In the past few years Australia has been taking over the electronic music scene one act at a time. One of the country’s most impressive offerings is Perth based Slumberjack. The production duo have become highly regarded for their inventive sounds and strong theme of juxtaposition found within their work. From landing an official remix for Porter Robinson, to touring Australia with Alison Wonderland, 2015 has been a massive year for Morgan and Fletcher. We had the chance to catch up with them to discuss the year they’ve had and look toward the future. Check out the full interview below.
FUXWITHIT: There has been a huge influx of talented producers coming out of Australia recently. Is there something new happening over there or is the music finally just making it to the world stage?
Fletcher: I definitely agree, we’ve had this surge of new music coming out in the last couple years. I’m not sure if it has always been the case and that now we have the platforms in Australia to launch to the world or if the stars have just aligned. I feel like it’s a self feeding cycle. We’ve had Flume kind of leading the way and that inspired a lot of producers and more and more got on board. Then we had the next wave and the next wave. Morg’s and I consider ourselves to be part of the second wave and now we even see like a third wave coming through with all these new guys. We were just at the electronic music conference this week and there’s this whole new platform of new guys that are making their way out as well, which is great to see. There’s this one guy in Perth called LUUDE. He’s really cool. There’s another guy Kuren, he’s dope too.
When you stand beside the stage and watch an Australian DJ or producer play out it’s so different.
FUXWITHT: What is something that non-Australians should know about the music scene out there? How is it different from other parts in the world?
Fletcher: I think Australia is definitely a lot smaller than the United states and Europe and that scene over there. It’s a much tighter scene over here, all of the artists know each other. That’s kind of evident on this Stereosonic tour. All the acts on the tour are hanging out really tightly.
Morgan: I think the DJing style is different. When you stand beside the stage and watch an Australian DJ or producer play out it’s so different. I think it’s a playlist thing. In terms of the ratio, we have a little bit more melodic pieces vs. just hard hitting stuff. I think American producers have access to all of this hard hitting music that maybe we haven’t caught up yet, or Australian producers just prefer not to play that out.
Fletcher: I think Australian DJs mix a lot slower – we play 30 songs in a set vs. 50 or 60.
FUXWITHIT: You have an extremely forward thinking and inventive sound. How do you continue to stay innovative?
Fletcher: We use a lot of world music sounds and for us that has been the best way to stay inspired and keep coming up with new ideas because there is such a vast world out there. You look at just one country and you can find thousands of different rhythms, tens of instruments that are very specific to that country and if you look at that county’s culture and scales and sounds you can find a lot of inspiration there. You can make one little part of your song and then you can look somewhere else in the world. For example, for our track ‘Horus’ we took some African percussion, we paired it with Turkish instruments and even some Japanese melodies and scales. So we weave different parts of the world together which creates this really interesting melting pot which is really inspiring for us and helps to stay different from the other stuff that’s coming out at the moment.
Morgan: We also deliberately challenge ourselves to use stuff that no one uses or replay something. Everyone uses an 808 or 909 so Fletch and I would ask is there anything we can do that sounds like it but is not an 808 or 909. So we just change it up and force ourselves to look elsewhere.
It’s kind of like a horror movie, it builds up this tension then gives you this big shock…
FUXWITHIT: There’s a strong theme of juxtaposition within your production. Whether it’s mellow vs. heavy, cheery vs. dark or melodic vs. gritty. Is this something you do intentionally?
Fletcher: Yeah absolutely. Our theme for Slumberjack is juxtaposition. Even the name Slumber is so opposite to what the music is. When we’re in the studio Morgs will wear the dark cap and I’ll wear the light cap and then we’ll switch. So we’re constantly trying to create these really strong juxtapositions because we think it’s a great way to get peoples’ attention and really hold it. It’s kind of like a horror movie, it builds up this tension then gives you this big shock that grabs your attention and hopefully holds it.
FUXWITHIT: What are the advantages of working as a duo vs. doing things solo?
Fletcher: There are many advantages. We speak to a lot of solo artists and they say they often get stuck in the studio and that doesn’t happen to us. If I was to get stuck in a certain part I can just send it to Morgan and he might do one tiny little thing and that might inspire me to work another 2 or 3 days on a track. It’s like if a train is rolling down a hill and it gets stuck on a tiny little rock, it just needs a small push and it will keep rolling away. There’s that side of things but then there is also the touring side. I’d imagine it would be pretty lonely on tour if we didn’t have each other to do stupid stuff with.
FUXWITHIT: Are there any drawbacks?
Morgan: I don’t see any drawbacks. I’m not sure how any other duos work but we have a pretty good thing going on. Even with disagreements. I actually find disagreement to be better than agreements because if you agree on something you immediately blind yourself from seeing another perspective and that to me is not the way to make any decision. If you make a decision, you gotta make sure you cover your bases and with having two people the chances are Fletch is going to disagree with me, or I am going to disagree with him. And we’ll go why are you disagreeing? And if you lay down your reasons and justify that, you instantly give me another opinion to think about to help make an informed decision.
It’s okay to not have an identifiable genre. Just be inspired by whatever inspires you and write that song.
FUXWITHIT: Given your forward thinking nature I wanted to ask you how you see electronic music changing/evolving over the next year?
