Australia’s next electronic kings
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Who us? Hermitude were touring America when their Dark Night Sweet Light topped the Australian charts. Picture: Tim Hunter.
Source: News Corp Australia
EL Gusto and Luke Dubs were standing the lobby of an Atlanta hotel when they were given the news Dark Night Sweet Light had debuted at No. 1 back home in Australia in June.
It was the fifth album for Hermitude and another sign that Australia’s electronic music scene was no longer an underground concern.
Even though predecessors including Flume and Chet Faker taking their particular brands of music made on computers and keyboards to the top of the charts here and stages all over the world, the humble Blue Mountains pair who have been making music together for half their lives were stunned.
El Gusto, known as Angus Stuart on his passport, along with his mate Luke Dubber were jumping up and down with excitement when the chart result came through.
“The fact we went to No. 1, I never thought it was possible with this kind of music. It feels like somehow we’ve met what is considered to be popular music in the middle,” Stuart says.
“The stuff we are writing now is kind of popular. I remember one guy wrote on our Facebook: ‘Does this mean I like commercial music now?’ It’s a good question. And I don’t know the answer.”
The answer is simply, yes.
And it’s not like it hasn’t been a long time coming.
The pair first met in their high school jazz band and played in myriad local outfits.
“I was 11 when I was playing in the local jazz band that my dad ran and the oldest person was sixty something; it was a motley crew,” Stuart says.
“There was another guy who was always high and every week he would say the same thing about ‘music is colours, man’ every week.”
They decided to explore turntables and samplers around the turn of the millennium when Stuart returned from a trip to America.
They raided the record collection of Stuart’s musician father John, scattering vinyl all over the floor as they searched for the musical stems which they would thread together as songs for their debut EP, Imaginary Friends.
Stuart remembers having to learn how to use the equipment by re-reading the instruction manuals and jokes he wishes there had been YouTube tutorials back then.
“We were both working musicians, playing instruments in different bands and this was a side project for us, writing this electronic music,” Dubber says.
“Luckily enough, Elefant Traks wanted to put it out. We made it on a computer with hardware samplers and synthesisers. It was a totally different game then.
“We played off a DAT player for the first or five years, battery powered tape machines. A little DAT player we bought off this guy in Katoomba for 50 bucks or something.”
It was their fourth album HyperParadise — and the title track remix by Flume — which took the pair from respected in their field to big on the charts.
That album went to win the Australian Music Prize and the Speak Of The Devil clip took out Triple J’s Music Video Of The Year.
Stuart believes the album arrived at just the right time to ride the rise and rise of electronic music.
Rise and rise … The Blue Mountains pair broke through with their HyperParadise album. Picture: Supplied.
Source: Supplied
“The sound we was making started to come into sync with the music being made by Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke. People who liked that music connected with HyperParadise,” Stuart says.
“It really started to happen, all the stuff that was bubbling up in Australia from all these producers, like us and Flume and Wave Racer. It all exploded and everyone started looking to Australia for these cool sounds.”
“Everything is so connected now with Soundcloud, social media, all of it. Flume doing the remix of HyperParadise, that just blew up huge and that got overseas. I feel that’s what started the whole craze.”
The craze got crazier when commercial radio in Australia discovered their track The Buzz and dstarted flogging it without the song being released as a single. It soon was and gave them their first bona fide hit single.
Their homegrown popularity didn’t go unnoticed overseas and Nettwerk Records signed them to a global deal and got them on the road.
And that is where Hermitude, like Flume and Faker, have proven most powerful. Australian musicians, no matter their genre of expertise, just blow everyone else off stage.
The sold out signs were posted on every gig of their album launch tour and the duo also drew thousands for their sets at American summer festivals including New York’s Governor’s Ball and Chicago’s Lollapalooza.
They will cap off a phenomenally successful year with two arena shows in Sydney and Melbourne in November.
Expect great tunes, a blinding light show and obligatory waving of arms in the air. And maybe some jibberish.
“Screaming jibberish into the mic to see what the reaction would be might be fun. But we haven’t done it. Not intentionally,” Stuart says.
Hermitude perform at the Hordern Pavilion, Sydney on November 27 and Festival Hall, Melbourne, November 28.
