Their first single was released in anonymity, but today, the faces behind the music have been revealed. DECIUS have been all over the airwaves recently with a string of fresh releases and remixes. The South London-based acid house band’s mission statement keeps it honest: “Decius is when members of Trashmouth Records, Fat White Family & Paranoid London find themselves climbing out of a hole together at a disco after hours.”
With nine EPs to their credit, the group’s sound shifts lanes from marauding techno to acid-house punctuated with unnerving falsetto vocals and unusually intricate lyrics. It’s so rare to find a fresh take on dance music that when one finds it, they should grab it by the jugular and hang on like grim death. But Decius’s addictive rhythms will probably grab you, first.
The electronic duo Medicine 8, helmed by Trashmouth Records founders Liam and Luke May, was the precursor to Decius. (Medicine 8 did a cover of the Velvet Underground’s, “The Murder Mystery,” that Lou Reed liked more than the original. “They did it so much better than I did, and I love it when that happens,” Reed said gleefully.) Medicine 8 disbanded, but the Mays continued their voyage of electronic experimentation in the form of Decius, adding Paranoid London’s Quinn Whalley and Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi to their crew.
They’re Iggy Pop’s house music of choice. He described their sound on his BBC6 radio show as: “Made by a loose amalgam of England’s most troublesome, wayward and wanton musicians, Decius gets the groove going in a different way, they kind of come at you out of the dark…” The hype surrounding the acid-house conglomerate doesn’t stop with accolades from the legendary Godfather of Punk: Decius’s recent EP U Instead of Thought was a featured highlight in the September 2021 print issue of DJ Magazine, and The Quietus recently did an in-depth interview with them, which coincided with the release of their ninth EP, Look like a Man.
Their dark, danceable tracks have won the praises of DJs the world over, and if not for the unpleasantly sticky situation of the ongoing pandemic, they’d undoubtedly be playing a residency at the Panorama Bar in Berghain right now. Pre-pandemic, the group played gigs such as NYC Downlow at Glastonbury, Salon Renaate Sur Wilden in Berlin, and the infamous, much-missed World Unknown parties. Post-pandemic one can only imagine the sweaty glory that awaits.
