Typically, a bands second album is an awkward affair. Not so for The Presets: their sophmore release, Apocalypso, debuted at number 1, stayed in the Top 50 for an entire year and sold triple platinum. But that was then. Now the ragtag team of Julian Hamilton and Kris Moyes are all set to enchant Australian electro lovers in a completely different way with the release of Pacifica.
Their third album is a far more spatial affair. Tracks like Youth In Trouble and Surrender are a comment on the fifteen seconds of fame culture our society breeds while elsewhere A.O. is a tour de force, a brooding comment on the seething underbelly of a city like Sydney. In fact, it could be argued that the whole album is an ode to the Eastern states Emerald City, sprinkled with ‘face-melting techno’.
‘Yeah I’m responsible for coining that phrase,’ Moyes told OUTinPerth when asked about the new term being banded around to describe their tunes. ‘I’m just reminded of that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark right at the end when the climax builds and tears their faces burn off. It’s like the crescendo you’ll hear at the end of Youth In Trouble Watch out, it screams, the Angel of Death has come around to strip everybody of their skin!’
The charm of this new work, as with all of The Presets endeavours, is that there is an integrity, not only to the sound they have released, but the intent with which it’s been released too.
‘We’ve stuck to our guns in a lot of ways. We’ve always made really heavy party tracks but also really beautiful, haunting hypnotic softer tracks. And we’re always keen to spice things up and move forward in a way that we can comfortably take our fanbase with us. So we just made as much music as we could and then sifted through the shit until the real gems fell out. But it’ll be up to the masses to decide whether they actually are gems or not.
‘Artistically we’ve pricked up a lot of ears with Apocalypso,’ Moyes explained. ‘We did that really naturally. So we just want to keep doing what we feel is really natural and keep it as artistic and enjoyable as possible. We don’t want to distance ourselves by being too difficult.
‘So with this album we just got back to core aspects of who we are, musically, which is the piano and the drums. So we used that as the foundation for this album and used space to enhance that. If anything it’s unlike anything you’ll hear on the charts at current: I just don’t get this Eurotrance ’90s style pop that’s going around at the moment. It’s just atrocious.’
Pacifica is an album of light and shade, and fans will appreciate the new depths this duo plunge to while keep it shiny and bright. This delicate balance is maintained through a sincere diligence to the craft of creating music itself.
‘We really love making music and we really love the educational aspect of it. The more you make, the more you learn. It’s a neverending process. We’re very restless in that regard and never very satisfied.
‘We’re constantly having to solve problems. We’re constantly trying new things. And we’re constantly working with new people. There is no complacency when you are making music. It’s a really on-your-toes kind of job,’ Moyes concluded. ‘Like, the moment you buy a new piece of equipment you have to learn how to use it and learn how to creatively implement it into making music.
‘The moment you stop learning from what you do, you’re dead.’
Pacifica by The Presets is out now.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
