On The Download: The Whip

Manchester, England has handed off to the world quite a few dynamic bands known for splicing up genres and The Whip, are one of the newest of the city's buzzy crop to hit our shores.

The band, a sweaty and hedonistically charged outfit, who mesh jangly guitars with New Order-sounding synths, have spent the last month touring their debut album, "X-Marks Destination" (Razor & Tie), stateside. It's been a hearty trek for the group, who live, turn what appears to be just an ordinary rock show into an underground rave-styled affair full of dripping-wet patrons swept up in a haze of electronics, edgy guitars and hypnotic vocals. At least that's what they did when we caught them at SXSW in March.

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Sweaty and hedonistically-sounding, the four-piece – singer/guitarist Bruce, synth man Danny, bassist Nathan, and their rock star of a drummer, (female) Little Fee — are about to wrap up a tour that so far has been nothing but a blast for the outfit.

"Yeah, everyone we've met has been great and really accommodating and friendly," Danny told On The Download of the road trip in a small tour van. "Everyone's been dead accommodating, telling us about their little local area and showing us places to go."

And though they play music made of swabbing synths, driving bass lines and Bruce's breathy vocals concerning a disaffected youth lifestyle, (like "I wanna be trash…"), they are fun-loving bunch, not afraid of embarrassing themselves at karaoke.

On the playlist – (we asked, of course)?

"Whatever weird and wonderful '80s classics we can find…. We generally go off on an '80s tangent… a bit of '80s rock… a bit of Prince is in there, a bit of Michael Jackson as well," Danny laughed. "Depending how drunk we get, ABBA can sometime squeeze itself in there. On one drunken occasion Bruce managed to lose his voice singing a U2 medley."

The band have handful of dates stateside before heading back to the UK, including one this coming Monday at Los Angeles' Spaceland. And while he's not likely to show up this time around, New Order's own Peter Hook given them the thumbs up, offering to play with them sometime.

"Peter Hook's been in touch on a couple of occasions… He said he'd love to come play bass on one of the songs live," Danny said. "It's not something we've managed to hook up yet … but maybe sometime in the future [we'll] get a bit of 'Hooky' bass magic on one of the tracks live."

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