Moving Units

LA trio arms itself with guitars and dance beats in the disco-punk explosion

Words: Phuong-Cac Nguyen

"People don't realize that being in a band starting from L.A., [it's] the worst possible city. It'd be better to be from like, Peoria, IL, just because there's an inherent distrust that anything organic [or] creative could happen in LA."

Whoa—hit rewind. That type of thinking doesn't exactly forecast success when you're trying to hit it big, even if you already have an impressive self-titled EP to your name. But drummer Chris Hathwell, along with fellow band member/lead singer Blake Miller and bassist Johan Bogeli, meant to be realistic in their endeavors when they formed Moving Units a few years ago. They were so levelheaded, in fact, that they concluded they should continue with what they did best even if the popular kids weren't into it, which was match frenetic pacing and disco elements with a rash of manic vocals that's on par with The Fall's Mark E. Smith posturing over Gang of Four or Wire's choppy chord arrangements.

"In our world there was nothing—just shaggy hair and barbituates," Hathwell says about a significant segment of LA's music scene that's nauseatingly obsessed with everything '60s. "Even just to attempt that energy shift really kind of pissed people off."

But it also made them dance. There's no synthesizer or drum machine in sight, but Moving Units' music harkens back to the day when people would pay the same attention as they did to dance-rock bands like Blondie. "We ironed out the energy and emotion first," Miller shares. "There's a resurgence in the idea of kids being disenfranchised...instead of coming together in a testosterone-driven way, like [with] a lot of traditional rock bands, [they're] influenced by punk and relating through an outsider status and joining together and expressing themselves in a moment, uninhibited, guided by this sound and that experience."

With an ongoing tour schedule–in which they opened for Hot Hot Heat last summer and the Locust, plus a recent hometown DJ set with friends/members of the Rapture—MU has quickly enticed new listeners. Their just-released Neon Eon (Rx) will turn them into the pop idols they weren't expecting to become. "Everyone's already got their favorite new Moving Units member," Miller says.