Clayton Gould and Kerry Adams are Les Filterbrats, a DJ / Production duo from Auckland, New Zealand. Les Filterbrats Sound is French house, filtered funk, a dab of disco, a nod to rave, and rock guitars to season. Confused? You should experience a studio session with them. Its party music without pretenses.

Clayton and Kerry have been producing together for several years, originally meeting at a free outdoor event, where Clayton was playing drums with his band, and Kerry was DJing in between groups. Both at the time were also dabbling at producing, and soon after sat down together to work on their first tune. This one, like much of their early work has been lost to the wonders of the crashing hard drive. There are probably one or two copies floating around somewhere on CD.

At their first gig, when they were asked to play down at the original Monkey Feather in Hamilton, they got up, with no idea what they were going to play, and took turns competing to get the biggest crowd response. It went down very well, and the two decided that it was a project worth continuing.

These days, when they play, it’s on four turntables, two CD players, two mixers, effects, congas, and a lot of filters. The mix is supplemented by effected vocals, scratches, and random noises. Their focus is on working the crowd, lifting them up, and gently letting then back down again.

Musically, due to its two members, the influences of the Filterbrats are wide. Clayton has a background teaching traditional instruments, guitars, keyboards and drums, while his early DJing was heavily influenced by the sounds you would hear at Trade in the UK, Hard House. The funkier side of hard house became more and more appealing which resulted in Clayman becoming more entrenched in house. The day however, arrived when he heard “Around the World” for the first time, and French house became one of the biggest musical influences in his life to date. Kerry has come from the other direction, getting into electronica through the sounds of Sven Vath’s more ambient works, Kerry approaches from a more ‘Tech’ side of things, bringing the chunkiness to Claytons late night funk. As well as being a tech head, Kerry also brought the noise in the way of turntablism and battle mixing. Scratching and cutting tunes to absolute shreds, Kerry could easily draw the most discerning dance floor critics into moments of complete heaven. Together they have developed a style, that while instantly recognizable as house, creates a new sub category all of its own.

The Filterbrats receive considerable airplay on the local dance radio stations, as well as being play listed on both the general play and breakfast show, the Filterbrats recently hit number 3 on the George FM top ten.