Photo courtesy of The Friendattack

I’ve always had a discerning ear for music. My tastes run the gamut. Amidst all the harder music that I tend to favor, STOP DIE RESUSCITATE brings a good balance of energetic beats, vocals and a melodic touch to their music – neither subtle nor in your face they are right on point.

Signed to the SLUM roster, the Toronto trio is about to release their 2nd highly anticipated album, “Midnite, Romance, Blood”. Having grown as a band over the past few years, they’re sailing in new territory, and their forthcoming album will be a departure from their previous works. With an array of influences and styles, their vision goes beyond just dance floor hits.

Upon hearing the ever so sexy lyrics to “Dirty Love”, which will be on the new LP, my senses were stirred. Intoxicating vocals sung by Graph Nobel, one of various collaborators that the band has worked with. “What does love sound like? Is it whispers in the night? Is it deep sighs? Is it a symphony or just two hearts, beating in the dark or maybe its those words that we say when we fight and fuckkkkk”. If that doesn’t get you going, nothing will!!

They’ve done remixes for the likes of Dandi Wind, Deerhoof, Apostle of Hustle, My Brightest Diamond, OK Cobra, Spiral Beach, and vitaminsforyou. As well as their own tracks remixed by Tacteel, Teki Latex, Murr, and Leif. Judging from their span of influences and up for anything attitude, we should expect some pleasing surprises from SDR!!

Stop Die Resuscitate - Dirty Love featuring Graph Nobel (album version)

Stop Die Resuscitate - Haul Away (SDR One Night Stand Redux)
SDR’s remix of “Haul Away” by Apostle of Hustle is out 8.30.07 on the Arts & Crafts sampler.

Make a purchase of SDR’s Bad Night 12″ at:
SLU WEBSTORE / TURNTABLE LAB

The boys at SDR were kind enough to take the time to give some thoughtful answers to some indepth questions. Just about everything you’ve ever wanted to know about SDR can be read below! I doubt they’ll be too keen on answering any in length in the very near future!! HA Thanks much guys!! x

Lovestar: It sounds like there could be an interesting story behind the name Stop Die Resuscitate – is there?

Luke: Some people might find it interesting, I met this photographer from France when I was visiting Vancouver. Me and Lyle had recorded the first few songs and were trying to figure out a name for the project. She suggested it. It’s basically a mistranslation of a Russian film title. I guess direct from Russian to English, it translates “Don’t Move, Die, Come Back to Life” but from Russian to French to English it worked out as Stop Die Resuscitate. I’ve been trying to find this film, but it hasn’t been reissued on DVD yet. If anyone wants to sell me their VHS copy I’ll buy it. Apparently it’s also a Russian kids game? I don’t know if that’s true though.

Lovestar: How would you best describe the elements that make up the SDR sound?

Josh: The biggest and most important element with us is energy. We feed off it when it’s coming from a crowd and they’re partying, and it makes us play harder. When they stone face us we give them as much energy as possible and try to feed them. When we’re recording we keep the things that make us excited and make us want to push each other harder. People make the mistake of assuming that for something to be full of energy it has to be the loudest craziest shit, but it doesn’t. To us it’s about a feeling that comes off a track/live show. Not to get too singer songwriter but it’s that energy that makes you feel something from the music, makes a reaction happen. Us recognizing that and really using it is probably the most important element that group has.

Lovestar: There are 3 of you in SDR – with rotating collaborators adding their creative touches – give a bit of your individual background music history

Luke: I was involved in a live weird hip-hop group before I met Lyle. Josh (our drummer) comes from a jazz background, but he is also a major genre-slut, he’s played in a non-traditional blue grass, with a washboard and all that, to funk, to weird improv. Lyle is the mega musician, he used to play in a gang of rock bands in Calgary in the mid-late 90’s, but he was also incorporating samplers and shit back then which I think lead him to doing techno type stuff before we met.

