SANTA MONICA, California — It was only a matter of time before someone dropped a sample from The Prisoner.
During a secret show here last week, Dhani Harrison managed to lead his trip-pop collective thenewno2 through a whole song — the opening stomper “Station” from the band’s new full-length thefearofmissingout — before working in a nod to Patrick McGoohan’s surreally influential spy-fi TV series. A sample of the late actor’s inimitable growl — “I am not a number” — played before “Wide Awake,” another track from thenewno2′s sophomore album.
The penchant for geeky in-jokes comes naturally for Harrison (a quote from Time Bandits found its way into the mix on the opening number). The musician’s late, great father George Harrison was in a band you may have heard of. Yet Harrison has emerged from the shadow of The Beatles by latching onto his own generation’s cross-genre outliers, like DJ Shadow and Radiohead.
This article appeared at WIRED