Music Monday: Ratatat

Band of the Week: Ratatat

Ratatat is an band from New York City, self described as electronica and psychedelic hailing; it has two members, Mike Stroud, the guitarist, and Evan Mast, the synthesizer player and producer. Their names sounds like either a stutter or the sound of gunfire, but their beats are too brilliant to be confused with anything short of being fantastic.

The band has been together since humble beginnings in their college years in 2001 when they were called Cherry, and since then, they’ve produced five studio albums, the self titled Ratatat in April 2004, two remix albums in 2004 and 2007, Classics in August 2006, and the most recent LP3 on July 8 of last year.

They’ve also had nearly 10 singles and additional remixes with artists such as Björk, Shout Out Louds and The Knife. They are strictly instrumental, with vocal interjections on rare occasions, or a sound bite of something random, like the roaring cat heard in Wildcat. They are often asked why they don’t add lyrics, but once you really get into the music, you’ll realize some things are better left unsaid.

I stumbled upon Ratatat sometime in the early 2000s when I was but a bored child rummaging the Internet for something cool to listen to. From there, I discovered a Flash animation about global warming with the song “Seventeen Years” in the background, linked below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be_pWWlf0xA

Like pretty much the bands that will be documented on Music Mondays, Ratatat has not been played on mainstream radio (to my knowledge). However, they’ve been featured in several commercials for cars (for companies like Hummer and Jaguar), for Rhapsody Music, for Cartoon Network promotions (for My Gym Partner’s A Monkey) and in films such as Cloverfield and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. More popular musicians, such as Daft Punk and Kid Cudi, have also sampled their work.

My personal favorite songs are Nostrand, Germany to Germany, Mirando , Wildcat and Mumtaz Khan. They have several outlets for music, such as their website, http://www.ratatatmusic.com/, their MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/ratatatmusic, and their YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/ratatatmusic.