Quiet Village

Comprised of master crate-digger Joel Martin and rising dance-music star Matt Edwards (aka Radio Slave), and borrowing their name from Martin Denny's exotica masterpiece, Quiet Village make the old sound new and the new sound old. The Quiet Village project first emerged over three hard to find, highly sought-after singles for the cult NYC underground disco subversives label Whatever We Want where their releases stood side by side with those of label mate disco DJ legend DJ Harvey. Those 12"s led to the duo appearing at clubs like NYC's Deep Space, as well as receiving commissions for remixes from the likes of Gorillaz, Francois K and Cosmo Vitelli — all the time building a larger and larger buzz for themselves in both the new Psychedelic Disco scene (alongside people like Lindstrom & Rub 'n' Tug) and the re-emerging downtempo scene (which is going overground in 2008 with new albums from the likes of Portishead) now Quiet Village step out of the shadows to present their much anticipated debut album, Silent Movie.

With a sound that comes in part from Matt's neverending obsession with Vangelis and Klaus Schulze soundtracks and Joel's overwhelmingly obsessive crate diggin (that covers everything from Italian film soundtracks and library music to disco edits, acid rock and vintage soul) it's no surprise that the duo aren't afraid to mix the unlikeliest elements — bluesy guitar, chamber strings, air-raid sirens, shuffling breakbeats, even flutes and seagull cries — into an hour-long, beautiful reverie.

Matt Edwards prefers to call the Quiet Village sound Balearic - citing that both him and Joel are massive collectors of that scene and have always been fans of it. To them the sound is "incredibly hard to define because Balearic music can be a Pop record, it can be a Rock record. Primarily I suppose it's this midtempo, chugging , druggy sound that came about in the mid-80's which fits in between very slow and club music."

"That's what we're into that sort of sound, that's between soundtracks and almost Disco. In the late 70's there was a lot of that stuff that was made. I think everyone, pretty much, made a Disco track. We have an Ennio Morricone Disco record and it's pretty much been a great influence on Joel and I." Joel, who has on occasion also DJ'd under the alias DJ Zeus takes a slightly different take to Matt and says "Our only conscious aim is to try and approach the music from an alternative angle. I suppose it's Balearic in the traditional sense of the word i.e. spiritual, unusual, warm, but I like to describe it as sophisticated adult exotica. Also we denitely incorporate the dub aesthetic into our sound too as it can really take you on a trip. So simple yet so much going on in the subconscious background."