THEY have received airplay on Radio One, been booked to play this year's Glastonbury Festival and are on the verge of releasing their latest gem-filled album.
The creative duo behind Harrow-based Eat More Cake, Andy 'Gamblehands' Briggs and Matt 'Pearno' Pearn, are childhood friends who grew up playing classical music at Hatch End High School, before graduating to making dance tunes from Matt's back bedroom studio at his parents' house.
After a bit of globetrotting, they settled in central Harrow and eventually signed a recording contract with independent label Urbantorque Records, based in Northwood.
Together they are about to release their latest album with the working title Climb the Ladder, Live the Dream.
"We got signed through MySpace," says DJ and guitar teacher Andy.
"It was during the peak where everyone seemed to be using it, we were adding loads of people and they sent us a message. We spent six months talking and negotiating a contract before we signed."
Many of the songs on Climb the Ladder... have a 90s trip-hop or chillout feel, dragged into the noughties.
They claim influences from Rage Against the Machine and The Levellers, to Faithless and Zero 7.
Bringing talented musicians Owen Charles, 26, Kay Juliver-Bacon, 26 and Alex Lane, 20, to the recipe really added the icing to their act, both live and recorded.
Ethereal female vocals lend a siren-like quality to conscious lyrics which at times border on the poetic. This is especially true of the airy song Red Sky.
A stirring orchestral string section for the track Story of My Life has just been recorded by Grammy awardwinning sound engineer Matthew Howe and Youki Yamamoto, who has composed scores for films including The Duchess.
Andy's rapping has style of delivery not a million miles away from The Streets and just right for the more grounded way topics are tackled in most of the songs.
The rap-heavy track Music Box, with bitter rhymes over the tinkling sounds of a child's open music box and a weighty baseline, tells of youthful ideals giving way to monetary aspirations.
Climb the Ladder, Live the Dream will be out in September, two tracks having already been featured on the popular Hed Kandi compilations.
With few exceptions, the fairly flat and soon forgotten Ever so Gently for instance, the EP is bursting with pleasurable, emotive, creative songs.
Catch a preview of Eat More Cake on Thursday, May 21, at the Trinity Bar, Station Road, Harrow at 11pm. £3 on the door.
