The Presets interview

Posted in MUSIC by Ben on Apr 04, 01:39PM

The Presets better be set for their “Enough Rope” interview or New Idea cover story – in recent months there has been an astonishing increase of visibility for their brethren in Midnight Juggernauts (see: mainstage Big Day Out action) and Cut Copy (see: a #1 debut for In Ghost Colours). The Presets’ Apocalypso record, the follow-up to the stupidly popular Beams, is waiting in the wings, causing desolation from April 12 onward. It works in the mould set by Beams – shoutalong vocals, strongly rhythmic programming and maxed-out melodic lines – but moves into darker territory. Hence the name. We buttonholed Julian Hamilton (vocals, programming and keys) early in the morning, furrowed our brows and foretold of the imminent rapture.

You’ve done solid touring over the last few years. What lessons from that did you take into the studio with you?

Yeah, the live show definitely feeds into the new record, for sure. With the songwriting, when you play a lot live, you realise quickly what you like playing and what doesn’t work so well. So definitely when we’re on stage jumping around and it’s the second last song and people are jumping around – wherever the hell you are, in Barcelona or whatever – you think “wow, this is fun” and you put a little note in the back of your mind: “must write songs like this for new record”.

With coming home from those tours, was the album put together piecemeal or did you set aside time for it to happen?

It is tricky actually because you spend so much time on the road, building momentum, building towards the next record, although it’s only really in the back of your mind – then you get off the road and it’s different. Your main priorities for the last three years of touring have been “where can I get online, where can I get my laundry, coffee,” and suddenly you’re faced with being home and needing to switch on that writing brain again. So it’s a bit weird. “My People” was the first song we finished, it took a little while though. Once we’d cracked that out we started moving – the rest took about two months.

You met Kim (Moyes, drummer, programmer and keyboardist) at the conservatorium in Sydney. I wondered whether that classical training is still there after touring and playing dance music for quite a while now?

You spend four years at university plus all your school years – I was singing in choirs as a little boy – and it leaves such a firm imprint on your brain and so I don’t think you ever shake that. It’s all so disciplined. The stuff we do with Presets sounds nothing like Beethoven, but it’s in there somewhere, alongside all the other stuff we did at the same time when we were young – going to clubs and listen to techno. It’s all part of this wild, miserable world that we live in, so that stuff’s in there and feeds the music somehow.

Yeah, this album has some darker shadings – particularly in the melodies – and it’s called Apocalypso. Where’s that come from? The new wave vibe seems to have got a bit grimmer?

I don’t want to get too political, but we made the record at the end of the Howard era. And for a while there we thought it wouldn’t be the end – especially before Rudd came in. It was a pretty desperate time. Songs like “My People” and “Kicking and Screaming” have really lyrically come out of that world: I wanted to make desperate party music for desperate times, for what seemed like the end of the world. He’s gone and the album was finished, so maybe it’s not quite as relevant.

Is that something you noticed in retrospect or did you know it as you were going into the writing?

I think it was a little of both. It was always bubbling under the surface. But I’d say artists don’t tend to think too much about that stuff, I think you just create the art and it spews out in ways you didn’t think about. When you listen to the song or album, you can go “this means that” and “that means that” or it sounds “bleak” or “dark”. You don’t go out saying “I want to make a bleak or stark sounding song,” you just make what comes out of you on the day. Then you can talk about it all you want when it’s out there.

Just talking about songwriting and that self-awareness – CDs are an odd part of electronic music, in some ways. It’s that old problem of whether you try to recreate the club vibe on a disc. Is that what you want to do with albums or is it an entirely different setting you’re imagining?

It’s hard. At the V Festival in the Gold Coast recently, it was totally wild – there’s something in the water up there, whenever we go there it’s weird and electric and crazy – but we’re never going to be able to create that thing and put it on a CD. But you try – you try and get as close as you can. You spend a lot of time in clubs and gigs, so you try to recreate that. But I think it’s also about one-upmanship. You make a record, and then you step it up when you’re doing it live – then that feeds into the next record, then you step it up again. So who knows what the next record will sound like – maybe stupid.

You’ve played both a lot of rock festivals and the rave-ier stuff.

It’s been a healthy balance – we’ve played a lot of rock/pop festivals in Europe and a lot of techno/rave parties too. I still think our music sits somewhere between those two things. Hopefully the sound and the character of it is strong enough for it to stand in both worlds. Kim and I think of it as pop music anyway – in the same way Pet Shop Boys and Eurhythmics were pop bands but really influenced by clubs and club sounds. I don’t think we really make dance music; it’s more dance-inspired pop music.

The dominant trend in electronic music over the past three years or so – at least in Europe – has been toward the minimalist sound. This doesn’t seem like it interests you guys? Is that because of this pop aspect?

Yeah. Maybe there’s one or two tracks that are quite thin, but I don’t know. Everything ends up sounding a lot more lush – with reverbs on it – so even when we write a dark or bleak song it still has a bit of romance in it. It’s never going to sound full-on minimal. Too many little Beethoven melodies for that.

With that minimal stuff bubbling over in Europe now, to the point of people getting sick of it, where do you draw your clubbish inspiration?

Probably more in the older guys. When we were in Berlin we played at this huge gay pride festival and Kevin Saunderson, an old Detroit techno DJ, was there – seeing him play was amazing. It really brought us back to basics, what techno and dance music is about at its most basic.

To be honest, I don’t go to a lot of clubs and don’t know a lot of techno stuff. Kim is a DJ and he shows me a lot of cool acts, but often until we get these guys to remix us, I haven’t even heard what they’ve done on their own. Except for when I download techno podcasts for jogging. I really love dance music, but I don’t listen to a whole lot of it.

I listen mostly to classical music – or the radio or news – at home. But my studio skills are with these synthesisers and drum machines. When I was young, I used to really love listening to dance music and was a real fan of it. Every once in a while I hear stuff I really like, but I guess I get bored of it quite quickly.

I guess it’s what you do at the office, so to speak…

Yeah, exactly. Every night we’re at a club – it is the office for us. When I get home, I don’t listen to a lot of dance music or go to clubs. I try to spend more time in the garden.

What else is on the cards now after the Australian album launch tour?

We’ll probably do about a million festivals in Europe, starting in July.

Someone has to do it…

It’s good fun, don’t get me wrong. When you’re at a festival in Spain and you’re at the catering backstage and there’s octopus, you think “OK, this isn’t so bad.” Sadly, with a lot of those festivals, we only spend one night at a place. And a lot of those festivals feel the same backstage – a lot of fencing and semi-trailers. The most fun part is catching up with friends you haven’t seen for a while. We ran into The Rapture five or six times last year. Hopefully Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts are over there this year. We always have a fun time when we bump into them on the road.

Well, their records are doing well over here…

I know, I know. We were stunned when Midnight Juggernauts got into the top 20. So amazing. And then Cutters at #1, incredible. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I wasn’t even thinking about top ten. I don’t want to think about it.

Ben Gook