Morgan: I see electronic music moving towards a melting pot of sounds. I guess that’s where we come in, to be one of the few people who are kickstarting the idea that it’s okay to not have an identifiable genre. Just be inspired by whatever inspires you and write that song. Yeah guys like Jauz as well. He mixes dubstep with hard-hitting house music and that’s very, very impressive. Where as we have the trap, future bass, and pop thing going on. I also see electronic music seeping into pop music. So opening our barriers and getting even more people involved in electronic dance music, which is what I think is the way forward to keep it progressive. I know a lot of people say electronic music should be kept underground but we are not taking it away from the underground. The underground is still there. I think we should be conquering different parts. We have the mainstream side, the cool indie side, you got the underground side and I see that all coming along very well.
FUXWITHIT: You had the chance to remix Porter Robinson’s ‘Fellow Feeling’. How did that come about? What did the experience mean to you?
Fletcher: It was a really huge opportunity. We’ve been massive fans of Porter Robinson since we were kids basically. I mean he’s actually the person who inspired me to start making electronic music so to be approached by him to do a remix 3 or 4 years later is just a really surreal experience. We picked the track ‘Fellow Feeling’ because we thought it was probably the most difficult one on the album to remix and it also fit in with our theme of juxtaposition. It’s a very juxtaposed track, the very theme of it is the beauty vs. the ugly. So we took that idea and tried to amplify what he did in the original and take the ugly parts and make them uglier and take the beautiful parts and do them in our beautiful style, using world instruments and haunting vocals and all these sorts of things.
Morgan: When we did that remix we just wanted to expand on Porter’s view. I personally feel like that song is the current state of the super mainstream EDM music and he was trying to explain that beauty will always win. We took that, (hopefully) to a new level in beauty. We do have some comments on SoundCloud that’ll be like “I don’t like this drop it’s too ugly” and another one will be like, “I think that’s the point”. To us it was more like an art project to convey a message instead of a remix to play in the club. It’s literally just an expansion of the original ‘Fellow Feeling’. If you don’t like the original hopefully you like this one and if you don’t like our remix you’ll still like the original. So the message is still really strong.
FUXWITHIT: Let’s switch gears and talk a little bit about DJing and your live sets. For those who have never seen you perform what can we expect from Slumberjack show?
Fletcher: It’s just 45 minutes to an hour of super awesome fun. We play a lot of original tracks but pretty much everything else we play is some kind of bootleg that we’ve done in the studio. We’ve got files of files of ideas that we’ve turned into bootlegs to play out live. We also play a lot of music to test it out live to see what we need to work on. It’s a really energy packed experience.
FUXWITHIT: You have been able to accomplish a lot in a seemingly short time. What do you see as your biggest achievement to date?
Fletcher: People tell us that quite often actually and for us it has been a very gradual process because we live and breathe Slumberjack. Although if someone saw a show a year ago and then came to our shows last weekend, it would seem we exploded out of nowhere, but for us it has been every single day – almost a linear increase to that point because we’ve seen every single step of the way. Every little step of the way has been really important but probably the most enjoyable experience for us this past year has been the Alison Wonderland Warehouse Tour. I think she sold 25,000 tickets around the country or more. It was a really tight crew: we had Motez, Cosmos Midnight, AWE and a bunch of other supports in each city and it was a really, really fun couple of weeks. We got to put out music in front of a huge audience which may have not found us otherwise. I think that was really important in terms of our growth this year and we’re super lucky Alison picked us to go on tour with her.
It feels really intimate but big…so it’s weird but in such a good way.
FUXWITHIT: What was the vibe like at those shows? Was it different from the typical shows you’ve played?
Morgan: It wasn’t typical because that was the first time we’ve played a warehouse style party. It feels like a club show, but it also feels like a festival because we’re on this massive stage with thousands of people and it’s still one stage and everyone is there to see you. It feels really intimate but big…so it’s weird but in such a good way.
FUXWITHIT: You guys have been spending a lot of time in the studio recently, can you tell us a little bit about your upcoming releases?
Fletcher: We don’t like to promise anything because everything can change right up to the last minute. But we definitely do have a lot of new music which we are really, really excited about. It definitely follows our theme of juxtaposition. We’ve got a very broad range of styles that we’ve been working on and it does follow that beauty vs. ugly theme which we’re really excited to share with everyone and hopefully everyone likes what we’ve done.
We’ve been working on some stuff that people would probably consider pretty far out of our style…
FUXWITHIT: Have you been writing anything that you think will surprise listeners?
Fletcher: I think people have probably come to learn that Slumberjack puts out very different music every time and that’s something that we’ve worked to build into our reputation. If we put out the same sounding stuff each time people wouldn’t be clicking play on our next release. So we want to keep people on their toes. We’ve been working on some stuff that people would probably consider pretty far out of our style and I hope that it throws people.
FUXWITHIT: What are you most looking forward to in 2016?
Fletcher: We’re probably most excited to take this project international. We’ve been doing mostly Australia shows around the country and a few close by internationals like New Zealand, but we’re really excited to take this to the States, hopefully Canada and Europe as well. That’s probably going to be the biggest step for us next year.
