If there's anyone who believes in life after death, it's James Ford and Jas Shaw. Over the past four years, their career path has progressed according to the the Joy Division/New Order self-destruct/rebirth pattern – albeit, thankfully, without any suicides involved.

Back in 2003, Ford was playing drums and Shaw was playing keyboards for Simian, a London, UK-based psychedelic-pop quartet whose career peak amounted to opening a North American club tour for Ladytron. As the modest momentum for the band's second release, We Are Your Friends, began to wane, the French affiliate for the band's Virgin label sponsored a remix contest for the album's single “Never Be Alone.” Emblematic of their flagging enthusiam for their own band, the members gave each just a cursory listen.

“We were in a very dark place at the time,” Ford recounts from his East London studio. “We weren't looking for a club hit; we just wanted someone to fuck the song up. We got 10 tracks on a CD and listened to them once on a little ghetto blaster, and chose the one we thought was best – it was a noise-core version where the guy just put the song through a distortion pedal.”

The prize for that winning selection was a B-side slot on Simian's next single, but the fact that Ford doesn't even mention the remixer's name is telling – since it was actually one of the losing entries that would anticipate his and Shaw's future course.

“We didn't really pay much attention to the Justice one,” admits Ford, referring to the French DJ duo whose rejected Simian remix eventually caught the attention of the then-emergent French indie dance label Ed Banger. “Pedro [Winter, of Ed Banger] got in contact with us saying, ‘Can we put it out?' And we were like, ‘Yeah, fine, send us a copy, do whatever you want.' And eventually that song made a little splash, got re-released again on International Deejay Gigolo Records and made an even bigger splash, and re-released again and seemed to never go away. It turned into this sort of club behemoth.”

Between the years 2004 and 2006, it was impossible to enter a club of any repute without hearing Justice's smash “Never Be Alone” mash-up, retitled “We Are Your Friends” in honour of the song's unmistakable chorus line. While the single immediately launched Justice to the international electro elite, its success also coincided nicely with Ford and Shaw increased interest in Simian Mobile Disco, a DJ team they initially formed in 2003 to spin at Simian-gig after-parties, and which would go on to outlast Simian proper, who disbanded in 2005.

“When we first started DJing, we were playing a lot more eclectic stuff: a Das EFX track into the Silver Apples into Sun Ra,” Ford explains. “It was weird stuff that would probably only work in smaller venues, which we learned to our detriment when we played a Black Sabbath track at [London super-club] Fabric. But once we started to get more club gigs, the music started changing, and we gradually tailored our stuff more towards the dancefloor.”

A string of suitably sleazy singles (“Hustler,” “Tits & Acid”) and high-profile remixes (Air, Bjšrk) would establish the duo as major players among an increasingly crowded field of electro/house hybrids. However, the duo's new debut full-length, Attack Decay Sustain Release, suggests a certain effort to distance themselves from their filter-freaking peers, favouring lean and clean pop-structured productions over the distorted-synth drubbing that's currently busting subwoofers in clubs worldwide.

“Oh yeah, I'm definitely bored of that – there aren't many distorted synths on our record for that reason,” Ford says. “When we started thinking about the format of the record, we didn't want it to be really long, like a bunch of 12-inches stuck together. We tried to make it work like a rock album to a certain extent.”

And part of that strategy includes closing the album with an odd, beat-less A Clockwork Orange-style instrumental called “Scott” – a nod to “the Raymond Scott/Delia Derbyshire side of our music tastes,” Ford says. It's that sort of open-eared eclecticism that's made Ford a go-to producer not just among electronic artists, but major rock bands as well: this year, he helmed the Arctic Monkeys' Favourite Worst Nightmare and the Klaxons' Mercury Prize-winning Myths of the Near Future. However, even though he can lay claim to a celebrity-clientele list, a home base in the hipster haven of East London, and an album that – as the saucy video to “Hustler” attests – can inspire a gaggle of hot fashionista girls to make out with another, Ford would be quite content to spend the rest of his life sequestered in his studio.

“I haven't been out here in a really long time,” Ford says. “A few years ago, this area got a bit toney, and all the bars started to get pretty scary. I wouldn't go out if I had the choice. We're not in it for the lifestyle. We're not rock stars – that's why we're producers.”

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