Performance anxiety

Brooklyn's Holy Ghost! are getting used to tough crowds

Nick Millhiser, one half of electro-disco outfit Holy Ghost!, is breathlessly pacing through New York City on a rare day off, explaining the dichotomy between being a DJ and being a live musician.

“If we DJ and people don’t dance, we’ve failed— just fucked up,” he says. “So, it took a while to get used to the idea that when we play live, with real instruments, and people don’t dance, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we suck.”

Millhiser and Alex Frankel were initially uneasy about stepping out from behind the turntables to play live instruments.

“When we started playing live, we were really hard on ourselves,” Millhiser says. “We’d play these shows and we’d be looking out in the crowd and everyone would be just standing still with crossed arms and we’d be like, What the fuck?” But Millhiser says he’s getting used to the pace and the anxiety attached to playing Holy Ghost!’s shimmering electronic studio songs in a live setting, usually for an audience that isn’t so eager to get down. And now that they’ve come out with a new EP, Static on the Wire, toured successfully with friends and labelmates LCD Soundsystem and played DJ gigs around the world, the Brooklyn duo have become idols among lovers of danceable indie-pop.

It really wasn’t a long road from tinkering with analog gear to sharing a bus with James Murphy, the audiophile behind LCD Soundsystem. Millhiser and Frankel grew up together in New York, playing in bands from grammar school through high school. A failed major-label deal with their rap outfit, Automato, and studio work with DFA Records led to a chance to record and release their single “Hold On.”

The song became a hit, bolstered by support from club DJs like A-Trak. The band’s remixes of songs from Moby, Phoenix, MGMT and most famously LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls” sparked even more interest as their track “I Will Come Back” solidified their place in the DFA pantheon.

The collaboration between Millhiser and Frankel is nearly two decades old, but it’s still evolving.

“Most partnerships butt heads because they are fighting for the same creative space,” Millhiser says. “Our interests as far as what we contribute to music individually have always been different.”

The result is Static on the Wire, which is two parts neo-disco, one part hipster indie music. It’s filled with hooks and spaced-out bass rhythms. It’s the work of a band that didn’t think for two seconds about how they might pull it off live, in a club, in front of breathing humans. Millhiser says they didn’t want to hinder their creativity and their writing process by imagining the songs live. But part of the problem is that their studio is filled with testy, ancient equipment that’s nearly impossible to take on the road.

The duo re-learned all their songs on hardier gear and added a guitar player and a keyboard player to the live mix. After months on the road, Millhiser says he’s finally comfortable on stage and starting to prepare for the release of their first full-length. It doesn’t have a release date, but it includes an appearance from yacht-rock king Michael McDonald, who sings the chorus on one song.

“We’re not trying to do anything that sounds old because we think it’s cute and funny or ironic,” Millhiser says. “I sincerely believe the records made in the ’70s and early ’80s just sound better.”

The retro kick will serve Holy Ghost! well on the road with Chromeo, an electronic funk outfit with a hip-hop bent. The anxiety of these live shows makes Millhiser enjoy the anonymity of the occasional DJ gig.

“DJing is simpler, but I think the challenge of playing live is keeping us on our toes,” Millhiser says. “But DJing taught me to rely on the audience as a barometer, and it’s so rewarding when they start dancing and you realize you’re making their night.”

Holy Ghost! will open for Chromeo at House of Blues on Monday, Aug. 16. myspace.com/holyghostnyc