Poni Hoax are playing the Hoxton Bar and Grill on the 4th. They’re a bunch of Parisian Jazz musicians who set up this band to play this kind of electro-glam rock stuff. Their album Images of Sigrid is getting rereleased over here next year, and there’s something wonderfully “cabaret” about the album’s dark synths. Also, the singer Nicolas Ker has this really great Theatre-of-Cruelty performative quality to his voice, so they kind of remind you of the film Cabaret, and, to a lesser extent, Performance.

They’re on Tigersushi, were produced by Joakim and supported Franz Ferdinand earlier this year and they live in a world where the sun never rises and it never stops raining and you shouldn’t leave the club because outside the dark is rising and neon is beautiful, right? So anyway, we talked to Nicolas Ker and Laurent Bardainne over email a while ago.

Dazed Digital: How did you meet?
Laurent Bardainne: All the musicians met at the jazz conservatory in Paris around 2000's. We were playing weird jazz experimentation with hip hop/trash/noise/free stuffs. I started the band the 11th September 2001 and we met Nicolas the singer in 2004 through the small ads!
Nicholas Ker: Through the collective unconscious.

DD: Tell me something about your influences. I imagine you have god things on your shelves.
LB: In the band nobody agrees, it's large, from hip hop to minimal to Fassbinder to Wittgenstein, from afro beat to trash metal. It's a cool way to be in a band when everybody never agrees but everybody tries to go in the same direction.
NK: Weird literature and ancient priestesses.
LB: I just come from a good exposition about contemporary Chinese art, it's really deep. They are forced to hide the oppression in their work, so they send different level of reading. I love body art too.
NK: Lots. I was much more influenced by writers or filmmakers than by musicians. Let's say Warhol, Petronius & Pasolini.

DD: How did the hook-up with Joakim come about?
LB: it was a mistake, I wanted to sign with ZE records, and it was the same mailbox. We met and the connection was quite fast with the same desire for music.

DD: I hear that you're traditionally trained musicians. Would you agree? What made you want to make dance music and do you find the change liberating?
LB: Poni Hoax really come from the fact we realised that it's so cool to make dance people doing our music. We come from really serious and dark underground jazz, and we needed to blow in a more funny and "physical" way, not for only the brain!

DD: The video to Antibodies reminds me of those Tecktonik videos. What do you think of those kids? Would you say the connection is accidental or purposeful?
LB: The connection is accidental, it's an old idea from me to film people who dance, and the clip came exactly at the same moment of tektonik. Tektonic is cool; it comes from no business plans, only from kids who were ignored by everybody. Now it's business and hype of course
NK: We wrote on our Myspace that we were filming a video and that everybody that would come up and dance would be included in the final video. And so it was.

DD: One of your influences is often quoted as "Italo Disco" Would you agree with this?
LB: We don't know anything about italo. It’s true I loved disco, Donna Summer, when I was kid, but that's all I can say about it. People say italo cause it's written in the biography and cause the bass line of Budapest is a disco beat:)
NK: Italo disco makes as much sense to me as Albanian windsurfing.

DD: Nicolas, you're often compared to very theatrical showmen. Is drama important musically?
NK: My life is fucking drama 24/24 hours a day; and if not, I'm playing videogames.

DD: Would you say that you make camp music?
LB: No
NK: Absolutely not.

DD: Tell me about your live shows.
LB: It's really more punk than records. We try to expurgate all the energy that grew on us in a fucking day

DD: Are they influenced by anything outside of other pop bands?
LB: I would say a "war feeling"?
NK: War, babies, libido stuff.

DD: How would you plan your perfect party?
LB: I'm not sure we're really into "parties". Gigs for us is the best
NK: Liar.