CONFIDENCE MAN:

Australian rave-pop group Confidence Man are back and taking over London in the only way
they know how: flying over the city in a helicopter, naked. In the visual for lead single ‘I
CAN’T LOSE YOU’ – a sugary shot of euphoria from their third studio release 3AM (LA LA
LA) – the dance delinquents are setting their sights sky-high. Good things come in threes
and this is their third album: it’s bigger, bolder and hits harder than a ten tonne truck. They
want to save you from the dull wasteland of modern mediocrity, pump up the volume and
dump you on the dancefloor. It’s ConMan 3.0’s rave new world, where the outfits are daringly
impractical, the hairstyles outrageously large, and everything is held together by good ol’
fashioned grit.
“It’s a fucked up sort of world. It’s 3am, it’s never not 3am, and we party all the time,” says
Sugar Bones.
Since they forced their way into the scene with their 2018 breakthrough album CONFIDENT
MUSIC FOR CONFIDENT PEOPLE, Confidence Man have won hearts and lost minds
around the world with their arch pop-dance confections and homemade choreo. Following
the acclaim of their last album, 2022’s TILT, Confidence Man’s next club-focused era began
with the release of 2023’s ‘On & On (Again)’, co-produced with Daniel Avery. They’ve since
released underground hits with DJ Seinfeld (‘Now U Do’) and DJ Boring (‘Forever 2 (Crush
Mix)’), culminating in a balearic-esque remix album (ConMan Club Classics Vol 1.).
On 3AM (LA LA LA), Janet Planet, assistant pop star Sugar Bones, producer Reggie
Goodchild and enigma Clarence McGuffie are delving deeper into the UK rave sounds of the
90s and 2000s – but like, in a hot way. From trippy acid techno and trance to breakbeat and
big beat, it’s darker, sexier and more surreal. You can feel it in the leather-bound swagger of
industrial-gospel track ‘SICKO’, on which Bones’s sultry vocals take centre stage. Planet’s
backcombed barnet, meanwhile, channels an unhinged Marie Antoinette. “We want to
re-fantasise pop music and take it beyond reality,” says Planet. “On this record we set out to
revisit 90’s rave production, then fuck it all up with big pop hooks that probably shouldn’t
really be there.’ And the genre even has its own name. ‘I’m calling it Bubblegum
Warehouse,” she continues.
3AM (LA LA LA) references what you might call a ‘flow state’ that Confidence Man found
when writing and recording the album at their studio in east London. Sessions would go on
well into the early hours. ‘Cooked writing we called it,’ says Bones. Vocals were improvised
in the moment, and sometimes captured in the first take. “We pretty much wrote every single
song when we were wrecked,” says Planet. “We’d get blasted and stay up till 9am coming up
with music, but we noticed that 3am was the golden hour.”
Real ravers may also notice the album’s reference to the song ‘3am Eternal’ by OG heroes,
the British acid house group The KLF (the very same KLF who once pulled off one of the
most talked-about stunts in UK music history: burning a million quid). That admiration works
both ways: The KLF’s elusive Jimmy Cauty has become a Confidence Man fan and has
even worked on a remix of the album’s closing title track. “I don’t think he’d been to a gig in
25 years and he came to see us at the Roundhouse in London,” says Planet. “We’ve kept in
touch ever since.”
The original prankster has given them some solid advice when it comes to taking creative
risks. “Jimmy said, Bill [Drummond] and I used to ask ourselves, ‘What would KLF do?’, and
then do it,” says Planet. “He was like, you should do that with Confidence Man.”
What would Confidence Man do? Well: the unexpected. While they aren’t planning to burn
their meagre savings anytime soon, their new album is definitely full of screeching twists and
hard turns. A seamless, high-energy mix, the title track ‘3AM (LA LA LA)’ blends together a
varied grab-bag of genres from old Now! compilations, bringing Goodchild’s production skills
to the fore. There’s the ‘let’s av’ it!’ atom-bomb of ‘SO WHAT’, with Janet Planet embodying
a sneering Keith Flint by way of ‘Born Slippy’, amid some seriously epic breakdowns; a nod
to ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’-era 2step on ‘SO TRU’; the bombastic, breakneck snarl of
‘BREAKBEAT’ – aka ‘I got a pill in my pocket and I really wanna drop it but I’m not gonna pop
it ‘til i hear a breakbeat’, also nods to booty bass and Balearic house; and ‘FAR OUT’, a
breakbeat roller heavy on the flutes and Planet’s ethereal vocals. ‘JANET’ hits like a
speedball of sunshine and ‘WRONG IDEA’ shows just what Janet can do in one take when
the stars align.
Meanwhile the ruffneck house pumper ‘REAL MOVE TOUCH’ features English reggae MC,
Gorillaz collaborator and rave royalty, Sweetie Irie. “I remember him coming into our tiny little
studio and then he’s like, ‘do you mind if I blaze up in here?’” says Planet. “And we said, ‘Hell
yeah!’ And he was like, Great, ‘I was just checking you guys were real rock stars’. On paper,
3AM (LA LA LA)’s dig through Y2k references might sound totally deranged if it wasn’t
stitched together so masterfully. Their frankenstein of references come to life perfectly in
standout track, ‘CONTROL’: bouncy to the point of aerobic acid-house.
It makes sense that Confidence Man draws on acts like Orbital, William Orbit and
Underworld, yet their take on it all is filtered through their own warped lens. “We didn’t really
know any of the rules,” says Bones. “These rave sounds seem so normal in the UK scene,
but we’ve repurposed them and come at them from a wonky direction because we didn’t
really understand the true context,” continues Planet. “There weren’t any warehouse raves
where we grew up.”
Brisbane may have been where Planet, Bones and their veiled producer Reggie Goodchild
and Clarence McGuffie met, but 3AM (LA LA LA) is about the band’s relocation to London.
Dalston, their new stomping ground, makes an appearance in the opening line of album
opener ‘WHO KNOWS WHAT YOU’LL FIND?’ – but in true Confidence Man style, the roads
they reference don’t actually intersect. “Ridley Rd and Mare Street were the only two streets
I knew in London at the time,” laughs Planet. Specifics aren’t important; the song – a
peak-time handbag house anthem – is about the easily relatable “wonder of being in a new
city and about possibility.”
Confidence Man have quickly attracted a hardcore fanbase of ravers from across
generations, many who found the band the same way: through their jaw-dropping, high
octane performance at Glastonbury 2022. They’ll be back at Glasto again this summer,
stepping up to the Other Stage, as well as hosting their revered club night, Active Scenes.
They’re naughtier than ever and ready for lift-off. Standby…