In terms of the people who are collaborating with us for the album, I can’t really speak on their influences. However, it has been very important for us to work with them in a different style than what people who are familiar with them would expect, which has also pushed us to work in a different way.

Lovestar: Your individual influences and how it all comes together to work as a solid group

Luke: We’re all pretty much listening to lots and lots of different types of music all the time, so I think there’s a lot of flux as to what’s influencing us. So, for instance Josh put me on to Sufjan Stevens and My Brightest Diamond, I put him on to El-P and E-40. Lyle got us listening to the Afghan Whigs and Venetian Snares and we got him listening to early 90’s rap, Ed Banger, Institubes, and TTC and so on.

In terms of how it comes together…it has been a bit difficult because there’s so many different approaches that we want to take towards making music, I think we’re starting to figure it out though. I think for me also, personally in the back of my mind there’s this idea of what I imagine late 70’s early 80s New York was like. It seemed to be a really exciting time for interactions…despite the supposed decadence of the time period. I mean Arthur Baker helped produce Bambataa’s Planet Rock and went on to work with New Order. Or even, that “World Destruction” track with Bambataa and John Lydon (produced by Bill Laswell). Or maybe it’s more I’m influenced by the progressiveness that Afrika Bambataa pushed and is still pushing versus that particular time period.

Have you seen Downtown ’81, though? With Basquiat? That’s the kind of interaction I hope can start again, in the sense that I know a lot of folks in a lot of different “scenes” dance/rap/rock/art/theatre etc. and I kind of don’t understand why there’s not more exchange or interaction between these groups of very similar minded people in terms of being interested in new and “weird” and good.

At the same time I do believe that there are more and more people like this, and that’s encouraging and I think those people come to our shows, so that’s a sort of unconscious influence.

Lovestar: Tell us a bit about your early days as a group and at the present. What’s different, what has stayed the same?

Luke: Well, we used to have another singer but she wanted to do more blues roots music stuff, and I think we started going in this dance-y type direction that she wasn’t feeling at the time. The songwriting’s changed, the last record it was mostly me fitting songs I already had onto beats that Lyle already had. This time we’re working on tracks together a lot more. We’ve been doing remixes too, which I think may inform our process a bit as well, but maybe not. It’s always interesting to hear the separated tracks of another band/artist.
We’re older. We’ve toured. The best thing I think, is that we didn’t really know each other when we started making music together, and have become good good friends as a result.

Lovestar: How do you all sustain the creative drive?

Luke: That’s a hard question. I guess part of it involves being around a lot creative people in Toronto. Also, for when I’m at a club I’m always sort of writing bits and pieces of songs over other people’s beats in my head, I mean if it’s just DJ stuff. Also, wanting to make something that’s relevant, but not something that will date itself. It’s always good to go back to old records too. The desire to let the world know that there is more to Canadian music than “indie” rock, singer songwriters, and Celine Dion.

Lovestar: (2 part question!) What do you strive for when creating a track as well as remixing another artists track?
What do you do when creating a remix to give it your specific signature SDR style? Are there certain key elements that create that or does it just happen as you go along?

Luke: Basically, I think we find an element in the song and then expand that element into the remix. I don’t think we’re interested in creating a signature style though. Sometimes we’ll incorporate some original parts from the original song and reconfigure them and sometimes we won’t. One remix Josh recorded brand new drums for, others we’ve used programmed drums. I guess the past few remixes have been really dance floor oriented which is lots of fun, but it’s not something we want to be expected to do every time.

Lovestar: It seems that SLUM records has a knack for bringing on artists that have a reputation for having an exhilarating stage presence – What sets SDR apart from other bands?

Luke: Yeah, it’s an amazing roster to be a part of. Everybody is so exciting live, I really hope we’ll be able to do a label tour sooner than later, because it would be nuuuuts.
I think we’re less concerned about trends in music, and are more interested in trying new things. I mean I don’t think we’re going to invent a new genre or anything, I don’t really know if it’s possible to make something 100% new anymore. Also, we are more concerned with making people’s feet move during the show.

