Alongside labelmates Cut Copy, The Presets have arguably been the most influential Australian band of modern times. After meeting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1995, Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes quickly ditched the ambient electronica they were fussing about with in instrumental band Prop, in favour of a more playful electronica, tinged with darkness. The duo's EPs in Blow Up (2003) and Girl and the Sea (2004), gave way to debut album Beams (2005), released via Modular Records, which delivered their first club (and festival) hit, ‘Are You The One?’.

The band's sound soon found favour with a mainstream shifting away from the tired posturing of guitar rock; one moving towards a more hedonistic, celebratory club-like culture that began pervading everything from festivals to the local pub. Whether it was right-place right-time, or something more intrinsically linked to the band's quickly growing fanbase, The Presets second LP Apocalypso was released in 2008 right as a newly branded mainstream were feverishly scrolling for new icons. Preceded by the mega-hit 'My People’, which quickly became a generational anthem, sitting in the ARIA Top 100 singles for over 18 months, the album struck a chord,. That year, Apocalypso was second only to AC/DC’s Black Ice in sales terms. (It's now gone three times platinum in Australia). The band embarked on a solid two years of touring, packing out halls, accumulating international fans (the Black Eyed Peas will.i.am claimed that 'My People' was a "huge influence" on that bands album 'The E.N.D') and making mockeries of festivals "dance" tents. Apocalypso cleaned up at the 2008 ARIA Awards, winning Best Dance Release and Album Of The Year, as well the Artisan Awards for Best Cover Art and Producer of the Year, a sweep which brought an intense, bizarre period for the band to a neat close. After five years of touring and recording, they retired for a much-needed break.

With a third album to be released sometime this year, and ahead of their re-emergence on the live scene as part of the Future Music Festival touring across Australia next month, Andrew McMillen connected with drummer and keyboardist Kim Moyes to discuss his change in addressing music, the weight of expectations and the ugly side of Australian culture.

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Hey, Kim. Besides a few shows in January, you spent most of last year out of the public eye. Was that a good year for you?

Yeah, it was a great year. The whole last five years – up until the end of the last few shows of Apocalypso – we were touring non-stop. If we weren’t touring, we were making a record, and then we were touring again. It was great. It was a huge experience in my life and career, but at the end of that I think we needed to have a few months off to defrag, enjoy some home time with our partners. We both became fathers in that year. We started working again about a year ago, and it’s been a steady, long slog since then. Right now we’re getting to a point where we have an album starting to take shape and just trying to put the final touches on it. We’re ready to go back out there and face that public eye again.

Was it a bit of a shock to the system to live through five years of non-stop creativity and touring, and then come home and adjust to the everyday pace of life?

Not really, because – without going into it too much – having a kid is kind of like a whole other pace of life [laughs]. There were a few moments where we got to really unwind and enjoy nothingness, and that was not unusual at all. It was bloody awesome. The rest just kind of…I feel like fulfilling the next bit of our lives, that we felt needed to be fulfilled.

You’re playing MS Fest in Tasmania in a couple of weeks, which will mark your return to live shows. What made you say yes to that gig?

We’ve done it a couple of times and always have a really good time there. We really like working with the guy who puts it on. We have a really good relationship with those guys and we thought that’s probably a really good, nice way to start things again. We’re doing the MS Fest, and then the Future Music Festival. It’s an isolated run around the country and a reinvigoration for us. Even being in rehearsals this week - getting ready for it, trying out the new songs and seeing how they fit, tweaking them and all that sort of stuff; it’s really taking the creative juices to another level.

I think there’s only so much… I was talking to Jules [bandmate Julian Hamilton] about this yesterday. I remember when we wrote Beams, and I remember when we wrote Apocalypso, and both those situations we were [playing in other] bands (both Kim and Julian have worked as touring musicians for other bands, most notably Hamilton with Silverchair - Ed) and recording with other bands, and we really felt this urgency to go and work at our [own] music. So we’d be working all day at rehearsal studios with a different band and then at nighttime we’d go to the studio and write songs. We’d done that at fever pitch, and then the same with Apocalypso; we came back after three years of touring and we were so highly attuned to what we were doing and what we needed to do in the next record, that we went in and did it in a short time.

I guess the drawbacks of taking a break from it all is that those things start to fade a bit in your mind; they’re not at the forefront and you start to forget. In a way it’s really great for your creativity to take on new ideas, new concepts, and try things you normally wouldn’t do, and that’s what we’ve done a lot of. But getting back into rehearsal this week and having this run of shows to look forward to, this reality check is really starting to complete the picture. As a result, we’re going to have a really interesting record. But nothing that’s too far away from what we normally do. It’s an exciting time.


The Presets - 'This Boys In Love' live @ Sound Relief, Sydney

What music were you excited by last year?

I wasn’t really excited by music last year. If I listened to music it was just on the side. I listened to it not for excitement, but for escapism. I was listening to a lot of ambient electronic music, and otherworldly stuff; stuff that’s so different to what I’ve been smashing away [at] over the past few years. I guess I’ve gotten to a point in my life and career where excitement about music isn’t really the most important thing.

For me, it’s about honing a craft; honing a skill, and developing an idea that has been laid out, and continuing down a path that’s in front of me. And in a way, being a musician, and having a career as a music producer or whatever, is quite a selfish thing. Your enjoyment to music that you maybe had at one point in time starts to get thinner and thinner, the longer you spend in the career. Not in a cynical or jaded way, but more that you start to want to put blinkers on, and start to want to focus on your own thing, if you know what I mean.

I find that every day I’m working on music in my studio, it’s rare that I want to get in the car and have the radio on. Or get in the car and put an iPod or CD on. It’s becoming much more of a rare luxury. Maybe it was something when I went on holidays I would be listening to music a lot more then, than I have been at the moment. So yeah, I can’t really tell you what’s giving me a kick at the moment. [Laughs]