Flight Facilities reveal they’re losing money by not just pressing play on a laptop when they go on tour

SYDNEY’S Flight Facilities reveal why they will never fake a DJ set again and how they are yet to break even from their latest tour.

Flight Facilities did a “fake” DJ set

SYDNEY dance duo Flight Facilities have revealed they once “pretended” to play live the way many of the world’s top DJs are suspected to.

Jimmy Lyell of Flight Facilities said one of their first live shows was anything but live, relying on ‘miming’ to a prerecorded DJ set.

“We put on a mix tape at one of our really early festivals just to try performing like that,” Lyell admitted. “But halfway through I thought ‘I am so f----g bored and I feel like a dick’. So we never did it again. We do as much as humanly possible up there. If there’s too many vodkas or beers beforehand we probably couldn’t do our job properly.”

Flight Facilities have spent the last year touring their hit debut album Down to Earth, utilising an expensive live show featuring a huge lighting rig, two guest vocalists (including Brooke Addamo aka Owl Eyes) and live musical technology that allows them to do more than press play on a laptop. The pair also dress as pilots at each live show.

“Dance music is supposed to be fun,” Lyell said. “The outfits are part of that. We want to make our live show an experience that’s not like EDM (electronic dance music). In America we get classed as EDM but we’re probably the antithesis of that.

“I like people who are used to that (EDM) culture coming to see us. We love the whole theatrical aspect to the show. Our biggest inspirations are the Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Orbital, the old school big beat stuff. They were doing so much stuff on stage not just standing behind a laptop.”

Indeed Lyell says the duo are yet to break even from their latest touring, which has involved smaller promotional gigs in the US and UK as well as Australian headline shows and festival sets.

“Hopefully we’ll start to make some money soon, we’re spending money to make money at the moment. That’s pretty important when you’re establishing yourself. I think it’ll pay off in the long run. I think we’ll have a brand that will keep going for a few more years to come because we’re putting in the hard yards now. It’s a big investment in time and money.

“This live show is the vision Hugo (Gruzman) and I had when we started, it’s tough for perfectionists to see it take so long to come to life. And it’s expensive. We’re touring with this huge lighting rig that has been the bane of our existence for the past two years. There’s a lighting guy to help with that, two vocalists, our manager, a sound man, a monitors guy and Hugo and I.

“If it was just a DJ thing we’d probably just need four of us on tour. Hats off to people who do that, it’s clever in the long run. And if you think about it people in the crowd have the same experience. That’s why all these superstar DJs have made it work, the experience in the crowd is the same and they make double the money and can probably do double the gigs. But our artistic integrity would stop us from doing that.”

The duo played Sydney’s Vivid Festival last week alongside label Flume to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the label Future Classic. Tomorrow they take part in Vivid’s Cloud Sounds, a discussion open to the public and presented by file-sharing service Dropbox to highlight how technology is used to make music. Glenn Richards of Augie March as well as the Aston Shuffle will also talk about their modern methods.

“Especially being in Australia you need technology to hook you up with people on the other side of the world without travelling 24 hours to work with them,” Lyell says.

“We can’t afford to pay a small fortune on flights. There’s vocalists on our album we’ve not even met yet, but if we didn’t have Dropbox and other technology we couldn’t have worked with them. You need to be able to share things online or else it would cost you an arm and a leg.”

The duo are working on some new material with fellow electronic wonders Client Liaison, which Lyell says was inspired by the potential of both acts performing together.

“We love those guys to death and respect what they do. They’re taking a similar path to us with the pilot outfits, they’re turning that 80s look into a brand and their brand is incredibly strong. If they just keep going like that they’ll surpass us. They’re so talented. Once we get off the stage our pilot outfits come off, but they wear their personas every day which is the best part of it.”

After a slot at Splendour in the Grass Flight Facilities will tour across Europe before returning for a show with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the Myer Music Bowl where they’ll perform rearranged versions of their songs.

All 12,000 tickets to the show sold out in three hours, with the duo torn as to whether to add a second show to appease demand or reward those fans who got in first.

“Playing with the MSO is stepping out of our comfort zone completely but it’s a dream come true for us,” says Lylell. “We were waiting to be asked to do something like this, the arranger is in Copenhagen, he’s worked with Coldplay and Goldfrapp.”

Lyell said the duo may release a deluxe edition of their debut album and hinted the full version of Crave You, featuring Kylie Minogue (a brief reprise features on the record) may surface however an early version of Sunshine featuring Chet Faker remains unfinished in the vaults.

“The Kylie track is a big maybe,” Lyell says. “There’s so many different versions of songs that just don’t see the light of day. The songs on the album could be totally different to the versions that made it, but that’s part of the fun.”

Cloud Sounds, Thursday June 4, 11am-12.30pm, MCA, 140 George St, The Rocks. $15/$10, http://www.vividsydney.com/