EMF: Still Embracing the Beauty and the Chaos
A chat with guitarist Ian Dench ahead of the British rave ‘n’ roll band’s anticipated return to the United States
It was 1990, and six lads from the small town of Cinderford in Gloucestershire, England, released their first single. What happened next can only be described as – you should excuse the expression – unbelievable.
Unexpectedly (and virtually overnight), EMF became, at least for a little while, the biggest rock band on the planet. This month, EMF will return to the U.S. for the first time in over 30 years, promoting The Beauty and the Chaos, a collection of ten new songs released earlier this year.
Singer James Atkin, keyboardist Derry Brownson, drummer Marc Decloedt, DJ Milf, and bassist Zac Foley formed EMF in the late ’80s. They sported knee-length shorts and funny hats, had a cool name (short for Epsom Mad Funkers, a New Order fan club,) a lot of big dreams, but no songs… not until guitarist Ian Dench came along. They quickly established themselves in Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean music scene and signed to Parlophone, with no clue that “Unbelievable,” the first single from their debut LP Schubert Dip, would turn the world upside down.
VIDEO: EMF “Unbelievable”
“Unbelievable,” with its insanely danceable syncopations, DJ Milf’s earwig record scratching, and an Andrew Dice Clay vocal sample, rocketed to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and, for a time, became ubiquitous on MTV, radio and television.
EMF never duplicated that success, although the group enjoyed a measure of popularity at home and released two more albums and several singles (a cover of the Monkees’ “I’m A Believer” did well in the U.K.) before disbanding in 1995. The band tried to mount a comeback in 2001, but the O.D. death of bassist Zac Foley led to a second breakup by 2002.
Atkin, Dench, and Brownson reunited in 2012, adding bassist Stevey Marsh to celebrate the 21st anniversary re-release of Schubert Dip, and have played on the festival circuit sporadically ever since. A career-spanning box set in 2020 inspired EMF to pursue another full-time run.
Go-Go Sapiens, EMF’s first collection of new material in over 20 years, received a limited release in 2022, followed in January, 2024 by The Beauty and the Chaos, ten catchy dance-pop tunes that introduced EMF to a new generation.
“Another beautifully crafted record, offering subtly evolved songcraft, hooks aplenty, and the same mischievous sense of fun that first attracted fans when EMF dropped a certain single back in 1990,” enthused SonicAbuse.com. The album bristles with danceable and anthemic singalongs but transcends mere grebo nostalgia, with songs that address hot-button topics like immigration and climate change.
EMF are not just back, but definitely worth a listen. They’ll return to the U.S. for shows at Milwaukee’s Summerfest on June 21, Detroit’s Magic Bag on June 22, and Brooklyn’s The Monarch on June 23.
We chatted by Zoom with guitarist and songwriter Ian Dench in England as EMF prepared for its first American shows since 1992.
The new album came as a surprise after all these years but I commend you on making a record that sounds both fresh and modern but also exactly like EMF.
Top job done, I suppose. I like to feel that we might still be contemporary. For sure we’re being authentic. But, you know, I think we picked up a few things along the way.
I was especially impressed with James (Atkin’s) voice, he sounds exactly the same after so many years.
I feel that in some ways, his voice has improved and he’s got more control over it. And just generally as a person, he has more control over himself now. You know, he’s very much grown up. We all have. He’s got kids, he’s spent years teaching music, and it’s been really good for him.
Years ago, he said, I’ve got to move out of Camden. He and Amy Winehouse and all the Camden crazies would go out on a Friday evening and stagger back on Monday morning, and he said, if I continue living like this, I’m not going to be around very long. So he and his girlfriend moved to Yorkshire, out in the middle of nowhere, and it’s been so good for him, because he looks after himself now and loves nature and loves to go riding through the beautiful hills where he lives. And when we get together to work on music, he’s got a beautiful studio with big windows that look over streams and sheep and fields, and it’s just wonderful. It’s a different sort of life, really.
That’s great to hear. So how did this new album come together? I know you released Go-Go Sapiens first, but that’s a bit hard to find. It’s not streaming anywhere, I had to go to your website to hear it.
Exactly. It’s meant to be like that. We were dipping our toes back in the water with that one. We’re definitely pushing this one a bit more. The Beauty and the Chaos happened right after Go-Go Sapiens. Go-Go was a result of our 30th anniversary. We did a few gigs to celebrate and we just felt the love out there, and we were like, oh maybe need to do a bit of music again.
James and I just rattled out Go-Go and we really enjoyed it, so we were like, let’s do another one. So we got in touch with Ralph Jezzard, who produced “Unbelievable” and the first two albums. He’d been in the States, working in Texas, so we thought, maybe he could do the mixes or something. We sent him a message and he literally moved back to London, to a studio right around the corner from my studio, and we were like, great, let’s do this. It was like the stars aligned. So we did a bit of stuff in James’ studio in Yorkshire and we finished it up in mine.
A lot of the music we’re hearing in 2024 gestated during the pandemic. Was that the case with this?
Go-Go Sapiens was the COVID album. It’s all a bit of a blur the last few years but I think with the new one, the songwriting was mostly done in 2022, ’23.
