The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Dananananaykroyd are massive teases. They made their name impossible to spell, so Google searches would remain futile. They released a couple of limited-edition 7” singles - ‘Totally Bone’ and ‘Some Dresses’ - so only a fraction of us could find copies. They let us witness body-jettisoning live shows, just to make us beg for more. And then they hid away in Glasgow, pretending they didn’t exist. But they’ve been busy formulating double drumkit-toting hardcore anthems for the pop-inflected youth. A new EP, ‘Sissy Hits’, has been due for a while and they’ve already been touring the songs. They’re teasing us again, although not intentionally.

“The EP was recorded six months ago,” says James Hamilton, co-drummer. “They’re quite old songs and most of them are staples of our set, so it’s quite funny that it’s taken so long to release them. Jealous Records kind of ran out of money and that basically humped us. I not blaming them, though. Holy Roar found out about it and got in touch almost straight away.”

Calum Gunn, vocalist and ex-drummer, describes the carnage: “It got out on the internet pretty much overnight. Suddenly we had a million MySpace messages saying, ‘I’ll put it out. I don’t even know what a record is but I’ll do it!’ Holy Roar was the best one for us. We’re big fans of bands on their roster.”

Those bands include screaming magma mentalists Rolo Tomassi and electro metal punks Cutting PinkWith Knives, and ‘Sissy Hits’ fits in nicely by tearing comparisons asunder. It’s an EP defined by structure and wild noise - stacked, melodic guitar lines, huge drums and yelped vocals. ‘The Greater Than Symbol and The Hash’ spreads chiming riffs, screams and rubato over its five-minute length; ‘One After One’ and ‘Cleaning Each Other’ build until they are overwhelming monstrosities of musical architecture. This is Dananananaykroyd in excelsis. And what kind of personalities tar and feather their ideas beyond recognition before making the public wait six months to hear them? Let’s find out.

“None of us can really afford to do this full time just yet,” says Calum about their future plans. “The logical thing to do would be to tour again because it’s fun and…”

Talk rapidly becomes garbled and confused - too many excitable voices - until Calum suddenly blurts out that people can already download the record (do NOT try this at home kids, bands like to eat), “but you can’t download a live performance.”

“That’s gonna be one of my proverbs for this week,” says a chuffed Calum.

James has a different solution. “If you recorded a gig and had it for download - film it in hi-def - people could project it on a big screen, in any venue of their choice. And then you’ve got yourselves a virtual gig!”

No more scraping the pennies together for Ginsters and petrol indeed.

Calum leaps on the idea. “What I thought we could do is play gigs in our flat for two weeks and only invite people from certain parts of the country each night.”

You’d screen people at the entrance?

“We’d have to check their accents.”

“Like casual fascism,” quips James

There’s always the Sandi Thom option: broadcast gigs across the internet.

“I always thought the Sandi Thom option was to make everybody else want to murder you?” says James, clearly the astute one in the band.

Talking across each other, firing random bursts of laughter and finally settling on a mildly cohesive line of argument, these two talk like they rock. It’s perhaps this compelling, scattergun attitude that suggests their current course of action.

“I guess us doing a full album depends on whether someone’s willing to put it out,” says James. “We’re pinballing between labels… but, in fact, we’ve already titled it.”

A Stool Pigeon exclusive. You heard it here first. “It’s gonna be called Baldrick. On the cover, there’s gonna be a picture of Tony Robinson from Time Team.”

Apparently I sound disappointed. Perhaps my laughter isn’t boisterous enough. But this is the best idea since someone named their band after a Ghostbuster. Are they just teasing us again? I wouldn’t put it past them.