New Young Pony Club; MTV Europe Muisc Awards 07, offical afterparty, Munich, Thursday November 1

The party bus pulls into Germany and the ’Clubbers turn an industry-fest into the disco at the end of the world

As disco preacher Tahita Bulmer trots gamely towards her microphone and unfolds her lilac eyes at her audience, something is clearly wrong. At her feet, the bobbing mass of electric youth that has greeted her at every show of her band’s worldwide journey is missing. Instead, there’s an immovable concrete slab of adult severity. Weird. During the past year’s never-pausing tour, New Young Pony Club have transformed pretty much every major city on the planet into a broth of android sex sweat for the hoards of wonderful raving neonanderthal youths who flood their gigs. But tonight is very different.

NME is in the stronghold of mainstream dollar-pop at the official after-party for the MTV Europe Music Awards ’07 in Munich. We’ve gone to Germany to a) try to touch Snoop Dogg, b) avoid NME Towers’ bi-annual ‘Tidy Friday’ (you try peeling Krissi Murison’s jam sandwiches off a bloody keyboard) and, most importantly, c) to support NYPC at the oddest gig of their world tour.

Beneath Ty and her chemical clerics Lou, Sarah, Andy and Igor, a crowd you’d expect to find slurping champagne and Red Bull cocktails at the Man Utd Christmas shindig is swaying drunkenly. Planet Indie, this is not. But who doesn’t like a challenge?

“We are New Young Pony Club,” laughs Ty, “and I hope you want to party.” Lurching into the sashaying futuro-funk brilliance of ‘Get Lucky’, it’s clear that it’s going to take more than a room of corporate buffoons with canapé stains on their £1,000 lapels to derail this band.

As the band pound on, the noxious setting fades into ‘Grey’ – the electro passport into Ty’s mind, where it’s clearly Studio 54EVR. To her right, Lou primly attends to her epic keyboard parts while gazing over the crowd with a raised eyebrow, amused by the dancing that is beginning to spread through it. Tonight ‘Ice Cream’ is still the sweet cult anthem that should have dragged this band on to the impenetrable world of daytime radio, but it’s ‘The Bomb’’s ascendant, twirling house which, over 18 months on the road, has mutated into a laser-sleek classic.

This band could be playing in a rioting Chilean prison and their elegance would remain undimmed. They’re the comely smile revealing an exquisite world that exists behind the rails of Razorfuck records in Asda. It’s your world, our world, their world. A place where music isn’t judged by sales, but by how likely it is to get you pulling off your green leggings and getting your freak on. Look on, mainstream, and quiver: NYPC are giving you and your fortress of dullard pop a right kicking. Tonight, they’re out fighting the indie crusade, but they’re

back in the UK come November. NME readers… make sure you go and say thanks.

Alex Miller

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