Go-Go seems much more of a downer, and Beauty is a lot more upbeat and happy.
I think that’s true, yes.
This is the third go-around for EMF. You tried reuniting once before and it didn’t take. And you personally have had an amazing career, writing hit songs for Beyonce and Shakira, Jordin Sparks, The Prodigy, and Florence & The Machine. With so much success, what keeps bringing you back to the band you joined when you were just a kid?
I think EMF is the real me. I’ve had some wonderful opportunities along the way, and I love working with great musicians and people whose work I love, and I’ve done some interesting things that took me to some amazing places. I wound up being Vice President of A&R for Epic Records in 2009, and working in corporate music and working with some really high level artists and some amazing people was great. But it was also all about ‘you gotta write a hit,’ and I was trying to make hits for other people. So yeah, I wrote some hits for other artists and it was wonderful. But after a while, it was strange. It got to be too much like a job and not the thing I love.
I’ve always thought I did my best work when I’ve loved what I was doing and not because I was trying to write a hit. And I missed that feeling. James and I had an amazing chemistry and over the years, we’d get together occasionally and bang out a song, and it just felt right. There’s nothing quite like playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band and EMF is a really good rock ‘n’ roll band.
It’s wonderful watching Beyoncé play my songs, and working with her and Shakira was fantastic, but it’s not like playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
I was lucky enough to see you back in the day and I’m looking forward to seeing you in New York soon, but I have to ask, is touring as much fun at age 60 as it was at 25?
Good question. Playing holds the same allure. It’s great. I mean, the best cure for my slipped disc is getting on a stage. Everything else disappears and I’m leaping around and it’s adrenaline, it’s a wonderful painkiller. But the complete touring experience can be hard work. We just did 11 dates around the U.K. and it was a brilliant time. The band’s in a great place. But sitting on a bus for five or six hours at a time doesn’t get any easier.
I’m curious, what the audiences were like after so many years? Was it primarily people who danced to EMF back in the ’90s, or was there a new generation of fans who have discovered you and wanted to see you?
It’s definitely a majority of old bald guys. (laughs) Because they were the fans. But again, that was a great revelation, seeing them, because I always thought that having been a pop band in some ways, well, I always thought that with pop music, people would find you and then they’d move on to the next big thing. But now, I see that’s not true.
I know with me, the music that I loved when I was a teenager, I’ve loved my whole life. And I’m finding that people who discovered us in their teen years, even if they were young and only heard “Unbelievable” on the radio and saw us on the cover of a pop magazine, well, we’ve brought them with us. And many people have said that they were introduced to the idea of alternative music by our second album, which was much darker and harder. So they’ve been with us all the way, and that’s brilliant.
That’s one of the greatest things about the live experiences, the EMF community. There’s some lovely people that we see, who come to all the shows and are reliving a wonderful moment of their lives. But there are younger people because a lot of fans my age bring their teenage children and they’re like wow, we’ve never seen nothing like that.
I’ve seen it with my own son, who’s about to turn 20. Live music becomes less and less of a thing to them at that age and it’s all about DJ’s and producers and music made like that. My son loves heavy metal so he still loves a band, but he also loves hardcore techno and I think, you know, a lot of kids that age have never seen what a great rock ‘n’ roll band sounds like. So it’s lovely that we can impress the young ‘uns occasionally and hopefully bring them along with us.
I have to ask, what was it like releasing your very first single and suddenly becoming the biggest band in the world? What were you in the moment thinking? Were you thinking that you were going to be the next Beatles, or just hoping to make the most of the moment while it was happening?
Oh, definitely, the latter. I mean, we were having fun, and I think that the fun came through and people wanted to become part of the excitement and energy that we had. But we never thought we were the greatest band in the world. We were just making some good music and enjoying it. And so, when it connected, we just had the most brilliant time. And I have to say thank you to the United States of America for that, because they opened their hearts to us. We got higher on the charts in the U.S. than we did in England.
What was it like when the second album came out, and then the third, and you didn’t enjoy that same level of success? I imagine that must have been hard.
It was hard. Because you think, okay, we got this right, we can do it again. I had been in bands for a long time at that point, I was a little older than the other guys, and I think I knew how precarious it all was. But I was like, okay, we’ve got the formula, right, here we go.
I think it’s a problem when you do things because you just feel them. That didn’t work out very well for us. We didn’t have any sort of plan. And so the next record was like, oh, let’s put in a bit of Jane’s Addiction and let’s do a little Nirvana, because we liked all those things. But in terms of music marketing, that might not have been the cleverest thing. In terms of our base, I think the second album, Stigma, is still the fans’ favorite. But maybe after that we moved into more of a niche in the alternative music market.
I always pity Don McLean having to sing “American Pie” every time he gets on stage and you’re in the same boat. Do you still enjoy playing “Unbelievable?”
I would play “Unbelievable” every single day of my life because of the reaction it gets. Every time we go out there and play “Unbelievable,” people go crazy. They came to hear that song and you play it and they go bonkers, and that just makes me very happy.
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