The Presets return with new album Hi Viz; an acid-soaked circle jerk of rave nuggets, cyber croons and pub techno.
We caught up with Jules to find out all about the new LP ahead of their Australian tour.
It’s been six years since your last album was released, that’s a long time in EDM years, how have you boys been keeping yourself busy in that time?
Thankfully we haven’t spent the whole six years making this record, we put out Pacifica and we toured a whole bunch, we came off the road in 2013 and hit the studio pretty quickly to work on new material for this album. Since then we did a six month project with the Australian chamber orchestra, Kim has produced other people’s records, and I have as well, so we’ve been doing a lot of bits and pieces as well as making Hi Viz.
You’ve been quoted as saying that My People was a protest song in response to protest movements like Occupy Wall Street and that the new single Downtown Shutdown is a song of celebration; If My People was point A and Downtown Shutdown is point B, what was the bridge in that gap?
Both those songs were about different things, I don’t like saying, “this song is about this” I prefer the listener to work out what it means to them, but certainly lyrically songs will be inspired by real things.
In My People the lyrics were inspired by the government at the time and the way they were treating boat people and refugees. I thought, well I’m a songwriter, I may as well write a song about it and everyone interpreted that as a big party anthem which was what I had hoped. With Downtown Shutdown I remember watching the news all the Occupy Wall Street stuff. I
was impressed by the people power of the whole thing and thought I could spin some lyrics about that. The Downtown Shutdown lyrics had been kicking around in my head for a while and I’d always thought they might go with a loud distorted punky anthem. Kim and I were working on another track which had a very Sunday afternoon block party feel and I tried them over that instead and Kim liked it too. It’s nice when these kernels of ideas finally find a home.
How did the African choir collaboration come about?
In the past I’ve usually recorded all the vocals on the record and put it through auto tune to give it a robotic sound. I wanted a big angry vocal with all the distortion, and if I wanted a big choir I just multi tracked myself, so on all of My People that was just 20 of me, but this time around Kim thought why don’t we just get a choir for a change and because the track had a New York early 80’s disco feel he thought why don’t we get some African voices on there to give it a real party feel, and we found one in Shepparton.
All these beautiful Sudanese kids, singing in a church choir, they were keen to sing on the track so we went down there and recorded them and the rest is history.
How is the Hi Viz concept going to manifest itself in your live shows?
Hopefully very easily, our music really comes alive at the show, you can listen to it in the studio and hopefully it sounds good but it really throbs, lives and burns when there are lights and smoke and people jumping around dancing and having a great time and going nuts. That’s a natural part of home for us, so hopefully all of that comes to life in multi-colour high visibility
Are there any tracks that come to life in a live performance more than others?
Honestly all of them, but then actually playing them with the live drums and singing them out loud, it’s like holy shit this song just got even better. So no doubt live with the visuals and the crowd and the screaming and the beer hopefully they’ll be cooking.
Your music has always resonated with gay audiences and you’ve never shied away from presenting a sexually ambiguous image in your videos and promotional material, do you think this is what gay audiences connect to?
From the very moment we started the band in the gay nightclub scene here in Sydney, those were some of the first shows we ever played. In San Francisco, Sydney and Berlin they were the first early adopters of The Presets and we’ve always been really thankful for that. I don’t know what they see in us but it must be something that they like.
There are some impressive guest acts on Hi Viz like Jake Shears and Alison Wonderland, you’ve also done remix work for Kylie Minogue and Kings of Leon, are there any artists on your wish list to collaborate with?
We don’t really have a wish list. We had the idea that we wanted a variety of voices and talents on the record to make it feel like like one big mixtape. It wasn’t like can we get this rapper or musician? It was more like who’s around, who are our friends and who do we like?
Jake Shears is an old friend and he’s a fan of the band, we hang out with him in the states, likewise with Alison, she’s a fan of the band and she’s got a great voice. They were a bunch of friends that we really admire, it was more just asking a bunch of our mates and seeing who was available, and thankfully everyone was. It was very organic.
This tour will take you around Australia and then on to Las Vegas for the Life is Beautiful festival in September, where to after that?
I don’t know, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, we’ll be doing a lot of touring, but we’ll see you over there on June 13th.
The Presets will be playing Metropolis Fremantle on June 13th. Tickets and information are available at Oztix. Hi Viz is out now!
Clinton Little
