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We chat to Filthy Dukes

What do you get if you cross Swedish dance-pop prince Tommy Sparks with London synth trio Filthy Dukes? One of the summer's most irrepressibly brilliant singles, 'Messages', that's what.
The song, out today (13 July), is in turns dark, delirious and downright filthy, but it's also feverishly addictive. What's more, we've got an exclusive remix from electro-house maestro Kris Menace, reimagining the rampant stomper as a fuzzy, trippy haze of piano, echo-y vocals and pure hands-in-the-air summer loveliness.
Before the song rages up the charts, we accosted Filthy Dukes and got them to introduce themselves.
How did your band name come about?
Olly Dixon: We do get asked that all the time, and we don't have a very good answer to what our band name is or why it came about. I think we should develop a story that revolves around us being some kind of gentrified royalty from the countryside and we're a bit dirty.
Tim Lawton: But it's not as interesting as that.
Olly Dixon: But no, it's rubbish, we just came up with it.
Which genre would you put your music in?
Olly Dixon: I would say we probably fall between the two camps of dance and pop. We're the glowing lantern in the middle.
Tim Lawton: The beacon!
Olly Dixon: Yeah. Me and Tim were DJs and run a night called Kill 'Em All at [London club] Fabric, and so we play big clubs and we know how to do a kind of dance thing. I guess you see what works on the dancefloor. But when we started to make the album with Mark [Ralph, producer], we were writing pop records and writing verse-chorus songs and we were like, 'Wow that's not really such a bad thing'. It's difficult to say but yeah, we're kind of a pop-dance act.
Do you prefer DJing or playing live?
Olly Dixon: When we're DJing, we love DJing. When we're playing live, we love playing live. I think there's something really special and magical about playing the tracks that you've written and spent a year making in the studio and seeing people react to that. You have to carry stuff when you're in a band. That's not so good. When you're a DJ it's just a few CDs, nice hotel, lovely food. We need to become a more famous band and then we'll get all of that again. And then people carry stuff for you.
Tim Lawton: Yeah.
Olly Dixon: That's it, that's the key. Sell more records. Then we'll be fine.
How do you feel about being described as the British Justice?
Olly Dixon: Yeah, being described as the British Justice is total nonsense. Justice's sound was exciting, it was like punk for dance music and everything changed and everyone tried to copy them. And we were like, 'They're brilliant - why would you try and copy them?' There's no point. So we went and did our own thing, in a sense we were almost like the antipathies of Justice. We worked against that and we were like, 'We wanna have fun and put songs back into clubs'. And Justice are Justice and they're brilliant, but yeah, we're not the British Justice.
Tim Lawton: ...in any way at all.






