Tim Hughes comes face to face with the eloquent, and now single, king of electronica – Dan le Sac

MORECAMBE & Wise, Lennon and McCartney, Sonny & Cher... err, Ian and ‘Wee’ Jimmy Krankie.

Great things often come in pairs...and in the world of electro hip-hop they don’t come much better than Dan le Sac and Scroobius Pip.

Spouting common sense for a jaded generation, they sounded off about everything from knife crime and democracy to birth control – and all to the backdrop of a wall of killer beats.

Now the dream team have gone their separate ways – beat man Dan and hirsute rhyme guy Pip striking out to do their own things. Well, kind of.

The split, they insist, is temporary, and both are hardly going solo, each collaborating with a Who’s Who of musical talent.

“I like it – for the time being,” says Dan – aka Daniel Stephens – who has always been the brains behind the music, commanding keys, guitars, programming and production, while the bearded Pip (real name David Meads) sounded off into the microphone.

“There is more emphasis on the ‘liveness’ of it all. And I don’t have to hide behind a man with a beard. It’s given me a new lease of life and got me excited about performing.”

For his new project Dan has put aside the percussive atmospherics that were the backdrop to Pip’s words on Top 40 albums Angles and The Logic of Chance, and sees him embracing everything from skittering electro-pop and dubstep to house and psychedelia – with all-new vocal talent.

“The album is more organic,” says the less-hairy half of music’s most unlikely of odd couples – who, while both hailing from the village of Stanford Le Hope, near Essex’s Canvey Island, only got to know each other while working at a local HMV.

“It’s got more live instrumentation because I’ve got better at playing those instruments. “It’s still danceable but comes from funk and soul, even though it’s dubby and dark.” And it’s going down well.

His solo album, Space Between The Words, features the talents of Emma-Lee Moss (better known as Emmy The Great), Merz, singer Sarah Williams White, B Dolan, poet Joshua Idehen, and Pete Hefferan from Pete And The Pirates – and has been well received by fans and critics.

His appropriately-named Dan le Sac & Friends Tour, meanwhile, is pulling in the crowds and special guests, since casting off at the beginning of the month.

It docks in Oxford on Saturday, with a show at the O2 Academy. “Some of the same people who collaborated with me on the album are now on the road with me – and Oxford is one of those dates with lots of people coming along.

I will have quite a crew on stage. And because it’s some way into the tour we should have got all the mistakes out of the way and know the words.” He goes on: “The guests know my work and we get on fine – the personal relationships are as good as the musical relationships. And some people, like Joshua, I’ve worked with before, so it’s nice to reinstate that.”

“The shows come from the same place as before, though, and are still about making people move to loud beats – there’s just not as much political rambling now.

“If there’s any rambling it will probably be me talking sexually.” And, he says, he’s delighted to have had the chance to give it all a go – even if he is, inevitably, playing smaller venues than the pair would have commanded together.

“I have previously played many of these smaller rooms and am genuinely excited about going back.”

So why did the pair decide to end, albeit temporarily, such a winning double-act – a collaboration that brought us such wise and rousing tunes as Thou Shalt Always Kill, Look for the Woman, A Letter From God To Man and Get Better – and intelligent dance albums Angles and The Logic of Chance.

“We toured and toured and then started whittling it down to record a third album,” he explains. “But we didn’t have a plan. We both decided we had to do other things. You can spend too much time in a van with Pip.

“And although it’s a great job, it is easy to get grumpy and jaded. We just wanted to concentrate on our own stuff – and hopefully our solo stuff will be as impressive as the rest.”

It is certainly pulling a fresh audience. “There are definitely new people who have been attracted by this record,” he says. “And hopefully some of those people turned off by staring at Pip and me will be brought back by all the ladies – some, like Sarah, are very pretty.”

And anyone who likes what they have heard should certainly come along and see the crew live, he says, joking: “You’ve probably stolen the album, after all, so you might as well pay something!”

But being away from his significant musical other still feels kinda weird, he admits. “It will take us about a year, I think. And I’ve not been this nervous for a long time. “It’s like cheating on your fiancee on a stag do – by sleeping with Beyonce!”

  • Dan le Sac and friends play the O2 Academy Oxford on Saturday.
  • Doors open at 7pm.
  • Ticketweb.co.uk