Eight musicians of different stripes and a gaggle of assorted instruments form the Phenomenal Handclap Band, who took the stage recently during a recent sold-out show at Joe’s Pub. The brainchild of DJs Daniel Collas (producer, songwriter, organ, synthesizers, vox) and Sean Marquand (producer, songwriter, synthesizers), the collective from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn have seamlessly synthesized common threads of funk, psychedelic rock, disco, electro, and prog rock into authenticity-testing airs of nostalgia. The songs on their recently released self-titled debut are also undeniably dance floor-worthy—“15 to 20” was labeled by Rolling Stone "the first summer jam of 2009"—but Collas and Marquand are quick to distance themselves from ‘party band’ labels. “We want people to have a good time at our show of course, but I think that there’s a lot more to what it is than just being some pastiche of dance music,” says Marquand. We met Collas and Marquand—who'll be playing at Le Poisson Rouge Wednesday night—at their favorite East Village hangout, Lil’ Frankie’s Pizza before the last show, waxing on their debut, their drawing board, and their Swedish obsession.

You guys started out as DJs together. How did that partnership begin, and then how did it evolve into its current incarnation of the Phenomenal Handclap Band? Sean Marquand: We only DJed a little bit together. Daniel and I have had a strong connection with records for a long time—our friendship started with mutual appreciation for certain records. Daniel’s got a real knack for finding this kind of incredible combo between soul records and rock records, which I feel really comes out in the Handclap record. And to this day, it’s almost like there’s a class of records that were made for Daniel in a way. What it is really is inspiration for the band. It’s a genre of music trying to do a different genre. There are all these amazing soul records doing rock, and all these amazing rock groups doing soul. Daniel Collas: A lot of it is just one-off records that we end up finding and some of them are 45s and you don’t ever find out what the band is or what they look like or anything, but you can just kind of tell from the sound because I think especially in the late ‘60s—but until the mid to late ‘70s—there’s a lot of crossover. There are white guys, even like Michael McDonald or Bobby Caldwell, who really try and cross over to the black market, for lack of a better term. Even Led Zeppelin really started trying to sound as black as possible. As a DJ, it’s your nature to gravitate towards more oddball, obscure stuff and to have the stuff that nobody else has.

For example, you drew inspiration for the album from 70s Brazilian funk. How did you get into that? SM: Well Daniel was into more of that rock/soul stuff, and I was more into ‘60s and ‘70s Brazilian funk. I used to live in Brazil, so I came back with a hundred records, and then unfortunately when I lived in New York I bought a bunch more records after that from Brazil, which stinks. I should have gotten those when I was there. I got super into Brazilian records and that was one of the things that Daniel and I started connecting on. I got a whole bunch of amazing psych and soul records from Brazil. DC: And that’s the weird thing, even though that stuff happened in Brazil, and the stuff that I was into was by and large American—well I guess it’s not really that much of a coincidence because I think American music was very influential on every other country—the stuff that he was playing me was exactly the sound that I was into but I had no way of ever hearing because I’d never been to Brazil.

How did the eight of you come together as a collective and start recording? DC: Well, when we actually recorded, it was me and Sean and then our rhythm section, the guitar player, the bass player, and the drummer. And the initial idea was to get all these people I’d been working with either in the capacity of a musician or DJ or just in nightlife… It was sort of cinematic. If you went through a list of people you had run into in your travels in last five years, and you’re like “Okay, this guy, this guy, this guy” you know, people you’d kept in touch with and knew that you should work with on some level. And this record was like that coming to fruition in a way. And then when it came time to actually figure out how we’re going to play it—because we didn’t think we really wanted to do it live, we just wanted to make this record—we needed to put it together. And everyone involved with the record up to that point was interested in playing live with us, luckily.

Do you find that it’s ever difficult to collaborate and share a common vision with eight different people? SM: Sometimes, yeah. It’s difficult to get a single idea out of eight different creative people and there are so many issues with personal ego and personal expression that are difficult to navigate. But once you come to a certain idea that everyone agrees on, then it’s great. It’s really exciting. There are so many compromises, but we do want it to sound like us no matter what, and that’s always been the goal. We had an idea of what the record should sound like and then in a way for me it turned out the way I hoped it would. And I can’t imagine being a painter and actually being able to draw an orange and having it come out looking like an orange. I would never be able to do that. But it was nice to have that with the record. It came out the way I wanted it. DC: As a band though, the refreshing thing about these eight people is that everybody wants what’s best for the band. I’ve been in bands that are half the size which were way stronger in the ego department and not for any good reason, but just because they want their idea to come across, as opposed to what’s best for the band.

Were you ever skeptical about how mixing so many genres would turn out? SM: Well we left out a whole bunch of types of records we loved as influences….There’s no reggae on the record, there’s very little Latin, a little Chicano here and there, there’s almost no South American except for Brazil. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that we love that we didn’t incorporate, but all of the stuff that we did let influence us did have a certain continuity rhythmically. Like a prog rock record will have some really interesting drums on it and a rhythm section to it and that’s the same thing as a psyc rock record or a soul record.

You mentioned some of the other records and sounds that you love. Do you plan on incorporating those into any future projects? SM: Yeah, there are so many nooks and crannies in records that inspire us. Hopefully we’re not staying too close to those. It’s nice to use those as a platform, an inspiration, but at the same time, we don’t want to remake each record. The original records are good enough as they are. They were enough to blow me away, so there’s no reason to go and redo any of that stuff. DC: We'd also worked on this record before with this Brazilian band who had made one record in the ‘70s. And then I made a record with this soul singer who hadn’t made a record in 20 years. Both of those records were reviewed really favorably by people that we care about, but at the same time, the other press seemed to be saying wow, this is like a time capsule. Which is complementary, but at the same time you get sick of hearing that it sounds like it’s from another era. Most of the records I have are older records, but I don’t want someone to be confused with “this is an old record.” I like the aesthetics and I like the warmth and the feelings behind those records, but this is a record we’re making now. SM: Even people who are doing what is probably universally accepted as revivalist music, they’re not really making the same old records that they remind people of… Some of my favorite records from the ‘70s have the most amazing drum sounds, and we went in that direction as much as we could but at the same time, we’re trying to make a record that we thing makes sense today. We’re listening to a lot of records that are happening today as well and we’re also informed by that.

So which contemporary artists are you informed by? SM: All that Northern European dance music really interests me a lot. DC: Lykke Li. SM: Basically everyone from Sweden (laughs). DC: But then a lot of the obvious choices that you would see on people’s top ten lists we would definitely hear that stuff and we’re like wow, that’s incredible. For me, about five years ago, there’s no way that I would listen to any indie rock at all, it’s the last thing that I was interested in. But especially when you make music yourself you realize wow, there’s so much that goes into this. And even bands that I don’t personally like, I get. I totally get. Like, oh: this is why everyone is talking about them. This is something incredible that nobody’s ever done before. I respect so much of what’s going on now.