-- by Rodrigo Perez
Given the melting-pot nature of the Big Apple, it's fitting that New York's hippest band is a transplant from the West Coast.
San Francisco's the Rapture are also one of the few bands in the city that's managed to gain favor with dance-club hipsters and punk rock devotees alike, by forging elements of early-'80s post-punk, '70s disco and Chicago house into a unique style of "dirty disco" that has really touched a nerve.
In its early days, the band, formed in 1998 by boyhood pals singer/guitarist Luke Jenner and drummer Vito Roccoforte, described its sound as "sonic death groove," but even as a jagged punk band, the operative word was always "groove." A remix of their "House of Jealous Lovers" by electro-house DJ Morgan Geist proved to be the band's calling card and defining moment. A taut and furiously controlled fusion of searing guitars, visceral vocals and a hypnotic club-thumping beat, the song became the anthem of the hipster underground in 2002, burning up clubs in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and several cities in Europe.
The Rapture first really found their groove in 1999 when they hooked up with New York producers the DFA (Death From Above), who took the group's raw, gnashed sounds in a new direction and never looked back. Composed of Tim Goldsworthy (Mo'Wax, U.N.K.L.E) and James Murphy, the DFA members happened upon a Rapture gig while the band rolled through New York and were impressed with what they saw. From there, the studio mavens offered to produce the group's next release.
Through celebrated Seattle grunge label Sub Pop, the band released the six-song EP Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks in 2001. While Out of the Races ... was still gnashed, angular and seeped heavily in noise-punk, the EP demonstrated hints and traces of the more dance-oriented direction the DFA's production direction was taking them. The label affiliation would be short-lived, however — the band, which had relocated to Seattle, soon had enough of the Northwestern Pacific climate. "It rained every day for three months so it was a little too much," Roccoforte said. "We got out of there."
Moving to New York wasn't the dream experience the band was expecting, however. After hooking up with bassist Matt Safer, the guys found shelter where they could, often sleeping in their van under the Brooklyn Bridge where it was parked. "We booked a tour, came in a van, got [to New York] and [met] some mutual friends through other people and they let us stay at their places," Roccoforte remembered.
These precarious living conditions would soon seep over into the creation of their music. "I think our circumstances were really pretty volatile," Jenner said. "We just didn't have places to live and we weren't stable people."
With no radio support, the dance floor became the Rapture's foot in the door. "The club is an important place for [our] music," Jenner said. "I think a lot of people have heard of us just from going out or even just being in bars in New York."
As the buzz grew on "House of Jealous Lovers," so did the Rapture's profile, and they were invited to open up for a reunited Sex Pistols at a critical gig in the U.K. While the seminal punk group kept its distance, it didn't bother the Rapture that they didn't get to meet the legendary Johnny Rotten. "He was hanging out in the pub I guess," Roccoforte said nonchalantly.
The experience itself was one to be remembered for the group, accustomed to playing small clubs. "It was pretty weird. I felt like Sting or someone," Jenner said.
With the addition of saxophonist Gabriel Andruzzi in mid-2002, the Rapture's lineup was complete. Lest anyone think, "What the hell is a saxophone doing in a post-punk band?" the band says: Think again. "The first single we put out was a Psychedelic Furs cover ['Dumb Waiters'] and the song originally had saxophone on it, so I always wanted a saxophone player," Jenner said.
The band's sound has also become heavily informed by their emergent roles as DJs. "It's an influence [and] it's becoming a bigger one," said Jenner, who bartends and DJs at Manhattan's trendy Plant Bar as his day job. "We're getting way more into writing songs around samples. Instead of writing it on guitar or whatever."
Making good on the promise they made with the "House of Jealous Lovers" 12-inch, the Rapture's upcoming album, Echoes, delves deeper into the disco-house groove, suffusing the feral snarl of their punk edge with a sexy, beat-driven edge marked by Jenners' Robert Smith-like howl.
Although the Rapture have been on the forefront of the buzz coming from the Brooklyn, New York, scene and particularly from the trendy neighborhood of Williamsburg, the group has been dismissive of the hype. "It's not very important for the band," Jenner said. "As long as those people who live there can come see us and pay money for our records and covet our pictures in the teen magazines," Andruzzi added with a sly smile.
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