Radiohead famously cut Creep from live sets after deciding they - and the public - were becoming dangerously reliant on it.

Simian Mobile Disco feel similarly about We Are Your Friends - the 2006 Justice remix of Never Be Alone, a song written four years previously in their former incarnation as Simian, the electro-rock band.

One of the biggest dancefloor anthems of last year, it was difficult to go out without hearing it played. It also had the unexpected effect of provoking a highly amusing hissy fit in rapper Kanye West, when the single beat his at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

"We were grateful for the tune because it helped us step up as DJs," says James Ford, who, with Jas Shaw, makes up SMD. "But it's like, you just don't want to play it again."

Besides, SMD have been hard at work on other things. They released their debut Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release in June last year and have remixed for the likes of The Klaxons (whom they supported on their 2007 tour), CSS, Brighton's own The Go! Team (Ninja guested on Attack, Decay) and Bjork.

Ford, whose work as a producer predates SMD (he was behind The Test Icicles' For Screening Purposes Only and Mystery Jets' Zootime) also worked with the Arctic Monkeys on Favourite Worst Nightmare, their second album.

It's clear their star is very much in the ascent; proved not least by the comparisons to the Chemical Brothers, those giants of festival-friendly, psychadelic electronica, whom SMD supported on their December tour.

Both duos met while at university in Manchester - "a great place to start making music because there's a good attitude to it. There's always been a thing about not being reverent to a particular scene and trying to mix things up and make new things" - and both have been credited with breathing new life into British clubland.

Ford says: "We never planned to be like them, but we've ended up in a similar place.

"I suppose it's to be expected because we're an electro-duo with leanings towards a pop sensibility. And of course, there's a bespectacled, geeky one and a dark-haired, heavy drinking one."

Though currently on their own headline tour, SMD claim to be happier in the studio than on a plinth in a sweaty nightclub.

New EP Clock - a collection of material as-yet-unreleased in the UK - comes out next month and they are working on a new album.

"We're definitely more studio-bods than your stereotypical rock people in bands," Ford says. "In a way, after Simian, we didn't want to do any more touring (the band split up while in the middle of an American tour).

"But it's surprised us how good it's been."

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