TMDP: “MY GOD, IT’S FULL OF SOCKS!”

It’s a bright afternoon on the cusp of spring in Kensington Market. An accordion player wanders down the street playing a hopeful melody, and as we lounge on the second floor balcony where John Kong’s Do Right! Music, Craig Hill’s YYZ Records and Hill’s first signing, electronic duo TMDP share office/studio space, we realize that we’re being watched.

“Oh my god, do you see that guy?” Gavin Rough turns his back to the street. A man in a paperboy cap is sitting across the street, staring up at us from behind sunglasses. Turns out he’s a nosy neighbour who often complains when TMDP’s glittering synths and four-on-the-floor bass drums leak through the walls of their studio. “He’s totally staring at us!” Rough crows. “I’m getting the Nerf gun,” says Rough’s production partner and long-time friend, Jeffrey Addison, though calling the four-foot-long pump-action dart rifle they’ve just shown me a “Nerf gun” is the equivalent of likening an ICBM to a bottle rocket.

Maybe the nosy neighbour’s just pissed because he’s not having as much fun as TMDP are, which, by the way, is a hell of a lot. The duo have just released their self-titled debut LP, a robust collection of tracks spanning from lush electro-house (“Running”) to seething synths run through side-chain compression and balanced with spidery guitars (“Fixed Wing”), are in demand for their live gigs around the city — particularly at Hill and co-promoter Brian Smiley’s Rollin’ and Scratchin’ parties, where they got their start — and are generally just happy to be doing what they’ve been talking about doing for ages.

“There were two years there,” Addison explains, “where we would get drunk and talk about how cool the future’s gonna be. And then we got to a point where we were like, OK, we’re gonna stop talking about it. Whenever we’d get drunk, we’d both want to talk about it, and we’d sigh. We’d be wanting to talk about it, and then being, like, ‘No man, just do it.’ ” And now they are.

The pair met during high school in Waterloo, though they weren’t yet the kind of buddies who sometimes complete each other’s sentences.

“We didn’t like each other in high school. Gavin pretty much looked the same, with longer hair; I had my septum pierced. I was kind of a douchebag,” Addison confesses jokingly. He’s the more gregarious of the two, though Rough is equally friendly; he’s just quieter.

Rough says, “Jeff always played bass, and I played guitar. And we eventually got to the point where we both had decent enough computers that we could take this seriously.”

After all the hemming and hawing — apparently their beer-soaked planning even included making diagrams of their studio set-up — TMDP started making tracks and asked their friends in Candy Coated Killahz whether they could open for them at an upcoming Rollin’ and Scratchin’. CCK said yes, which left the duo with a month to come up with an entire set.

Addison: “We didn’t have any songs, we just had ideas.”

Rough: “When they said yes, we thought, ‘Umm, we gotta write some music!’ ”

Their trial by fire left them nervous and shaky before the gig, but the crowd were appreciative. Next thing they knew, they had struck up a relationship with Hill, who became both their manager and label head, making them the first signings to YYZ. TMDP speak glowingly about Hill and Kong; they’re modest to a fault about both their music and their understanding of the industry, which, in a dance landscape cluttered with titanic egos, is only one of the ways that TMDP are refreshingly different. They’re also really funny.

“[Hill] wanted us to get our own lawyer, as opposed to his lawyer,” Addison says with a laugh. “And we were, like, ‘you’re our manager, we trust you! I don’t know what this [contract] means! I don’t care!’ And he’s, like, ‘I don’t understand this stuff either, I only understand because I have a lawyer, so you guys should just get one.’ ”

Jokes aside, Addison and Rough are pleasantly optimistic about the future. When we talk about touring (they’re pro, though after bad experiences at “indie-rock venues” they’d rather focus on playing in clubs), working with vocalists (pro, though they haven’t done it yet) and doing remixes (con — “we keep coming up with good ideas and wanting to keep them for ourselves”), they can’t hold back the grins.

“We’re very happy,” Addison says. “It’s hard to capture the excitement, being in this kind of band; you have to just slow down and think about it. It’s like when you’re 14, and you think, ‘I can’t wait to be 25 and living in my own apartment.’ And by the time you’re 25 and living in your own apartment, you’re, like, ‘shit, I got bills.’ It’s kind of the same thing with the band, because you just worry about keeping the momentum up.”