Cassius are back with surprise new single “Action”, featuring an all-star turn from Cat Power and Mike D, out via Interscope / Polydor Records.
Cassius’ story thus far is already the stuff of dance music mythology. They emerged amidst Paris’ defining French Touch movement, where the likes of “Feeling For You”, “1999” and “The Sound of Violence” – alongside friends such as Daft Punk – helped shape the future of electronic music. It was an intimate scene which always proved conducive to collaboration, and soon provided the band with distractions on a global scale: Philippe has become a Grammy-award winning producer and mixer for his work on seminal albums from Phoenix, Kindness, Bloc Party, Chromeo, Cat Power and Beastie Boys to name but a few. Yet as the influence of French house was felt further still in recent years – Kanye West and Jay Z even sampled the band on their Watch The Throne project – it always came back to the dance-floor, to club-culture, and to Cassius: the long-standing friendship between Philippe Zdar and Boom Bass who continued to write, perform and bide their time in assembling a stunning new record.
 
Though technically not a comeback, then, “Action” nonetheless arrives with a bang: a glorious fusion of disco, house, Afrobeat and insistent pop hooks, marking not just a return to the classic Cassius sound but a keen desire to move forward. Trading melancholic and explosive verses respectively are Cat Power (Chan Marshall) and Mike D (Beastie Boys), reversing the producer-artist binary by joining forces with former collaborator Philippe. It’s the first taste of further new Cassius material (and familiar faces) which will be revealed shortly: for now, it’s time for “Action”.