DFA Records, a pioneering New York indie label of near-legendary status, threw a party with four bands at Northsix in Brooklyn for the recent CMJ music marathon, and 500 people showed up to dance. Meanwhile, another band on the label was prepping a show at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, with another toiling away in a Los Angeles studio.
Flash back four years. James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy were DJing and remixing rock and punk records, anything with a groove, into dance floor anthems. But dance clubs shunned rock records, and indie fans thumbed their noses at house and techno.
But over a conversation at a bar in Brooklyn, Murphy and friend Jonathan Galkin decided, on a whim, to use those remixes and start a record label.
“Dancing in New York had gotten so stale,” said Galkin, head of DFA Records. “Our goal was to mesh rock and dance. And then everything opened up. Why can’t everyone carry the records? That was the best part: Instead of just one genre, everyone could carry everything.”
Soon, rock bands were showing up on Pete Tong compilations and everyone was OK dancing again. So goes the meteoric rise of DFA Records, from a bar conversation spin-off to a bustling label well regarded by art punks and club DJs alike.
DFA invades Denver twice in the coming month: Noise punks Black Dice hit the Larimer Lounge on Monday, then LCD Soundsystem and The Juan Maclean visit the Fox Theatre in Boulder on Oct. 17.
“My job at first was to convince dance record shops in New York to carry albums by indie rock bands,” Galkin said. “So I’d take test presses of remixes to the dance shops and play it for them and watch their faces as they said, ‘This is good.”‘
“Soon, they were calling distributors asking for our records and then orders came in for five records, then 10, then 20.”
DFA’s first single, a 12-inch dance remix of The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers,” was made for clubs. But college radio caught on and punk kids started dancing. Galkin worked as label chief while Goldsworthy and Murphy started other projects. Goldsworthy, formerly of UNKLE, continued producing. Murphy started his own band, LCD Soundsystem.
Then bands as disparate as Le Tigre, Junior Senior, Nine Inch Nails, N.E.R.D., Chemical Brothers and Gorillaz all were soliciting remix albums through DFA, and the label hit the stratosphere.
Now the label’s core lineup includes LCD, Delia and Gavin, Hot Chip and the Juan Maclean (John Maclean, formerly of Six Finger Satellite). And when the label picked up Black Dice, it found something else entirely.
“A lot of people reject being in a place where they’re physically confronted,” said Aaron Warren, the bassist for Black Dice. “We try to maintain an intense confrontational edge.”
That bent toward assaulting, abrasive music doesn’t translate for some music fans. Black Dice can be as physically sickening with its jagged, junk groove sound, as it is with its strobing, aneurysm-inducing light and visual shows.
Black Dice was perfect for DFA Records, a label equally at home with post-punk and noise as it is with punk-funk and experimental electro.
“I’d never heard anything like it,” Galkin said about the first time he heard Black Dice’s 2002 album “Beaches and Canyons.”
Black Dice surfaced in a staunch noise scene of Providence, R.I., in the late 1990s, where the dominating aesthetic denied every rock cliché, including playing on actual stages and using PA speaker systems. But Black Dice always was rooted more in punk music than their avant-garde brethren.
“We’re a punk band, not so much from a sound perspective, but I still feel like we maintain a punk approach to what we do,” Warren said from Brooklyn, a day after playing a show at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. “But (punk) is not the most accepting community, it’s really rather conservative. So we felt like we had to go against that.”
After relocating to Brooklyn, Black Dice found a home at DFA.
“In Providence, the noise scene is very anti-rock,” said Warren, a Colorado native and former member of Boulder hardcore band T Tauri. “But we don’t want to outright reject rock clubs. There’s a different set of influences in New York. (DFA) is a pop music label, and we’re kind of an anomaly on the label (but) … we can take advantage of the different resources available here.”
One resource available to Black Dice and DFA was its respected standing among larger labels. The band’s new album, the appropriately titled “Broken Ear Record,” became a joint release through DFA and Astralwerks.
LCD Soundsystem, meanwhile, hit big with a self-titled release in January and its sarcastic, catchy single “Daft Punk is Playing at My House.” With LCD, Murphy took the dance jive of Liquid Liquid and other post-punk pioneers and made a dance album for rock fans, much like the Rapture had on its DFA work. Murphy’s touring band even includes a member of like-minded dance fiends !!! and Outhud, among others. Murphy and DFA even plan on releasing a Liquid Liquid concert DVD next year of a 1980 club show the band performed.
“If you’re around long enough and working hard,” Warren said of Black Dice and DFA, “people will be exposed to your work. It’s an interesting time.”
Staff writer Nick Groke can be reached at 303-820-1960 or ngroke@denverpost.com.
Black Dice
NOISE ROCK|Larimer Lounge, 2721 Larimer St. |7 p.m. Monday, with Blood on the Wall, Lotus Black and My Calculus Beats Your Algebra|$10|All ages; 303-291-1007
