“It happened right at the end of the night,” recalls Ian Worang of his most horrifying studio recording experience. “We weren’t being too security conscious because there were four of us in there, and all of a sudden four dudes rushed in with ski masks and guns and ripped all the phones out of the wall. Then they duct-taped all of us up in the office and robbed the place.”
“I didn’t think they were going to shoot us, like, ‘they’ve seen too much, now we have to kill them.’ It was more the fear that someone not robbing the place would walk in on it and everything would go all Quentin Tarantino—but it didn’t, which is good.”
After an agonizing wait, Worang and his three pals were free, and discovered something funny: “They didn’t end up robbing very good stuff, they ended up taking all this crappy home-recording equipment, and left all these really expensive microphones—it was probably their first studio-invasion robbery.”
In the years since this intense incident went down, Worang has dedicated himself to piecing together Uncut, one of the most acclaimed and interesting indie-rock bands Toronto has produced this decade. Garnering glowing comparisons to Joy Division, Interpol, My Bloody Valentine, and The Jesus and Mary Chain from heavy hitters like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Vice, the quartet—rounded out by bassist and vocalist Derek Tokar, guitarist Chris McCann, and drummer Jon Drew—has had a banner year promoting their wonderful new record Modern Currencies.
Backed by Toronto’s favourite indie imprint Paper Bag Records, 2007 has seen Uncut open for garage hipsters Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and tour Canada with rock legends Dinosaur Jr.
According to Worang, opening for indie-rock royalty isn’t as easy as it sounds. “I almost barfed before the first show,” he admits, “I was so nervous. Whenever you play with people whose music you really like, you get scared that they’re going to wreck that for you by being dickheads.” Luckily, J Mascis and the rest of Dinosaur Jr turned out to be “super-nice guys” and “things got much cooler from there.”
Recently, Uncut had their song “Kiss Me” featured on MTV’s post- Laguna “reality” show The Hills, something the band wasn’t even aware of until the episode aired. Worang just happened to be at home watching. “At first I thought, ‘Hey, this song sounds familiar’ and then I heard the intro and I was like ‘fuck, this is so familiar, oh, wait, this is us!’”
The band is currently hard at work writing new material for their follow-up to Modern Currencies.
