Kissy Sell Out is not a pouting Japanese pop princess. Kissy Sell Out is not a band of angry emo-goths. No, Kissy Sell Out is a 24-year-old self-confessed cheeky Essex boy and one of the leading lights in the revived electro scene. It's an odd name - and it's not only a stage name; he is barely known by his real one, Tommy Bisdee - with a suitably strange provenance. "On my 18th, 19th and 20th birthdays, I mixed my drinks and had a recurring nightmare," Kissy recounts. "I was a character in a film. It was post-nuclear, like the year 3000. There was a big city covered in ash, with 40 people living in it, 20 good and 20 bad. The bad people were mute and looked a bit wrong, and they would kidnap the good people and torture them. This film was called Kissy." The "Sell Out" part is an ironic declaration of integrity - and a kind of note-to-self not to do so.
Kissy is becoming widely known for his Radio 1 show. In 2007, he was taken on as one of the station's rotating "In New DJs We Trust" hosts, but before long he had a weekly gig, the slot on Thursday night - or rather Friday morning - midnight to 2am. The show is tagged "jump-up rock and rave", and there is no better introduction to the new electro genre, which mashes up every musical style it can get its hands on - preferably all at the same time. Kissy thinks nothing of shoehorning 47 tracks into a five-minute mini-mix.
For him, though, the radio show and live DJing at venues around the world is a second job; he is primarily a record producer. When I interviewed him late in 2007, he was "jump-up-and-down excited" about the imminent release of his debut album - which finally comes out tomorrow. In the 18-month interim he has been through what he describes as a "painful" experience with Atlantic, the major label that signed him. It soon became clear that the relationship was not going to work: "The record label was trying to get people to write songs for me. At one point, they tried to bring a producer in. I was dumbfounded. I was like, 'That's what I do. What did you sign me for?'"
The album, entitled Youth, opens with a cello figure classical, almost baroque, in feel. "The reason I used cellos at the start," he explains, "was... I don't know if it's the film Forever Young or some other film with Mel Gibson... but at the start of it, it pans; the camera quickly rushes over some fields off the bottom of a helicopter or something - you see all these sweeping fields. I loved that idea of... you know if you're on a football pitch or something, and someone says 'Sandwiches', and the kids all run off together and there's this (he makes a panting noise). To me, duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh on the cello sounds like young people running, and it sounds like it's in summer; and the reverb makes it sounds like it's a while ago." It can be tough to follow such careering trains of thought, but it indicates a strong visual sense involved in the composition process, and Kissy insists he can express himself more clearly with music than with words.
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It is hard to think of any of his electro peers having the nerve to kick off their debut album with a cello solo; and he makes his own life harder by bloody-mindedly avoiding repetition, that staple of dance music. He describes the Atlantic executives' reaction to one of his songs: "They said, 'You can't put Harriet on the album in the form it's in.' I said 'Why not?', and they said, 'It's a six-minute track and you've got this one amazing hook right in the middle; you hear it once and it doesn't happen again.' When I heard the guy with the tie on saying that, it made me like it even more."
The biggest change to the album in the lost 18 months was the addition of vocals. Kissy's music is so complex and inventive, it has always sounded complete without them, but early on he decided to change the record from a largely instrumental to a vocal affair. It was a big decision, because, first, he reckons vocals are the hardest part to record and, second, it nudges the music out of electro territory and towards electro-pop - which means a bigger but less open-minded target audience.
Kissy, who turns 25 this week, is from the generation for whom writing a full-blown album on a bedroom computer is second nature, so standing out from the crowd is vital. His exuberant, good-natured character jumps out of the radio, but he is also blessed with determination. He kick-started his music career by pressing up 100 vinyl copies of his single Her and hawking them on the streets of London. Eventually, exhausted, he came to Rough Trade Records. "I was like, 'I know people say this the whole time, but if you could give it a listen...' They listened to both sides right through. I remember the guy saying 'Is it supposed to sound like that?', because there were crackly noises on the B-side. I said sheepishly 'Yeah', and he looked at the other guy at the till and went, 'Cool!' They said, 'How many have you got? We'll take all of them.'" The shop made Her its record of the week. As his name began to circulate, Kissy got remixing commissions and became known for his irreverent cut-up style.
With his ingénu charm and club-kid style, as well as his facility with music, Kissy has much going for him, but he is not immune to moments of doubt: "I'm always scared someone's going to find me out - 'You can't actually do any of this stuff can you?'" And without the huge leg-up major labels give their neophyte artists, Kissy has a challenge on his hands. Then again, at least he hasn't sold out.
Youth is out tomorrow on Marrakesh Records. Kissy Sell Out plays Rockness today and Glastonbury on June 28