System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian teams up with Jimmy Urine on 'Fuktronic' album

System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian and Mindless Self Indulgence’s Jimmy Urine have released their long-rumoured collaborative album Fuktronic. The electronic album-cum-audiobook was inspired by the pair’s shared love of British gangster films.

Tankian and Urine caught up via video chat this week to discuss the origins of Fuktronic. “We were sitting having sake and some sushi, both of us just going off on Guy Ritchie films and all these other British gangster films,” said Tankian. “[Films like] Gangster No. 1, Sexy Beast and RocknRolla.”

The conversation in question took place approximately a decade ago. In fact, the record’s opening track ‘Chase’ surfaced back in 2012. “The initial genesis was, ‘We should do an electronic record together,’” said Urine. “So we started working on electronic stuff and it blossomed into this thing.”

The 2012 announcement described Fuktronic as the “soundtrack for the ultimate British Gangster Film,” featuring four instrumental tracks and eight tracks with scripted dialogue. The finished product delivers on this promise. Musically, Fuktronic hews closer to Urine’s career output than Tankian’s, featuring high-intensity electronic productions.

“We wrote all this music first and then we came up with the idea of having sound bites,” said Urine. “And then we were like, ‘We’re not going to sample from these movies so why don’t we make up our own from scratch?’”

Tankian and Urine soon realised they already had the appropriate contacts to execute the idea. “I think you were like, ‘Dude we’ve got so many friends that do voiceovers. This could be a really cool thing – we’ll not only have the music, but we’ll have the voiceover friends doing different characters.’ Then it got really exciting,” said Tankian.

“[It was like], hey let’s get all these other friends involved and [get them] actually speaking parts over the music and it being like a soundtrack to a film.” Listen to the album here.