Death From Above 1979

This drum and bass duo from Toronto consists of Sebastian Grainger (drums and vocals) and Jessie Keller (synths and bass). Like those indie-grind twosomes GodheadSilo and the Ruins before them, they take stripped-down instrumentation and channel it into pure crash-and-bang noise with the addition of post-punk vocals and a funky dance beat. Formed in 2001 as Death from Above, they got the name from military surplus T-shirt that sported a U.S. paratrooper slogan. In order to avoid a lawsuit from New York music collective and label DFA, they ended up tagging it with Grainger's birth year. It was under this name that they released their long-playing ruckus, You're A Woman, I'm A Machine, in 2004. Because their interests and influences are not only steeped in noise, but also house and hip-hop, they followed it up in 2005 with Romance, Bloody Romance, a CD of dance remixes and B-sides.