How The Presets thought they had a hit, then nearly killed each other after it took two years to finish

CONSIDER the banger: a lively song everyone can get around, no matter your colour or creed. The Presets can claim a healthy back catalogue — and they’re back with a vengeance, six years after their last release.

CONSIDER the banger.

It’s a lively song everyone can get around, no matter your colour or creed. Bold Sydney duo The Presets can claim a healthy back catalogue of them: Steamworks, Girl and the Sea, Are You the One?, This Boy’s In Love, Talk Like That and their biggest, My People, from Apocalypso.

Lotta bangers. My People, their compassionate dance music dedication to asylum-seekers, notched number 18 in the 2007 Triple J Hottest 100. It was the song that brought in the New Year at 2017-18 Beyond The Valley Festival, reinforcing their relevancy. Both members are fathers of two, sure, they still know how to make the kids rock though.

Let’s skip back six years though. When it came time to follow up My People on their 2012 Pacifica album, well, The Presets knew there was an expectation of a rough n’ tumble, heaving hoovers n’ horns hit.

“We tried to write My People Part 2 but it just stank,” Julian Hamilton offers, munching on a Subway cookie in the office of his record label, EMI.

“They (the fans) would have hated us a lot more if we’d done that,” curly-fringed bandmate Kim Moyes says with a gleaming eye.
“It just felt phony.”

Employees start playing table tennis, (tap-thwack, tap-thwack) metres away.
It’s very distracting. Hamilton reads the room and tells them to stop. Tersely.
I like this guy.

“We had to follow our instinct and make a more song-based record. Pacifica was very critically acclaimed … the kids had moved on to the new thing though,” Hamilton contends, the words hang in the air meekly. “Luckily that experience led us to Pacifica.”

Pacifica was Short-listed for the Australian Music Prize in 2012, losing out to Hermitude’s ho-hum HyperParadise. “Things had become more dubstep and EDM in the scene and we didn’t felt like we fitted in to that,” says Moyes. “Everyone seems to forget Muse made a dubstep track at the time (all laugh).

Australian dance duo The Presets are back after six years. And smashing it.

“We needed to make an album like Pacifica for ourselves.

“We’ve never chased trends and worked with the hot new producer or got the hot new rapper to put a verse on a track, yaknowhwatimean?”

Hamilton’s smile turns into an in-jokey snarl — “We thought if we’re going to die, well, let’s make it a good death.” Moyes chuckles away. “If we came back and we’re like ‘Hey guys it’s us, the My People band!’ on Pacifica that would have been a bad death. A dishonourable death.”

Hence, Pacifica didn’t really connect with audiences. And The Presets knew it. “When we got to the end of that touring cycle we knew we wanted to make more fun, up-for-it songs we’re renowned for,” says Moyes. “Ask someone in the street what The Presets are known for and they’ll tell you it’s energetic party music.”

The Presets licked their wounds and knuckled down to make their next album, out Friday titled Hi Viz (review below). At first it felt like they’d hit a purple patch.

“I put down a bassline and Kim said he could hear the bass way down low singing ‘Do what you want’ so then I sang it and it was super-easy and by the end of the day I was yelling ‘Man we’ve got a hit! This is totally The Presets! (claps hands joyfully)’,” Hamilton utters, setting himself up for the fall.

“Then it took us another two years to finish Do What You Want, (exhales). We had 60 different versions, we went out of our minds. At one point we sent all the tracks to our label and said ‘Hey guys, what do you think? We’ve also got this other song (reluctant tone) we just can’t finish, we’re over it, we want to kill each other when we hear it’,” Hamilton says.

“And they were like ‘Yeah, Do What You Want, that’s the first single’.” Moyes chuckles away.

They have an easy energy, having studied classical music together at university by day then hit clubs like Chinese Laundry with impunity at night as their bond formed.

That dynamic feels even more fluid and unforced today. Why?

The Presets know they’re B.I. T (Back In Town). So what was the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle?

Australian dance duo The Presets are back. And they’re all over the net.

“It felt like the attitude was right from the get-go but the energy was wrong; the tempo,” says Moyes. “We had this sound ‘burrrrrr, burrrrrr’ and nothing was helping. It had this reigning irreverence, it had a punk attitude. I know what it’s meant to be doing; it’s just not doing it yet. We find a way to make every track difficult. You convince yourself it’s there. But we knew it wasn’t.

“We put all our album’s hopes and dreams into that one song too early. We kept asking ‘Is this working?’ We wanted everything to be clear in its intention, it has a strong character: this will make you dance, make you feel something,” Moyes continues.

“When we were working on it, Kim kept saying ‘I think it can be a little faster.’

“It went from 128 beats per minute to much, much faster,” Hamilton says.

“I wanna jump faster!” adds Moyes, leaping out of his chair like he just birthed a silent whoopee cushion.

“We wanted to make a techno version of an Aussie pub rock song, like the Angels or something.”

Do What You Want sounds like Rammstein and Skyhooks in a gay bar at 5am, getting up to no good. “That’s the vibe,” Hamilton replies.

A lucrative vibe, as it happens. Nissan knew a banger when they heard one. They used Do What You Want for their “sophisticated” new QASHQAI car commercial. The word on the street is that cash injection funded the whole album. “Yep, that’s true,” Moyes says, owning the fact.

The Presets aren’t averse to doing corporate gigs.

