E-Mail This Article to a Friend Jealous lovers The Rapture and the DFA BY CARLY CARIOLI

For the better part of the last decade, the First Commandment for the indie-rock producer was "Thou shalt not meddle" — his job was to remain invisible and preserve the sanctity of the artist’s vision. Which is part of what made the relationship between the Rapture (who play Avalon this Monday) and the NYC production duo the DFA so intriguing. The two groups honed the kind of creative alliance that was normal only in pop and hip-hop but nonetheless produced a groundbreaking single ("House of Jealous Lovers," first issued on DFA Records in 2001) and then an album (last year’s Echoes, on Universal) that were popular first with underground club and indie-rock audiences and later with mainstream-rock fans. The Rapture/DFA alliance in the underground echoed the Avril Lavigne/Matrix partnership in mainstream pop, and it signaled rock’s new willingness, after a long bout of self-enforced solipsism, to cooperate.

Yet though the Rapture’s spiky post-punk chords gave the DFA’s house-music beats rock-and-roll danger and the DFA’s tight production gave the Rapture’s squalls a fierce focus, it was a difficult relationship. "They’re incredibly controlling people," says Rapture guitarist/singer Luke Jenner over the phone from NYC. "They were really hard to work with in a sense. James [Murphy, one-half of the DFA] is a super control freak. And having come from a position where we didn’t want to let anyone’s hands on our music — to all of a sudden having someone who wanted total control — was a huge shock. It actually caused a lot of soul searching."

The Rapture began as a standard-issue indie band in San Francisco around 1998, but after putting out a debut album, 1999’s Mirror (Gravity), the outfit reconstituted itself in New York and found itself drawn in new directions. "I ended up living with a house DJ for a while when I was homeless," says Jenner. "And also, New York has a pretty good house-music scene. The Europeans here take house music just as seriously as indie rock. And that was a pretty foreign concept to me until I got here, outside of, like, raver kids with glitter on their faces and wings and stuff. It was like there was this other world that ran parallel to indie rock. Because it’s all about being geeked out on records, and there’s only certain records you’re supposed to be into — it’s like the same crap."

Some of the best songs from Echoes — including "House of Jealous Lovers," "Heaven," and the title track — were already formulated by the time Sub Pop released 2001’s Out of the Races and onto the Tracks. It’s not as if the Rapture became a studio creation of the DFA: the embryonic versions of those songs (they appeared on a limited-edition EP distributed by Insound.com in 2001) are structurally identical to the polished versions on Echoes. Still, once the album was completed, a power struggle ensued. "That sucked," says Jenner. "We got in a huge fight over money, and a huge fight about who was putting out the records. Originally we were supposed to be on DFA [Records, the DFA’s in-house label] forever. That was the plan, and it totally fell apart. It was like getting a divorce — more in the business sense, maybe not in the creative sense of working together. They were not only our friends and the people who were producing our records but also the people who felt like they owned us. Which is pretty fucked!"

As a result, the album lingered in limbo for more than a year — during which time "House of Jealous Lovers," released in 2001 as a single on DFA, became a massive underground hit — before the band landed on Strummer/Universal. (The DFA eventually were assigned writing credits on three songs.) In the meantime, the disc was widely downloaded on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. "I’m glad," says Jenner. Did it help? "Probably not in terms of making money, but in terms of people hearing the record, well, I’m really glad that they heard it — because it’s just frustrating to make something you’re proud of and not have anyone hear it."

The Rapture will be playing a few new songs on this tour, but they’re not in a hurry to make another record. "Yeah, I’d like to work with the DFA again," Jenner says. "But to be honest, we don’t have enough songs to make a record with anybody, so it’s not even something we’re considering."

The Rapture play Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street in Boston, this Monday, April 5, with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Starlite Desperation; call (617) 423-NEXT.