Simian Mobile Disco Made an Album in a Wild West Ghost Town

As live venues go you would be hard pressed to find a more grandiose location for recording a live techno album than Pappy & Harriet's in Pioneertown, California. Part roadhouse, part straight-out-of-Hollywood old Western relic, Pioneertown is a long lost gem from another era. The dirt road leading up to the restaurant and venue is flanked by a general store and 19th century-style trade shops, with horse staples in place of parking spots. Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown Palace is a drastic change of location from the London warehouse venues that Simian Mobile Disco usually plays, which is what made the show special—it was the perfect minimalist backdrop for what James Ford and Jas Shaw looked to accomplish with experimental new album Whorl.

With no computers, and only one synth and sequencer each, the duo envisioned the album as a raw and real response to a world of overproduced, shiny dance music. We Angelenos didn't know what to expect but, but we knew it would be worth the two hour eastward trek into the Californian desert. And it was cold. Really cold. Underdressed city kids huddled together looking trendy as always as they danced away the night on the set of an old Western movie, and while this may sound magical, words cannot convey the depth of this experience. Only through pictures can you truly see the end result of such an enchanting idea from a duo who are not new to pushing the boundaries of modern electronic music.