Robots in Disguise
Be transformed by… Robots in Disguise
The girls make funky electro. They dress sharp, and their lyrics are sharper, as evinced by some of the lyrics in Boys:
Boys
Let us celebrate the foreign glamour of boys
Their allure is left unexplained
Their features and form alien to girls as described by girls
Scant chance for us to consume the beauty of the male body for pleasure
The body of boys, the blood of boys
In true electro style their music is unemotional, slick, sexy and tongue-in-cheek. They mix tacky references, rudey-pudey language and Byronesque romanticism with the super-superficial (spending a million years listing what they like their different favourite kinds of boys to wear in Boys, for instance).
The girls tap into art-school and punk (like Polly Styrene from the X-Ray Spex) with their punworthy names, suggesting stage alter-egos. Delia “Dee Plume” Gaitskell (vocalist, guitarist and songwriter) took her name from the French phrase “Nom de Plume”, which means the fake name you can adopt if you’re an author and don’t want anyone to know the work was written by you. Sue Denim (vocalist, guitarist and songwriter) took her name from the word “pseudonym”, which is the more official name for ‘pen name’.
In fact, the girls are seriously art-school, and not afraid of being all poetic and french, although if you look closely at the french lyrics to La Nuit (‘the night’ in French) you’ll see they’re pretty much about being high and having nice vodka jellies and showing their knickers on Paris balconies. But, when you think about it, that is perfectly Byronesque and therefore cultural and high-art:
La Nuit
Minuit j’suis si high à la party
Party, party ah-ah
Le mix de gelée vodka et le beat
Le beat, le beat ah-ah
Tu flashes sur ce balcon de Paris
Paris, Paris ah-ah
Et m’excites avec ton look risqué!
Tu m’excites avec ton looook!
The girls have strong connections with electro-surreal British TV comedy The Mighty Boosh (as of writing, Dee Plume is going out with Boosher Noel Fielding). Both Dee Plume and Sue Denim have appeared in episodes of the show: Dee has appeared in five episodes altogether of The Mighty Boosh, three being with Sue Denim. Their first appearance together was playing two mutants in “Mutants”, in which Dee sported an elephant trunk and Sue had blue skin. Their second appearance was in “Electro”, playing electro girls ‘Neon’ and ‘Ultra’. Their third was in “Nanageddon”, playing goth girls ‘Anthrax’ and ‘Ebola’, (Dee was credited as “Dee Gaitskell” in this episode). Dee’s first appearance alone was in “The Call Of The Yeti”, where she played a magazine-delivering ninja. Her second was in “The Legend Of Old Gregg”, playing a seashell-covered fisherman’s wife.
Sue also makes music with her long-term boyfriend Chris Corner in Berlin, one of the electro capitals of the world, under the name The Siblings. But they are not siblings. But no! They are girlfriend and boyfriend!
Mookychick’s last thought on Robots in Disguise: We can’t say goodbye to Dee Plume and Sue Denim without noting that their sense of style is as superb as their music. These girls are not afraid to use yo-yos in anger or to wear flowing silver capes. Fierce… Robots in Disguise, nous vous aimons!
