Kim Moyes Of The Presets Is A Big Fan Of Mondegreens

At the time of our chat, Kim Moyes is at his home studio in Sydney, so naturally we need to know whether we can expect some fresh tunes from The Presets any time soon. "We're in the studio, we've got a bunch of things on the cook and we hope to have some stuff out imminently," he reveals. 

Even though it seemed like Moyes and Julian Hamilton took some time out from The Presets to become fathers before the release of their latest, ravetastic Hi Viz set, Moyes chuckles, "We never really went away!"

So how old are his kids now? "My eldest boy is nine and my daughter just turned four a week ago." 

When asked what they think about Dad's job, Moyes ponders, "Well, my son's like, you know, I think he thinks it's cool, but he tells his friends, 'Whenever you get to hear one of my dad's songs on the radio, I've already heard it, like, 50 million times!'" he laughs. 

After witnessing the effect that cranking up Do What You Want, the lead single from Hi Viz, has on some friends' toddlers – they basically go completely apeshit and jump around – we put it to Moyes that The Presets are potentially corrupting children's musical tastes from a very young age (which we're all for, obviously). "Well maybe they [their kids] corrupted us into making that song, you know?" he teases. 

Another Setties song with a relentless, driving 4/4 beat that gets kids of all ages (including club kids) pogoing, My People, received a companion piece of sorts in Downtown Shutdown, the third single to be lifted from Hi Viz. "I think Julian was kind of interested in what was happening in the Occupy Wall Street thing a few years ago, and the ability that people have to kind of shut down a city if they want to, you know?" Moyes explains of Downtown Shutdown's genesis. "He just thought that that would be a cool idea for a party track and it wasn't sort of meant to be as politically loaded as My People is, which is pretty specific about the Australian Government's treatment of asylum seekers back in, like, 2007 and even still today. Nothing has changed, which is great for the song, but awful for everyone out there who's, you know, trying to make a better life for themselves."

When Downtown Shutdown was released, however, Moyes observes, "A lot of people were sort of really quick to say, 'Is it about the lockout laws in Sydney?' And, I mean, I think part of the appeal – for me at least, anyway – was that I liked that it could be read into that way even though, perhaps, it's not specifically about that. But it definitely rings true for [Sydney's lockout laws]."

We discuss how sometimes knowing too much about a song can ruin the listening experience and Moyes opines: "I also feel like maybe I get pretty bored when artists dictate to you what songs are about. I think a lot of the time the success of a song is what's conveyed that's not said, like, of course it's a combination of melodies and lyrics and storytelling and the emotion of the harmony that's underpinning it and also, you know, the thrust of the groove. But all of that combined isn't really something that cerebral, it's more undertones. And so I think to come through and sorta say, '[puts on a wanker voice] I wrote this song about this and it's about my sandwich that I had, and it was the best sandwich ever.' Like, you're kind of killing the potential of that song to be connecting to other people's lives."

Last year, following The Presets' Splendour In The Grass set, a crew of punters 'fessed up to mishearing their song Martini as 'My Tinnie' (and went on to open the @mytinnie Instagram account in honour of this mondegreen), which is kind of a fun way of describing connecting with a song by oblique means. "Haha, exactly!" Moyes allows. "I think people have always taken great pleasure in mishearing our lyrics and kind of making fun out of them, because I remember even when Ghosts ["in heaven"] came out in 2012, people turned that into, 'Goats in heaven,'" he chuckles. "So it's always so fun to sorta see what people are mishearing. I do the same thing and it must drive Julian insane, like, when we're working on songs I'll think that he says something and I'll just, you know, spend the rest of the week saying my misheard lyrics and driving him up the wall!"

"I'd love to rip down the slopes with one of those on."

The Presets absolutely owned Meredith 2018 and we've always wondered how the Supernatural Amphitheatre, in full peaking mode, looks from the stage. "I just remember looking out and not really being able to see where the crowd ended... It's almost a bit like when the orcs are taking over the castle in The Lord Of The Rings," Moyes enlightens, "You're like, 'Oh my God, this is neverending!' It was mad fun, you know?" 

Moyes then reminisces about the first time he and Hamilton played Supernatural Amphitheatre with their first band, Prop. "I think we rocked up and played, like, a 7am set or a 6am set and, you know, everyone was sort of winding down from a big all-nighter. And we got up on stage and played our kind of funny, spacey jazz-rock – whatever it was – and we ended up selling, like, 160 CDs straight off the stage. It was amazing!" 

Another incredible performance by The Presets that is etched in this scribe's memory is when they performed My People at the 2008 ARIA Awards ceremony in the company of way too many dancers to count. "That whole dance piece was choreographed by Julian's brother, Antony Hamilton, who's quite a well-known and excellent contemporary dance choreographer so, yeah! That was so fun and so special."

For this one-off performance, Romance Was Born designed The Presets' lavish costumes and "crazy headpieces"; Hamilton's headpiece basically resembled a hollowed-out soft toy monster's head – beyond awesome. We reckon these outfits should definitely be revisited for Snowtunes. Moyes laughs, "Yeah, totally! I'd love to rip down the slopes with one of those on."

When asked whether The Presets have ever performed at the snow before, Moyes recalls, "I think Jules and I played at the snow very early on down at Falls Creek back in the day, and I DJed down there once or twice... We've played in the snow in Denver as well. We played at, like, a snowboarding festival or something like that and I remember being completely inappropriately dressed and sliding around – I couldn't walk properly because, yeah, I had dress shoes on or something like that and actually couldn't walk from the stage to the van [laughs]." So how does drumming while wearing gloves work? "Well thankfully, you know, drumming is quite an active pursuit so I think I can get away with just wearing a jacket."