Eclectic beats and subsonic dub business.

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Have you heard the growl that accompanies that Audi ad with the bull wrestler? Well, that noise is the beginning of Bitten by DOG.

DOG are a drum ’n’ bass, dub, hip-hop punk outfit that revolve around Mark Sayfritz, a sound engineer and programmer who’s worked with Goldie, Ian Brown and who wrote the incidental music for High Fidelity. He has toured the States with Jane’s Addiction and spent four years in Nigeria recording African tribes. DOG is his sideline, but over the last year it has evolved into a full-time job.

“We see it as a collective,” he says. “In a normal format a band has one singer but in this band there are four people who take the front at different points in the set.” These people include Mark’s drum ’n’ bass programming associate Ice and his rapper brother Pink. Also on vocals is Hamish Clark, a 6ft 8in New Zealander who’s worked with hip-hop giants The Nextmen.

Hamish also brought in an unexpected collaborator. During a night out at London jazz haunt Ronnie Scott’s, he was invited up to freestyle with the resident band. “Pete Townsend and Liam Gallagher were standing at the back,” says Mark. “They came up to him afterwards and went, ‘That’s f**king amazing!’”

After hearing a demo of DOG, Townsend offered to add some guitar parts. “He just played for five hours solidly,” remembers Mark. “I did 250 takes of guitars and he was doing the whole swinging the arm thing, and his amp’s burning and the speakers are stretching. He was in a soundproof room but it was still very audible – it was so loud.”

Guitarist Chris Compton, a punk/dub rocker, and drummer Eshan Khadaroo complete the line-up. The result is like a deeper, more thoughtful version of The Prodigy with the production quality of Leftfield. The mix is eclectic: ethnic beats, political anger and punk attitude meets the subsonic beats of drum ‘n’ bass and hip-hop delivery. “It’s a culture clash of styles really,” says Mark. It certainly is. Matt Walton 02 January 03

Bitten is out 24 February 03 and the album is released 10 March 03 on Heavenly Recordings.

useful link: www.dogcollective.com