Just before they hit the stage in Melbourne on May 3rd and headed overseas for a few weeks, Larry Heath caught up with electronic collaborators Mobin Master and Tate Strauss to talk about their new track “Dreams”, the US and Australian EDM scenes, underage dance festivals and much more.
Looks like there are a few crazy weeks ahead!
Yeah definitely. Hopefully they get even crazier too!
What can expect from these shows, and how did the gig in South Australia go?
We play a lot of our own music and our own mash ups. There’ll be a combination of big room and Melbourne sound as well, and just our own flavour I guess. We try to focus on good quality sounding stuff, none of that cheaply made, bedroom sounding stuff… though I guess everything is done in the bedroom now these days! But we’re all about the good quality bedroom material. Once you produce you start to get really picky with what you play.
How does a show overseas in the States compare to something you’d do at home? Do you have to change up the set?
It’s actually becoming more and more similar. Much more similar than it used to be. The sound quality we’re making in Australia in EDM, we’re at the forefront now. The Dutch, the Austrailans and the Americans are really running EDM at the moment. A lot of people tour through Melbourne and they’re amazed at our dance scene, they just don’t expect it. I think that’s why a lot of dance artists have settled down here from overseas.
Have you noticed that change yourselves? That growth…
I think Melbourne has always been really strong. There are so many nightclubs, DJs and producers here… it’s always been strong. But it’s definitely building a bigger presence now that EDM music is bascially top 40 cheese now, it’s the flavour of the moment. And hopefully the flavour of the next ten years…
Let’s talk a little about Dreams. It’s about to be released. How did it all come together?
Well the guy from an Italian record label was trying to get us to do a collaboration with someone, and then he found Polina, and he played us the song she had done at the time. We really loved the feel of it, and went and did a lot of work on the vocal – we spent quite a few months perfecting it and finding the right sound for the song, the right emotion. I think it does have that now. We love it anyway, so we’re putting our necks out there to see if other people like it. At the end of the day we’re artists, and we’re actually not sick of the song, so that’s a good sign. It’s got great emotion.
I imagine it’s never boring with the variety of people you get to work with.
Yeah it’s just about pushing boundaries, and trying to make everything interesting a new for people. there’s a lot of angry people out there who aren’t very happy with the way dance music is heading, and just seem to spend all their time complaining. Where as we think it’s great! It progresses, but they want it to progress faster to a new sound. They want something new. Everyone’s talking about Daft Punk and how they’re “making records how they used to be” with a lot of soul… but I think what we’re doing has a lot of soul too, a lot of feeling. I think with Melbourne that we’ve got a lot of different music styles that we play, too, where as overseas it’s more one style in each city. It tends to be a bit more monogamous. You go out to a club in Melbourne and there’s every style of music in the same night!
What’s the rest of the year holding for you guys?
We’ve got numerous collaborations with both local and international artists that we’re working on and excited about; they’re more club and EDM type records. Made by DJs for DJs sort of stuff. And we’ve got another vocal song with a vocalist called Carrera who put out a track with Ian Carey and myself (Mobin – listen to it here). The new track is still in the works but it should be our next vocal release.
And you recently put together one of the discs of the Wild Nights compilations, too…
Yeah. We did disc 3, the late night disc. A little harder than the other two. And we’re doing a tour for that launch at the moment. It’s a great disc, we’re really excited to be a part of it.
What’s the process of putting that together like?
We basically give a list, and we push and push and push with all the labels, and slowly they give in. You have to be in their faces basically. And there’s stuff they want to push too, but there’s only so many songs that can go on so many compilation CDs. So they narrow it down, we mix it and they put it down, and then we do a really exciting tour.
Have you ever not been able to get a song onto a mix for one reason or another?
Oooooh yeah *laughs*. There’s a lot of cock blocking in the industry, if you want to call it that. You usually have to get tracks that they don’t think are big, or they don’t see the potential of. We try and pick the next up and coming tracks.
You’ve had a lot of support in Europe, too, will you be heading back there anytime soon?
We’re hopefully doing a tour later in the year or next year. Everything changes constantly. We live month by month with all this dance music, between what we’re producing and the way the music scene is changing. we might make a song today and release it in a couple of months, but by then the popular style might have changed. So we have to update songs.
With the Summer coming up in the Northern Hemisphere though it must be tempting to focus on that part of the world?
Yeah, America… but to be honest in Europe, they don’t really have the budgets to fly you around and do all the things that we can do here in Australia and over in America. EDM just isn’t big enough there at the moment. Brazil in particular, and America, those are the places. Europe has been done to death. Everyone up North, meanwhile, is looking down under. They couldn’t believe how much stuff we had going on over the summer.
What were some of your highlights of the Australian summer?
We do a lot of stuff with Future Music, and they’re starting to large scale under ages. It’s amazing to be 14 or 15 and get to see 10 of the top acts in the world right now. It’s stupid really! When we were underage, you wouldn’t even dream of seeing someone like that. But the downside is it might made nightclubs less appealing by the time they do hit 18 – because they’ve already done it all! Gotten it out of their system.
Over the next year or so we’ll be looking at doing a lot more festival tours in Australia… we just need more content. We’re trying to be in the studio as much as possible at the moment!
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“Dreams” is out now.
