Stoking the Engine: Dick Drone releases the ‘Engine Room’ EP

One thing the Tokyo-based 2-member outfit Dick Drone is missing is honesty.

That’s because one member also makes electronic music under a different alias, and would prefer to remain anonymous here.

The other member can’t quite vocalize the truth either, because she’s only two and a half years old…

Let’s call dad and daughter Chichi and Chigo (their suggestion, not mine), which translates from Japanese as “father” and “child”.

Chichi, the older one, professes ignorance about the origins of Dick Drone as a creative project, but admits it was sometime before Chigo, the younger one, was even conceived.

What is known is that a track called ‘Engine Room’ was released on a limited edition TTAK sampler in Japan around five years ago, and DJs around this country busted their balls trying to track down a copy.

The artist’s name was Dick Drone.

Chigo joined the outfit “sometime after she was born,” reports Chichi, with a mischievous grin. “She makes the best abstract sounds and I love to sample her incidental percussion work and vocals. She’s a natural.”

‘Engine Room’ has now been remixed by Dick Drone themselves (“It needed an upgrade”), and by other artists from Tokyo and Sydney, namely Little Nobody and DJ Hi-Shock, who make the track more tech-house and dancefloor-conscious.

On the remix EP, there’re also two other original mixes by our Tokyo-based papa and his wee little tacker.

The sounds of Dick Drone drift from minimal, chilled tech-house, into abstract, metallic electronica that can be as abrasive as it is invigorating.

It also has a huge sense of humor that’d appeal to other musicians like Si Begg, Luke Vibert, Aphex Twin or Cassetteboy – all of whom Chichi cites as influences.

Chigo’s own influences remain unspoken, but the mischief in her eyes remarkably resembles her dad’s.

By Terry Rance.