming E culture. Brian had tried E in New York back in Autumn '81 (it was Legal then) when he worked with Soft Cell on their album 'None Stop Erotic Cabaret'.. While clubbing in New York he became a friend of the infamous pill dealer Cindy Ecstasy and so was one of the first people from the UK. to try the drug that hit the Northern clubs in '89/'90 like a.. Hurricane..
Steve and Brian start to make music together again this time without the earlier hardships.With less vocals and guitars it comes out as Techno. Cybersound sign them and they release 3 twelve-inch singles, 'Medication Time', 'Loud Everybody' and 'Can You Feel'. featuring Louise Dean. (R.I.P Sadly missed)..
Rob Tissera plays them at Dream and they sell well. Hammy owner of Peaceville records likes what he has heard and contacts Cybersound to buy DFA for his new experimental label Dreamtime. This small label is not Metal like the main label Peaceville. Dreamtime has other acts like the immaculate psychedelic band 'Ship of Fool's and the industrial band GGFH. In '92 Hammy puts DFA back into the studio for 30 days and nights. They end up crashing out in sleeping bags in the studio, working round the clock with sound engineer supremo John Dalby. John was the only person who could stay awake with DFA..They smoke a bush of skunk and drink lots of beer.
Steve has also been dabbling with Acid While Brian has been doing lots of large outdoor parties. They recruit Andrea Healey (aka Valley Girl) on vocals, DJ's....RMD (aka electro master Mossadon) DJD, Tall Order and Beau. The end product is an album named simply 'Trip'.This title is self-explanatory. Mix Mag love it and DFA get labelled Intelligent Techno. It is mostly instrumental and is designed for smokers and midnight tokers everywhere. .
DFA get endless letters/e-mails from stoners and druggies everywhere claiming that the opening track "Cyberspace" and the second track 'Detroit Walkabout' is a benchmark in Psychedelic Techno. The title comes from Steve's visit to Detroit where he recorded vocals for the 'Ten Miles High' a mix released on Kenny Larkin's 'Pod' 12 inch. He also did vocals for John Penns Undercurrents label and met Underground Resistance,
Brian who does all the programming and writing of the tracks was in the band Vicious Pink Years before. VP was credited for being the first band to coin the phrase Techno in 1982. and the first Band to have World wide success using a Roland Bass Line TB 303.
'Trip' sells well and gets good reviews. MTV play the Video One Alien Nation Under A Groove taken from the Album. Brian and Steve decide to expand the line up and DFAs guitarist Paul rejoins. They also recruit Hayley Windsor to add her sensual, breathy, dream like vocals to the mix. After Touring Europe playing the prestigious Mind the Gap Festival along side acts like Pitchshifter they go back into the studio. Touring has tightened them up into a band once again and they record 'Narcotica the New Pornography.
NARCOTICA seeps in with two long hypnotic tracks by their keyboard player/ programmer Brian Moss, showing a return to their original musical inspiration and influence - hard edge electro duo, Suicide. Contemporary dance genres, Trip Hop and Dance dub become evident as Narcotica begins to take hold. The band were truly ahead of their time with the concept of drugs as sex, with many glossies, such as Cosmopolitan running features on drugs as the sexual crutch of the nineties.Deconstructed from verse written by vocalist Steve Dixon, the new DFA lyrics represent observations on the nature of addiction - emotional, social and narcotic.
Steve says: "Things seem heavier now, and so we have returned to our old skool electro roots and made a claustrophobic album for the Blank Post E Generation, who are now waking up to the fact that real love does not come in tablet form".
This time with vocals from both Steve and Hayley and Pauls immaculate spacey, funky guitaring they come up with a sound all of their own. They get linked to Darkwave by European fanzines, even though they don't know what Darkwave is? It is not for another 5 years that the term Darkwave becomes used in the UK to describe an electro off shoot of the new wave of Goth music. Again DFA are bemused when girls wearing all black, Rock boots and fishnets attend their gigs. Their audience is a mix of techno pill heads, Darkwave Goths and crusty festival types, i.e. a fair cross section of drug- and Booze fuelled outsiders who are all united by the Dark Techno music DFA are playing. To confuse matters even more Steve does a re-mix with John Dalby for Peaceville label mates, doom metallers, My Dying Bride. The track 'Transcending (Into the Exquisite) goes out as the B side of the 12 inch ' I am the Bloody Earth', and ends up on metal compilations.
In 1997 they release their last C.D. for Dreamtime entitled OM23. Working with engineer and artist Tim Wright..Again it has strong dance beats with neat melodies and sparse vocals. The title track OM23 is used in the film Get Real.
They are also approached by D-J Maurice, of Union nightclub in Leeds, he is also a regular DJ at Gatecrasher playing progressive trance.. He does a remix of the DFA track 'Jewels and Calories' for Charlie Hall's Union Recordings. It is a dance floor hit.
Recently Brian has remastered the first three singles and the first Album plus selective tracks off 'Narcotica'. DFA plan to reissue all the tracks as a double C.D and will be available to Download. Now the four originals are back in the line up watch this space for further details,
We are now Warping Time
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