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Music

IDM in 3-D

DURAN DURAN DURAN with HAZMAT , DEV/NULL and others at the Gladstone (1214 Queen), Friday (January 14). $10. 416-534-7707. Rating: NNNNN


In the hierarchy of rock journalist questions, “How’d you get your name?” is right near the bottom. It’s practically Remedial Rock Writing 101.

But when an artist calls himself Duran Duran Duran, how can you not ask?

“It was just the dumbest thing I could think of,” says Edward Flis, the 24-year-old laptop technician behind DDD. “Originally, it was on a list of names, and everyone told me, ‘That’s the one!’ Now I guess I’m stuck with it.”

Talking from his Philadelphia HQ, it’s clear the irreverent Flis takes absolutely nothing seriously.

In fact, most of our discussion centres on David Lynch’s Eraserhead (“That’s Philly – it’s probably the worst place in the world”), the plethora of audio samples one can take from gay porn DVDs (“You could get some nice little bass sounds for sure”) and, of course, Duran Duran.

“I hope I get sued,” he says, referring again to the wacky moniker, “although Duran Duran took it from (the 1968 Jane Fonda film) Barbarella, so I doubt it’ll ever happen.”

From there, the conversation drifts to guitar stud Warren Cuccurullo, who, since being booted from Duran Duran a few years back, has been filling his time doing guy-on-girl/guy-on-guy skin flicks. Cuccurullo has also taken to selling replicas of his penis online.

Obviously, Flis still has a few things to learn about being a wild man.

“Yeah, I was pretty upset when I heard about that,” he says. “How do you outdo that? I mean, c’mon – the dude is selling his cock on the Internet! Where do you go from there?”

Fresh from an epic five-month tour that started on the U.S. West Coast and took him through Europe and Japan, Flis has just dropped his first LP, Very Pleasure (Cock Rock Disco).

Four years in the making, the record is good news for fans of Flis’s slice ‘n’ dice laptop madness. Until now, his discography has been a patchy, ramshackle collection of one-offs, remixes and obscure compilation appearances.

In fact, Flis can’t even say how many tracks he’s put out since his Henry Kissinger War Criminal debut in 2001.

“Um, at least 30 or so,” he says. “It’s hard to say, because a lot of records have come out on different labels, and I have a bunch of stuff that’s about to come out.

“If you think about house music, it’s very underground, and the stuff I do is even more underground. The only way to find out about it, really, is just to sit on the Net and search it out. It’s better for me to get more stuff out there so people hear it.”

Apparently, Flis isn’t afraid of having relationships with several labels at once. Like Cuccurullo, he’s a bit of a slut.

“Well, most of these things are based on weird handshake deals,” he explains. “I also like the idea of having obscure records out. It’s like this nerdy record geek aesthetic.”

As for his live show, Flis says he wants to avoid the typical laptop bore-fest that usually ensues when IDM producers “play live.”

“I try to think about the dance floor,” he says. “So I usually start slow, get everybody dancing to some nice mid-tempo stuff and then gradually build it up to the point where everyone is dancing to complete noise – and they don’t even realize it.”

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