Lovestar: In today’s ever changing music market, what methods have you found to successfully promote your band?

Luke: I think the internet’s a very useful tool in some ways, it’s also a huge time waster. I guess it’s a mix of the old and new, playing shows, and maintaining an email list and what not. We just don’t have the time to update 10 different websites. I mean we have our own domain name, and still haven’t had time to do anything with it.

Lovestar: SDR is releasing their 2nd highly anticipated album off SLUM records in the coming months – What can you tell us about this album? How does it differ to your first LP, ” hell.o”?

Luke: It’s called Midnite, Romance, Blood. So that’s sort of the running theme of the album.
Despite the title, there’s more humour in it, at least to us. There are definitely more up-tempo songs. I’m also trying to be more economic with words. You can probably tell from this interview I can ramble on, so I’m trying to curb that in the lyrics.
I was pretty much dry when I wrote most of the songs off the last record, now I’m not, unfortunately. The final third of the album is shaping up to be a departure from what people who are familiar with us would expect. The song we did with Nirmala (formerly of controller.controller) is basically this waltz and we’re really happy with it. I think there’s going to be a few surprises even for people who have been coming to our shows for a while.

SDR’s Official BIO:
TO DIE AND LIVE IN T.O.

A metropolis tends to eat its own at night. Stop Die Resuscitate, then, make the sound of paranoid dusk falling on a city street (with your name on it). Since 2002, this Toronto-based threesome of steady-grinding rap / electro whizkids has been honing its intense, informed musical vision that makes no time whatsoever for jaded scenes, industry ignorance, or tired sounds. Next, or nothing.

In 2004, SDR’s debut album, HELL.O (mastered by buddy Noah Mintz (Broken Social Scene, Danko Jones, The Dears), was released independently, to deserved acclaim.”[HELL.O is] a record that just exudes the now” wrote Toronto Star pop music critic Ben Rayner, in a column devoted to the group. Toronto music guru Denise Benson dubbed SDR “a weird, wonderful blend” and EYE Magazine described them as “the sonic equivalent of a psychotic episode; but in a good way.”

Since, SDR has stunned crowds at punk joints, electro nights, rapstravaganzas, scenester shows, glam-encrusted stages and open-air benefits.

In early 2006, the band was signed to up-and-coming Vancouver-based record label S.L.U. (Summer Lovers Unlimited) for a future release, and received Mexican distribution for their debut HELL.O (Noise Kontrol). They have been playing their new material to rapidly increasing interest and wilder, wilder crowds.

SDR are possibly the only band that can lay claim to having opened or toured with acts as diverse as; techno stars Ellen Allien and Miss Kittin, soon to be Can-Con rock stars controller.controller, Vancouver’s hip-hop cut ups No Luck Club, Philadelphia’s gallery rappers Plastic Little, next gen-soul sensations LAL, Brit pop chart-toppers Hard-Fi, and Canadian diva-darling Esthero, all the while gaining new listeners. Keep that ear to the ground.

Roll call, roll out: Producer Lyle Crilly (aka Surge Gainsboard) is a MUTEK vet and knob-twiddler whose compositions have been described as “wizardly”, and Denise Benson crowned him “a genius” The man on the mic, coolhandLuke, is an impeccably dressed spitfire with a hawklike eye for observation and a wizened grip on industry trappings; which makes for some of the most bs-free post-everything emceeing you’ve ever heard. Nova Scotian Joshua Van Tassel, SDR’s newest addition, rounds out the crew by adding furious, jazz-precise live drums to the experience.

Stop Die Resuscitate weave a hardline DIY ethic with deft electronic sensibilities while remaining firmly rooted in hip-hop culture. These kids are up on everything and down for whatever, two things often claimed but rarely delivered in an industry rife with eclecticist posturing belying inter-scene ignorance. They’re on the real, and they know what you want. Exhale on your own time.