Dance Music mavericks King Kong Company for Galway

Dance-music mavericks King Kong Company play a free show in Róisín Dubh on Saturday, September 6. The Waterford band are also gearing up to play this year’s Electric Picnic. King Kong Company will be closing the Salty Dog Stage – a pirate ship in the forest – at 1.30am.

“We’re hoping for a good crowd, because we’re the last thing on and there’s nothing else on at the time,” says keyboardist Tom Stapleton. “We played a gig in the Body & Soul last year, which had a good reaction. So, we’ve got an hour-and-a-half to two hours to play, so we have to get a set together, which we’re doing at the moment.”

Using drums, bass, guitar, brass and samples, King Kong Company make dance music that brings to mind acts like New Order and Chemical Brothers.

“A lot of what we do we try and do live,” Tom says. “We use backing tracks when we’re using samples. And I have four or five keyboard parts; we’ll have some of that on the backing track.  Our whole thing is to try and keep it live, otherwise you might as well go and watch a DJ.”

King Kong Company play youthful, hedonistic party music, so it’s a surprise to hear they’ve been around for a while.