On the face of it, the new single from New York funk and disco crew Phenomenal Handclap Band is the perfect slice of escapism for these dark and strange times.
We Are Worlds Away, the title track from their new EP (out October 3), is a glittery nu-disco jam with lead vocals from longtime associate Morgan Phalen. However, according to mainman Daniel Collás, there’s more to the collective’s music than moving a dancefloor.
“I feel like a lot of people assume that a lot of our music is celebratory – and I like that, that’s fine – but the lyrical content beyond the hooks is generally protest, or a little bit more insightful beyond what most people assume from the hooks,” he says, speaking to Inflyte+ from his home in New York.
Indeed, We Are Worlds Away hints at the dislocation that so many of us have felt since the pandemic, while another track on the upcoming EP, Free Time, rather audaciously makes a hook out of the phrase “9 to 5” (hello Dolly!) as part of a comment on how joining the rat race robs us of our liberty.
“8 to 6, 7 to 7 is where we’re headin’,” goes the chorus, the sweet female vocals ultimately concluding, “It’s what it is, we deal with it the best we can.”
Both songs will also appear on the group’s fourth album, due out early next year.
Protest pop
Collás cites the socially conscious 80s pop bands The Specials and Dexys Midnight Runners as enduring inspirations in how to blend sugar and spice, and bringing it back to New York he points to the early disco played by DJs like Nicky Siano, Francis Grasso and David Mancuso.
“The general outlook of that stuff was protest,” he says. “You had all these unintentional gay anthems when it was still essentially illegal to be homosexual, like More Than A Woman by the Bee Gees or Free Man by South Shore where they slowed it down because it was too fast and then the gay community picked it up – you know, ‘It sounds like two guys singing to each other now’.
“Things like that where it was like this kind of secret society, before [disco] became shopping malls and housewives.”
Formed in the clubs
This isn’t Collás’s first rodeo. As well as helming PHB since the late 2000s, he’s worked with Amy Winehouse (briefly playing piano in her band just before Back To Black blew up), and produced albums for songwriter and Gil Scott-Heron collaborator Brian Jackson, and Joe Bataan, “the King of Latin Soul”, among others.
And although they are primarily a studio outfit, and a musically eclectic one at that, whose records have touched on disco, funk, soul, psych-rock and tropicalia among other styles, PHB are very much rooted in the clubs of New York.
Collás was a DJ before the band came together – he still is – and there’s a lean rhythmic drive to the new songs that has clearly been informed by his DJ sets.
“I think that, like, 20% of the stuff I play [in the club] is PHB stuff or stuff that I’m producing, or remixes that I’m working on,” he says. “To me, it’s always been part of the process.
“The single that’s coming out next, there’s this place Night Moves that has an amazing sound system, and I played basically the finished mix of it last summer. I went down [to the dancefloor] and listened to it, and you could see, ‘Okay, it’s dragging here, maybe we should bump up this bit’ – you know what I mean? It’s great to see it in real time.”
Decamping to Sweden
The writing and recording sessions that produced the new songs took place in 2023 in Stockholm, Sweden – a city that Collás knows well. He had previously collaborated with members of the Swedish psych band Dungen for a project called Drakkar Nowhere, and when his friend, the vocalist Morgan Phalen, decided to settle there, Collás and the PHB crew took the opportunity to go back to Scandinavia.
“We went over there to write these songs and he was in the neighbourhood,” he explains. “He’s done a lot of high-profile guest spots – he sang on the Justice records and Kavinsky, and he’s done some stuff with [house producer] James Curd.
“He’s a really talented singer and songwriter, and really fun to collaborate with. I mean honestly, that’s kind of the way it should be – decamping somewhere and just settling down.
“The studio had been on the outskirts but now it was right in the middle of Stockholm, so it was really nice. You’re deep in it and then you take a break and you’re right on the main strip, it was really fun.”
A family affair
That bright lights, big city energy is all over the music that PHB have come back with, and they’ve found a like-minded label to put it out in New York-based Nublu Records. The label is affiliated to a jazz club of the same name where he first met Brian Jackson through their mutual friend, the DJ and Brazilian music expert Greg Caz.
“It’s an artist-run label and the principal guy there, İlhan [Erşahin], was like, ‘Well, why don’t we put out your stuff?’. We’d talked to, like, four labels up until this deal, and I was like, ‘Yeah, that actually sounds like a good idea. We should just do that’, you know?
“I mean, it’s a family affair, so why not just do this here and see how it happens instead of handing it off to some nameless, faceless label and hope for the best.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve dealt with a New York label and it’s been great so far. I mean, this is going to be our fourth album, and you either understand what we’re doing or you don’t.
“The thing is, one of the reasons that we talked to so many labels for some of this upcoming material was like, ‘It’s too poppy’. What? It’s too poppy? The feedback has gotten so weird. ‘We don’t hear a hit’ was the earlier feedback from years ago. And now it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s too poppy’.”
‘What are we doing here?’
Given the hold that the streaming economy has over artists now, and the imperative for songs – even dance records – to become shorter and shorter, getting to the chorus as fast as possible, this seems counterintuitive. But then maybe it’s just more evidence of the upside-down world that artists are grappling with in 2025…
“Yeah, exactly,” says Daniel. “And I don’t really care. If you want to actually do something in this business, I don’t think you can really pay that much attention.
“I mean, what are we doing here? We’re making art for people to listen to and hopefully dance to and enjoy and think about, and it’s not worth it, I think, to overthink how it’s going to be received. Because then you’re not really being true to the internal process.
“Obviously I want to reach people, that’s part of it. We’re not just making it for ourselves. But at the same time, there were lots of times where we’re just like, ‘We don’t have to keep doing this’.
“It doesn’t have to be Phenomenal Handclap Band anymore, we can just do one-offs and whatever, it’s fine. And then you talk to people who are like, ‘Oh, are you guys working on new stuff?’. And then you’re like, ‘Well, I guess people like this and we should just keep doing it!’.”
If it means we get a few more mysterious dancefloor killers like We Are Worlds Away, then long may that continue.
We Are Worlds Away is out now on Nublu Records, with the EP of the same name to follow on October 3. Follow PHB on Bandcamp.