Artist
Rogue Traders
Why we feature this artist Club production finds a frontwoman and a band Rogue Traders’ Voodoo Child gives a concise introduction to the Australian act’s best-known period. Natalie Bassingthwaighte’s sharply timed singing meets an insistent electronic figure, …
- From
- Australia
- Sound
- Electronic rock, dance-pop
- Active
- 2001–2011, 2015–present
Start with the music
Tracks to explore
The artist, in context
The story of Rogue Traders
Why we feature this artist
Club production finds a frontwoman and a band
Rogue Traders’ Voodoo Child gives a concise introduction to the Australian act’s best-known period. Natalie Bassingthwaighte’s sharply timed singing meets an insistent electronic figure, with the surrounding band making the rhythm feel physically immediate.
The production partnership comes first
James Ash and Steve Davis began the project as producers and DJs. The early Vicious release history includes the 2003 album We Know What You’re Up To and One of My Kind, placing the later pop-rock breakthrough within an existing dance-music chapter.
The band form developed with Bassingthwaighte on lead vocals, Tim Henwood on guitar and Cameron McGlinchey on drums alongside Ash’s keyboards. Here Come the Drums in 2005 includes Voodoo Child, Way to Go!, Watching You and We’re Coming Home. The songs put a particularly clear melodic and visual performer at the front while retaining the producers’ interest in a short, repeatable instrumental idea.
Better in the Dark keeps the pressure moving
The 2007 album includes Don’t You Wanna Feel, I Never Liked You and What You’re On. Those songs extend the relationship between a club-oriented rhythmic frame and the attack of a playing band. The vocal can act almost like another percussion part in one phrase, then open into a much broader melodic line in the next. The project’s later personnel changes and recordings add further chapters, but the two mid-2000s albums remain a particularly vivid account of this lineup. Rogue Traders’ strongest arrangements do not require a choice between electronic precision and a live performance’s energy. The repeated figure supplies a stable centre, while the singing, guitar and drums keep finding small ways to change its impact. That combination makes the familiar singles useful documents of how dance production could enter mainstream guitar-pop without losing its appetite for repetition.
Essential releases
We Know What You’re Up To
The early album and One of My Kind document the original production partnership.
Here Come the Drums
Voodoo Child and Watching You introduce the widely heard band-fronted period.
Better in the Dark
Don’t You Wanna Feel and What You’re On extend the mix of electronic rhythm and pop-rock performance.