Together with Cut Copy, the Presets are leading the charge for Australian label Modular Recordings in the US. The duo of Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes combine the influences of 80s new wave with electro and rock for a dancefloor friendly mix with a party vibe. Anyone who listens to New Order, Depeche Mode, or the Pet Shop Boys would do well to pick up their CD Apocalypso.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: Are you having a good time in the states?
Kim Moyes (The Presets): Yes, I do actually really love the US. It's the first time I've
been here when it's not been a Presets tour, so it's cool. It's just
like a little holiday for me.
RS: It seems like Australia's having a great bunch of electronic
dance acts come through right now, with Cut Copy, the New Young Pony
Club, and even Darren Hayes, formerly of Savage Garden, releasing
their stuff. Why do you think Australia's putting out so much great
electronic dance music right now?
Kim Moyes (The Presets): I hate to be a pain in the ass, but the New Young Pony Club is
from London.
RS: Point taken – I made the assumption based on the record label
– Modular out of Australia.
Kim Moyes (The Presets): And we certainly don't embrace them as Australian. Yes, I don't
know why there is such good music coming out at the moment. To me,
there are only a couple of really good bands in Australia, and they
happen to all be doing well at the same time. We're kind of friends
with them, but at the same time, there's a whole lot of really crap
bands in Australia, like there are in the rest of the world. It's sort
of funny, like if one man's doing well from one part of the world,
then that's nothing, but if there's two or three, then that's a sort
of scene. It's sort of funny; it's how they run things, like sort of a
big deal. To us, it's not really anything that special.
RS: You mentioned other good bands, Cut Copy – who else is on
your radar as good?
Kim Moyes (The Presets): Midnight Juggernauts. Heavy Avalanches are going to have a
second record out this year, which we've only waited about ten years
for them to do. There's good parties and stuff like that in Australia,
there's a good vibe. Australian people are kind of loosening up.
They're loose people and they like to just go crazy and stuff. So it's
a fun place to play, and there are a lot of really great bands.
RS: Do you play more in clubs, or in live band settings? What's a
typical live show for you?
Kim Moyes (The Presets): A lot of what we do when we're touring is at festivals, and then
we do smaller club shows, where we're not super well known. But in
Australia we do big theaters – two and a half thousand people capacity
sort of venues. It's pretty much a whole spectrum of venues that we
play.
RS: How did you and your bandmate Julian meet up?
Kim Moyes (The Presets): We met at university. We were both studying music at music
school, and then we kind of became friends, and then he joined my band
that I had at the time. We ended up having pretty similar kinds of
ideas about what was going on. After that band finished we started The
Presets.
RS: What was your musical motivation? I hear a lot of the 80s
electro, the whole Vince Clarke and Yello vibe. Were those bands that
you dug a while ago?
Kim Moyes (The Presets): When I was growing up a lot of the music that I listened to was
music that my older sister was listening to – a lot of stuff like The
Smiths and New Order and The Cure, which was a bit darker, maybe more
brooding sort of indie music. The sort of influences that The Presets
draw on are things like The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers, and
mid-90s acid house and rave, and maybe Underworld and Daft Punk and
stuff. There's a whole load of other stuff in there, but that was kind
of the point when we were just finishing school and really getting our
imaginations carried away to other places, with electronic music.
