8 things you never knew about The Young Punx

1. Hal Ritson of The Young Punx has performed, written or produced behind the scenes on over 150 dance records in the past 4 years, including playing keyboards on Eric Prydz’s “Call On Me”, singing the “Jimmy Somerville” lead vocals on Supermode’s “Tell Me Why” and co-writing 2 tracks on David Guetta’s platinum selling “Poplife” album.
   
   
2. The Young Punx’ album “Your Music Is Killing Me” contains no audio samples of music ­ despite sounding like most of the tracks are sample-based. To produce their trademark mashed-up sound the band painstakingly record many different pieces of retro music ­ big bands, orchestras, 80s pop, surf rock, heavy metal etc, all in historically authentic ways, then ‘sample themselves’. They are always getting asked “I can’t work out what the samples are you used in ‘Fire’ and ‘Drum and Bacharach’”. There are no music samples. That said, the re-edited "Shipping Forecast" vocal on the track "Rockall" IS a genuine BBC shipping forecast, read and endorsed by Radio 4 announcer Alan Smith!
   
   
3. As a teenager, Cameron from The Young Punx had a Top 20 hit with club classic “I Know” by “New Atlantic”. The vocalist, Candy Staton, was not able to perform live with them on Top Of The Pops, so her part was sung live by “some bird the A&R man knew” ­ a performance so appalling The Sun named it the worst in the show’s history, and launched a “campaign to find New Atlantic a new singer”.
   
   
4. The Young Punx have developed an artistic partnership with cult Dutch digital artist Han Hoogerbrugge in which Hoogerbrugge has developed the visual identity for the band, record artwork and several renowned animated videos. Built on a darkly comic cast of surreal hand drawn characters, later animated in flash and 3-D animated packages, Hoogerbrugge's distinctive creations act both as the main public identity for the band, and as an exhibited part of Hoogerbrugge's own portfolio.
   
   
5. The Young Punx are big stars in Japan where they are signed to leading label Avex. This summer they performed live to thousands of screaming Japanese fans on the same bill as Gwen Stefani, Avril Lavine and the Black Eyed Peas. Young Punx videos play on massive screens in the streets of Tokyo and there are life-size cardboard cut outs of the boys in major record stores!
   
   
6. Cameron and Hal both suffer from a rare genetic disorder which gives them the stump of a prehensile tail ­ an evolutionary throwback to the time before cavemen. The band met at a support group for sufferers.
   
   
7. Both Cameron and Hal studied at King’s College Cambridge. They usually keep this quiet on account of it not sounding very ‘dance’. But in fact it is a positive hotbed of club talent with leading artists such as Freeform Five and Will Saul also having studied there!
   
   
8. 12.5% of things The Young Punx say are not true.