Could I do better than that?

In the beginning

It all started back in January 2003, when friends and co-conspirators Mattie and Hooray met at Bill Drummond's designer-dilapidated Hoxton hang-out for a quiet pint. Unfortunately, their peace that night was disturbed by some pitiful live electronic noodling.

Fuelled by dirty lager and a spirit of reckless adventure, the pair harassed the Foundry into giving them their own gig, despite never having played together before. The next slot fell a mere 8 days later, but undaunted they returned, instruments in hand but otherwise utterly unprepared, and made a racket. In the resulting chaos, the boys threw open the challenge of spontaneous noise to the floor, and I could do better than that was born.

And then there were hats

Then something quite unexpected happened. Instead of following the usual path to rock'n'roll stardom and an untimely drug-induced death, we took a rapid right angle departure in our second "season" of audience-interaction events. What we enjoyed most of all wasn't making noise at all, but creating an event. So we decided to focus instead on the magic can exist in a moment of time. So when the crowd was expecting music, everyone got to make hats.

Whatever you do, just do something

And so, years later, we find ourselves at quite a strange point. We would probably call ourselves performance artists in as much as we think of what we do as conceptual art in performance (although the negative baggage that the label "performance art" carries is heavy). Yet we continually find crossover and inspiration in the worlds of improv, cabaret, situationalist stunts, and of course rock'n'roll.

At the end of the day, all we can say for sure is that we will always do events, we will always strive to be accessible and include other people, we will always build from a strong concept, and we will always try and create a little bit of magic.