With their new album 'Shout' promising to make an impact in the dance scene, and an unerring vision for Holy Spirit revival, 65DBA are set to achieve great things for God. They spoke to Karl Allison.

They've also been touting the nation with their 'Shout' presentation. Taking along fellow NGM groovers ReFresh as support and Ray Goudie as evangelist, they've been packing them in from Croydon to Colchester, from Solihull to Stockton. "The last show had lots of different elements within it," says Robbie. "This one's much more homogenous anyway because of the musical style, but it's also very much more club-style than the last one. We're doing the remixes from the album, with dancers, and there's some techno-rave graphics on the video."

"There's still elements of drama though," adds Shaz. "We don't want it to be just a straight concert, just music and dancing. It's more of a presentation. And no chairs." "Or overhead projectors," says Robbie.

But isn't it a little difficult to play this kind of music live as a band? Doesn't most of it come off the tape or out of the keyboard programme? Robbie explains the technicalities: "We did it all with sequencers on the last tour and it worked alright but it's a heck of a lot of gear to lug around. So we've put everything down on digital multi-track. All the bass is on there, plus the percussion and drum loops. And Phil's recently acquired himself a state-of-the-art electronic drum kit so he can play all the proper dance sounds on that. When we developed the songs for the live show, we just picked what parts we were going to play live. It's a big sound." Phil: "So what you hear on the album, you pretty much hear live."

Curiously, part of the tour was captured on film for Dutch TV! Shaz explains how this came about: "We do a thing in NGM called 'Short Term Teams'. It's like a two week stint and we get young people from all round the country and give them a week's training in evangelism and then take teams off to different places. This year I took a team to Holland, and that's how we got the contact. They put out this Christian youth programme every week and part of the show is a feature called 'Portraits' - it's like a day in the life of someone. And that's what they've done with us!" "It's not really the band they're interested in," adds Robbie, "it's just Shaz!"

But then Shaz IS a very interesting person. Not only band front person and occasional columnist in Nelson Word's Premier advertorial (the curiously titled 'Shazmatazz') writing in breathless, teenage Smash Hits Speak, she is also one of those people you reckon must have a fascinating testimony from the moment you meet her. And she has...

"My mum had me while she was in prison and because of that I was taken away. I don't know who my real parents are, and I was eventually adopted when I was about seven or eight. The family that adopted me was big, and quite difficult, and I never really felt like I belonged. I remember my parents fighting a lot and I don't remember many happy times. I was abused as well. I found it really hard because we went to the church every Sunday and it was like you had to put on a show and make out everything was fine. I really hated that. I felt that I just couldn't tell anyone what was going on. I used to wish I was someone else. My way of hiding all that was to be really hard, but I wasn't allowed to see friends and I felt very isolated. At church it was just more rules and regulations. I felt like a real nobody.

"So I left home and someone told me I could actually have a friendship with God, which was a totally new concept to me. I'd always heard at Sunday School that God is your friend but there wasn't any reality in it. So when someone told me I could have a relationship with God I really fought against it but I really wanted it, too. I got really desperate and there were times when I felt that I just wanted to end it all. One day - it sounds corny but it's true - I just thought, 'God, I can't handle this any more, something's got to change." I just knew that God was there. I experienced something very real and a peace that I'd never known before. I got into a really good church and, through that, God's done a lot of healing in my life. And God's done real healing in my family too. There're still ups and downs and still things we don't talk about from the past, but God has done healing to some degree." It's a story that is so passionately related that it should really be on the tape rather than in the magazine, but it clearly cost Shaz enough to say it as she did. God clearly has his hand on her life and will surely use her to lead many into his Kingdom.

Doors have certainly been opening for them. Earlier this year they benefited from a largely unstructured trip to America. "When we were praying together as a team we felt that God was telling us to put our feet on American soil," says Shaz. "We weren't really sure how that was going to happen but we knew that was what God was saying. We have a few contacts over there. Steve Nixon (who works with Scott Blackwell) had been to one of our 'Great Awakening' shows, and Ray and Nancy know a few people, including Sheila Walsh. But when we went over we didn't have a full programme, but once we were there more and more things opened up. We'd do a youth event and someone would see us and invite us to do something else. It just grew." Along the way, Shaz got to meet Scott Blackwell ("for about 10 minutes") and they even played the prestigious Cornerstone Festival.

"They had a dance venue, probably pretty similar to the Cross Rhythms festival," says Robbie with a poor grasp of proportions. "We played alongside the Prodigal Sons and a few others." "It was really nice to meet other bands that are into similar sort of music," adds Shaz.

Which is a fair point, of course. Apart from the aforementioned Zarc, who else is there for them to swap notes with in this country? It's a question tackled with some relish by Robbie. "I don't think there's ever been many keyboard-based bands. You have to be quite dedicated in that area because there's a lot of technology involved and there's not often the money in Christian music. Also, part of the problem with Christian music is the turnaround. Most of the secular stuff will be out within a couple of weeks of being done. Dance music is so dependent on the new sound. There's a need for the Christian labels to get stuff out quicker."

The coming year will see no let up in the NGM drive. As well as the Spirit-led ambient project, Robbie must find out how to record the manic, hoover-playing (!) Jimmy Ragstaff in two weeks in between their schools missions that Phil will be organising. Then there's another tour early next year, this time with Floyd McClung. There's the tantalising possibility of a major American tour, perhaps by getting a support slot with one of the American biggies, and there's the small matter of Robbie and Shaz becoming man and wife next May.

But the final words must come from Shaz. For a team that have been so geared to seeing revival for so long, they must be as excited as anyone about the current move of the Holy Spirit across all manner of churches. "There is evidence of things happening," says Shaz. "We first experienced it when we went to America. There were young people laughing and crying, groaning in intercession. It was quite incredible to see. Then we came back here and it started happening to us in our NGM meetings. We've asked a lot of questions and I think that's healthy. When I first saw it I was really questioning it because God was doing such bizarre things! But there's no doubt it's God. We don't want it just so that we can have a nice experience. We want it to affect us. It's great to have a laugh in the Spirit, but we want him to affect what we do in our ministry and we're definitely seeing that happen."