Hamilton recounts “the glory years when we did a whole bunch of those. We did one for Macquarie Bank and it was just after they’d laid off all these employees.

“It was this big story in the paper (dramatic newsreader voice) ‘Macquarie Bank Christmas Party, they had champagne, blah blah blah, and they even got The Presets (laughs).

“They stated our fee and it was one-tenth of what we’d been paid, and I was like what the f---? Someone was cooking the books.

“We are absolutely available,” Moyes yells. “If Flight Facilities aren’t available … call us.”

“We will consider all offers. Please email John Watson, [e-mail].”

The all-important support from Triple J has been there for Do What You Want and slinky Prince follow-up 14U+14ME. The Triple J text line got into 14U+14ME: “Bass so filthy I gotta go to confession.”

Hi Viz is loaded with guests: Alison Wonderland, DMA’s, Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters), Shane Parsons (DZ Deathrays), Michael Di Francesco (Touch Sensitive), Rromarin, Fritz Helder and KLP all bring their A-games.

Australian dance duo The Presets is back. And they’re sounding sweet.

Interestingly, the least famous special guests steal the show on Hi Viz, a bunch of former refugees from Burundi, South Sudan and D.R. Congo now living in Shepparton.

They bring an unmistakeable joie de vivre to the Chic-smelling, funk-laden, kaftan-wearing, current single Downtown Shutdown.

“Once Julian had got the lyrics and melody down it sounded like Caribbean vibe, purely on an aesthetic level. I thought it would be fun to get those sorts of accents. There are certain accents in the world that already have a melody in them, like Scottish, Southern American accents. Around the same time we were listening to Duck Rock by Malcolm McLaren.

“We went on the hunt and found the St Paul’s Lutheran Church Choir in Shepparton. We flew down for a day and recorded them. They bring such passion,” Moyes says.

“That song is a distant cousin to My People, it’s a protest party.”

Hamilton doesn’t start singing until Downtown Shutdown is well underway.

“I was looking at Kim saying, ‘Can I come in and start singing yet? And he was (puts stop-hand up) ‘Not yet, not yet’,” he says, champing at the bit.

“Then I said he could come in. We made a seven-minute version of the song for the album.
I really liked the production on The Weeknd’s I Feel It Coming, that really nice, super squashed, super compressed disco vibe. We really chased that sound for Downtown Shutdown.”

The clip for Downtown Shutdown is a gem.

“We wanted to get that ‘70s old school disco videos, y’know like Rock With You by Michael Jackson?” Hamilton asks.

“It was a special thing with all the feedback and all the electricity coming out of the fingers and Julian and others zapping each other with the vibe of the music (laughs),” says Moyes.

“My brother, Kris, had just made the Do What You Want clip and that was fun, we wanted to change it up with this one. Post-production stuff takes a minute. So yeah it came back looking pretty good but yeah we just had a couple more weeks to tweak it.”

The Presets found the funk before on Yippiyo-ay. Where did the funk come from on Downtown Shutdown?

“It came from us and we brought it out in everyone else. We wrote the bassline then got Touch Sensitive to come in and play it,” Moyes explains.

“You can fake the funk,” says Hamilton.

“No, you CAN’T fake the funk,” interjects his bandmate, Moyes curls bouncing as he rocks forward to correct his mate.

“Oh yeah. I always mix those two up.”

REVIEW: HI VIZ, THE PRESETS, (EMI)
4 stars (out of five)
It’s a stroke of accidental genius.

The Presets became known as a band synonymous for slamming disco rock (My People, Talk Like That) and melancholy, milk-drenched house (This Boy’s In Love) then pulled the ripcord and freefell into sea-shanties and anti-EDM actual-songs on 2012’s thumb-biting Pacifica. The genius part?

Returning to their strong suit.

Their fans are hanging out for Hi Viz and, in 2018 tweet parlance, The Presets see you.

Knuckles is an odd, anxious, skittering Atari-bleeps opener, then Do What You Want pulls you on to the dancefloor and tears your belt off with its teeth. It’s like Rammstein and Skyhooks punching each other with kisses. Martini is a more straightforward 4/4 in-between club track, shades of Plump DJs’ Fabric-made Eargasm album.

It clicks into the vicious tech-house of Beethoven, Hamilton taking a sip on his glass of milk as he becomes A Clockwork Orange character.

Hi Viz — The Presets

NB: they hold back a Mozart sample until the coda. Downtown Shutdown is the piece de resistance, this year’s Chameleon, replete with bright, local African voices.

It’s the jam that will forge peace between both Laurel/Yanny and North/South Korea.

Gear-shift, Alison Wonderland’s guest spot on Out Of Your Mind fires up the Pyro punk attitude. It singes as it slams — definite single. Tools Down is a tradie knock-off banger that features Jake Shears. He kills with his shrills.

Are You Here feat. DMA’s sees The Presets elicit an original, sweeping vocal take. Pretty impressive. 14U+14ME uses vocoder (make it stop) then things get nasty in the best possible way with Until the Dark closing all the doors of the club and cancelling your Uber. The Presets hold a lock-in. They know you don’t really wanna go home yet.

VERDICTThe evergreen lords of the dance are locked in on album four

HEAR: Hi Viz (EMI) out Fri.

SEE: The Presets, The Forum, 154 Flinders St, city. June 15-16. $71.10. ticketmaster.com.au

I preset, sorry, present you with more rad dad stuff here: @joeylightbulb