What the Allstars feel is the real deal. What the Allstars feel is the real deal." Many bands have trod the postage stamp-sized stage of Leeds's Cockpit but it's safe to assume that few have had their mantra-cum-motto chanted back at them by the audience, terrace-style. And it's a safe bet that none of them sounded anything like the Lo-Fidelity Allstars.
The Lo-Fis' live set, like their debut album, 'How To Operate With A Blown Mind', sounds (roughly) like the Chemical Brothers, the Beastie Boys, Primal Scream, Massive Attack, Underworld, Flowered Up and Funkadelic meeting over a sampler and some blotter acid. It's the wildest, psychedelic freak funk you'll hear all year. Vocalist The Wrekked Train stands on stage, eyes concealed by black wraparound goggles.
The Lo-Fis sample everyone from the Stone Roses to the Soul Sonic Force, and they've got a frontman to match: his onstage pose samples the open-mouthed blankness of Ian Brown, the mic-hugging stance of Bobby Gillespie, a dab of Liam Gallagher's casual imperiousness. He snarls another distorted slogan, part-boast and maybe part-prophecy: "Allshtaaaarrzzz taaaayyy kinnnn ovaaaahhhh!"
WHEN the Lo-Fidelity Allstars played their last single, 'Vision Incision', live on Jo Whiley's show, Whiley introduced them as "the big beat bruisers from Brighton". Which sounds great, only they're not big beat, they're not bruisers and they're not from Brighton. Still, she did also say they were probably the best new band in Britain. And maybe, that time, she was right.
Even optimists would have to admit that ambition and innovation are pretty thin on the ground in music right now. No wonder the Lo-Fis' opening salvoes, last year's 'Kool Roc Bass' and 'Disco Machine Gun' singles, provoked such hysteria. Stone Roses and Verve producer John Leckie was interested in producing the album while house DJs like Terry Farley were raving about their self-produced remix of 'Disco Machine Gun'. It wasn't just the music that seemed right - there were the bizarre names, the superhero comic-style logo, and the remixes of feeble psych-Scousers Cast that cockily featured The Wrekked Train (better known as Dave) scrapping with the original vocals.
Not since the Wu-Tang arrived with their outlandish monikers and self-mythologising gang identity had a band appeared so brash, so fuck-off, so self-assured. Even if, as they claim, it was pretty much accidental. "It wasn't a big masterplan," says DJ and samplemaniac and Phil (aka The Albino Priest ) in a soft Leeds accent. "We didn't set out to be different. We just..." "We knew we were different," Dave interrupts.