Pressure Drop: Eli & Fur

Rifling around on the internet throws up some odd things related to Eli & Fur. Prominent is a cringeworthy Evening Standard interview from 2010 framing them as a pair of dilettantes with a Soho House membership. When Mixmag brings it up, Fur gets heated: “That journalist!” she exclaims. “She was like, ‘Who do you know that’s famous?’” But more interesting is the fact that they started out as a pop proposition, their 2012 debut ‘Sea Of Stars’ a featured track on blog Popjustice. The reason for this particularly mid-noughties origin story is traceable to Eli’s first post-college job as an intern at pop production house Xenomania. Wangling a job for Fur too, the two made tea in the morning and wrote music in the afternoon under the guidance of their boss, the impresario Brian Higgins. “It wasn’t like they were trying to make us pop stars, it wasn’t as cool as that,” Eli insists. Even if they were, it didn’t work. Fur, who began raving aged 15 at an Infected Mushroom gig (“Rank. No offence!”) was soon encouraging Eli to explore London’s clubs.

Swapping production houses for warehouses, studio hours for after hours, the two set about translating the tech-house sound then prevalent in the Capital’s sweatboxes and merging it with their songwriting and vocals, while building a DJ profile on the side. It was a period of late nights and personal discovery. “We were learning more and more about ourselves as we went on. It was almost like a fight, because Brian would be like, ‘This is a great pop track!’ but we’d be like, ‘No, this is more housey, it’s cool’.”

By October that year they’d split with Xenomania and, given free rein, their sound toughened up, grew darker. They haven’t looked back.

Today though, there’s a snag: Fur has left in search of food, and hasn’t returned. We trace her back to the hotel where she’s holed herself away, ill. After inviting Mixmag in, the conversation becomes more candid as talk turns to their worst ever gig: “It was the Mad Decent boat party, no offence to Diplo.” This was the ill-fated trip which ended in the death of partygoer Kaylyn Rose Sommer Davis in November last year. Eli suddenly looks serious – which is disarming because she rarely does. Far from being the “lol” (Fur’s word) they were expecting, they found themselves caught up in a tragedy. “DJs refused to play so there was no music for a long time,” says Eli, recalling the eerie feeling as they cut the ship’s engines, leaving it to bob, hopelessly, in open water.

“When we got off I called my mum, burst into tears and said... ” Fur pauses for effect. “I. Hate. Cruise ships.”

It’s this ability to stick together and be stronger for it that marks them out for the long haul. Rather than counting against them, their unlikely route into the club’s main rooms is setting them apart, as proven by triumphant DJ gigs everywhere from Ushuaïa in Ibiza to our very own Lab LA and The Warehouse Project.

Refreshingly, there’s no talk of Berghain all-nighters, or years spent toiling with a pair of 1210s with just their collection of rave flyers for company. Eli & Fur are able to approach club music from a different perspective, to crack a window on the stale dance music narratives that fetishise ‘authenticity’ above all. It’s one of the reasons they prefer America to the UK.

“We’ve not had a hard time, but you definitely notice a difference in the way people act,” says Fur. “I think people in the UK… oh god, I’m really going to say the wrong thing… they study it more in the sense that there’s more of a history, a competition about knowing things.” As conversation moves from Pietro Psaier, the mysterious Warhol contemporary who some argue never existed, to George Fitzgerald, Kölsch and the surreal photography of Tim Walker, you get a sense that Eli & Fur are drawn to artists who marry emotion with something darker and stranger; who, crucially, mess with expectations. Most importantly, they’re keen to hang onto their pop instinct. “I don’t want to go too underground,” reflects Eli. “I would hate to have to de-commercialise our music. That seems a little contrived.” For this reason, they’re not shy about saying that the US currently holds the most appeal; they certainly enjoyed their time in Erick Morillo’s studio overlooking LA. It was there they worked on a collab, due on Subliminal next month featuring Fur on vocals. “The studio was like being at the top of the world,” recalls Fur. “The whole of LA looking at you like: deliver.”

There are a lot of eyes on Eli & Fur right now. A lot to deliver, too. But right now they’re in reflective mood, the upsets of the day already forgotten as they regroup, as they always have and likely always will. “We’ll probably still be doing this when we’re seventy,” jokes Fur, emerging from the covers at last. “Maybe we’ll have moved to LA and had Botox and we’ll be like, ‘Yeah, we’re 25’.”

We’re not sure about the Botox, but the rest of it sounds just about right.