Meet Getdown Services, the Bristol duo who fuse ‘power disco’ with unrepentant silliness

“Do you remember when you were younger and you were watching Dick & Dom In Da Bungalow?,” asks Getdown Services’ Ben Sadler.

It is, in fairness, the last possible reference I was expecting to hear from the Bristol duo. But see the duo in full flight at a live show and you’ll soon realise it makes perfect sense. The pair – Sadler and childhood best mate Josh Law – deal in songs that are every bit as anarchic and unrepentantly silly as that CBBC staple.

There’s the T-Rex flecked stomp of ‘I Got Views’, which sees the pair wax lyrical about eating nine Wispa Golds in a single morning. And then there’s the laid back groove of ‘I’m Not Feeling It’, which sees them use Wreck It Ralph to reflect just how big they want to be.

The pair originally started the group as an attempt to escape the drudgery of their everyday circumstances, but with a burgeoning cult fandom behind them, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before they land in the big time.

You can read our whole interview with Getdown Services below.

Hello, Getdown Services. How was your summer? I’ve heard through many people that your set at Green Man Festival was one of the highlights of the weekend.

Ben: That’s the best gig we’ve ever had, I think. We were expecting a good turn out because a load of people had been messaging us, but that was unprecedented. I think we can use that word. It’s a great summer, we’ve had load of gigs and we’ve been keeping it busy which has been dreamy to be honest with you.

What is it about a Getdown Services show that people have really taken to?

Ben: Well, do you remember when you were younger and you were watching Dick & Dom in da Bungalow? I will make this comparison. You see blokes who seem to have absolutely no dignity or self worth at all, chucking mushy peas at a load of kids? I think we touch a similar sort of thing.

I think you’ve just given me the headline there, lads…

Josh: It’s true! We do get it a lot and I think that gigs can actually be quite awkward environments. They’re quite tense and it’s an unnatural way of interacting with people. There’s someone there, you’re just kinda watching them and the way we enjoy it is to let loose and try to make each other laugh. That’s a big thing because that can give permission to other people to let loose a little bit. I’m not putting ourselves down here, I think that’s what people like sometimes more than the music itself. I think it’s just a bit of an excuse to be completely stupid for about half an hour and people who are quite tense will continue to be like that if the band’s nervous too.

Ben: I think you’re right. It’s an unnatural way to enjoy it too. A play is one long story not to be interrupted, but with people you should let people do their thing. What’s really nice for me is looking out and most of the time people are grinning. They’re having a nice time in those 45 minutes and they come away thinking, well, something happened!

Josh: When we started playing live early on it became quite obvious that this was a thing about us trying to make each other laugh, really. And that’s how the recording started and the whole thing felt ridiculous. It started to feel like, well, if other people can get something out of it then everyone’s a winner. We can have a good time and so can they. Even if people don’t enjoy it, I think they secretly do a bit!

And does all this fit into the mantra of your Instagram bio, which simply reads Britain’s Best Band…

Josh: Haha, well I was thinking about that the other day. We should probably change that, because when we made the page we just thought we’d put it because it was funny and nobody was paying attention. We weren’t even really paying attention to what we were doing and it’s just stayed there since day one. We’re obviously not Britain’s best band, but also we kind of are?

Ben: If you make yourself invincible and untouchable, then you know, then no one can take you down a peg or two!

For the uninitiated, how do you describe Getdown Services?

Ben: We like to package it as, like, disco rock. We’re not like Cobra Man, but they said Power Disco and I think that’s a really good phrase to use. But to be honest it all comes out different because we want to make stuff we like and we like a lot of stuff!

Josh: To the uninitiated, I’d say it’s disco and eighties and like seventies infused groove based music, but really, there’s a lot of different influences and it’s a display of who we are as people. It’s the music of our horrible personalities! I’d say disco, with a bit of classic rock and with our newer stuff there’s folkier elements too. Think of it as a British ham sandwich.

There’s a bit of T-Rex on ‘I Got Views’ too…

Josh: Oh massively. How it often works for us making music is that there’s a few artists we both just like and have always done. It’s like T-Rex, Daft Punk, AC/DC and Chic. And every now and then we’ll just spin the wheel and land on one. But T-Rex was a big one and for a while it was going to go quite heavily that way but we just nipped it in the bud with one song.

Ben: But the door hasn’t closed on anything, it keeps it more interesting when we’re doing what we want and feel.

Josh: The hope is that the consistent thread will be our voices and the overarching sense there’s the same feeling throughout it. I’m starting to realise that’s the idea.

You’ve spoken before about the thread of escapism within your music too – what is the importance of that for you?

Josh: Yeah, especially with our last album Crisps, which reflected a sense of drudgery, boredom and dissatisfaction.

Ben: But with our latest EP we’ve been on the road and it was written a lot while we were away, so everyday life isn’t the same as it was. We’re playing shows and getting to do this amazing thing. It sort of rubs off on you a little bit, feeling quite lucky.

But was your own silliness almost a response to your circumstances at the start?

Ben: Definitely, although we’re not particularly silly when it comes to music. We both take it quite seriously. Josh once spent eight hours trying to find an electronic horse sound!

Josh: Yeah, I was trying to do a cover of The Osmonds’ Crazy Horses and I was recreating the horse sound, so we do take it seriously. But I couldn’t find it and it fried my brain. It was quite dark. The silliness of it, well we were both quite unhappy with our lives and to make light of that felt quite natural and it felt ridiculous that this was a band too. Me and Ben have been friends for 20 years too, so the dynamic between us as a band is the same dynamic that is us as people.

We were quite unhappy with our circumstances. Work was shit, life was shit, but we had this thing where we could dick around and go to new places.

Ben: I say it all the time but it’s like therapy, screaming your head off for half an hour and it make it feels better!