The Presets

Flicking through the alphabetized racks of your local CD emporium you’ll find that releases from Australian electro wizards The Presets fit snugly between Pet Shop Boys and Elvis Presley. Could there be some weird universal synergy to this? The strident beat of the heart and the swagger of the hips: it’s at this musical cross point of emotive technological peaks and primal caveman rock that one finds The Presets.

After two years studio silence, The Presets (Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes) come rocketing back into the fray with their sophomore album, Apocalypso. Ranging from expansive, emotive techno, to future pagan house and choral space funk, Apocalypso demonstrates the band's undeniably canny knack for welding hook-laden pop to some of the most singular and exciting sounds of tomorrow. 

In less than four years Julian Hamilton (vocals, programming and keys) and Kim Moyes (drums, programming and keys) have worked their way up and out though the musical quagmire of Sydney’s club scene to become Australia’s foremost proponents of twisted electronic pop. They’re now one of the most talked about and in-demand live acts today with a catalogue of dance smashes to their name.

Julian and Kim had first met a decade earlier as tearaway students at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music: by day they were battling Beethoven, by night sweating it out in seedy clubs to the strains of New Order, Bjork and The Smiths.

They’d also collaborated in the largely experimental band Prop, specialising in highly impractical exotic instrumentation and non-vocal excursions in noodle.

The harder, electronic leanings of The Presets came about when the duo chose an alternative guise to remix one of their own Prop tracks. It was the antithesis of their Prop work, concise hold-no-bars pop, and when paired with a lithe, pared-down live show, made for compelling listening, viewing and partying.

Signed in 2003 to Australia’s Modular Recordings (on the strength of demos which became their debut EP, the dark Blow Up) The Presets planted seeds throughout their hometown Sydney scene, which within 18 months began to reach germination internationally.

Things warmed up substantially for The Presets with subsequent releases Girl And The Sea EP (2004), and their full-length long player Beams (2005), which spawned the dance floor monsters Down Down Down, Are You The One? and I Go Hard, I Go Home.

So began two years of non-stop touring. From playing to clubs kids in Barcelona, New York and Istanbul, then to thousands of S&M leather daddies at the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, to over one hundred thousand people at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and every imaginable key festival in-between, Julian and Kim have covered almost every corner of the globe with their take no prisoners live show.

Along the way the band has remixed and been remixed by many of the modern dance music alumni. Additionally songs were picked up for use in hit TV programs such as The OC, CSI: Miami and CSI: New York as well as appearing on dozens of compilations.

All the touring, the music they’ve heard, the people they’ve met along the way, the parties and the tears, the trials and tribulations have borne their sophomore release, Apocalypso.

Wrapping up after headlining last year’s Boiler Room for the Big Day Out the guys packed up and relocated their home studios to an isolated farm near Byron Bay in Australia. For four weeks they began work on how to best distil the experience of the last three years of their lives as The Presets into their new music, in between attempts at to milk bulls, race roosters and embrace life on the farm.

Writing and recording continued whilst touring over the last European Summer. The band based themselves in Berlin for two months and in-between jet hopping to festival dates continued to chip away on the album. Upon returning to Australian soil again they alternated between their own home studios to prepare final mixes.

The first fruit of their labour, the recently released My People, is clearly a call to arms party, and unmistakably Presets in its sentiment. Tracks such as Anywhere and the new single This Boy’s In Love are clean hits of pure, emotive techno that blossom with Technicolor ecstasy in their choruses. Talk Like That shoots straight for the pop heart while My People and Kicking And Screaming aim squarely for the dance-floor jugular. These unabashedly sharp pop songs are offset with tracks like A New Sky which nudges the balance of the record ever so slightly towards a more abstract future utopia.

Apocalypso trips across a cosmos of sound, and self-assuredly succeeds in its ability traverse the belting soundsystems of the clubs of the world while also sounding like liquid moonjuice coming out of the speakers in your loungeroom.

Welcome to the world of Apocalypso.