Soft And Slow

If Disclosure have taught us anything in 2013, it's that clubs are done with aggressive electro and dumbstep – people are down to funk with the groovy house sounds of yesteryear, and Sydney duo Softwar are another young pair making happy house while the sun shines.

“I think house music is the 'it' word now for a lot of people which is really good to see, and I think what we tried to do with this EP is a proper, straight up club track.” So tells Jeremy Lloyd, who along with good friend Myles Du Chateau formed Softwar a couple of years back.

The EP he speaks of is their latest, Believe/One Day, featuring the titular singles along with remixes from Francis Inferno Orchestra and Detroit Swindle. “We really just wanted to aim for that [house sound] and I think we nailed it, in terms of just what we wanted, and a lot of people are just having a good time with it which is great.

“The DJ feedback we've been getting has been really, really positive. A lot of people have been digging the Detroit Swindle remix [of One Day], but Believe's got the most amount of positive feedback.”

He needn't have been concerned, though. The new EP shows a slightly more focused direction for the duo, whose This Time Around EP last year felt a little restrained, perhaps trying to appeal to a wider demographic with slightly more disco leanings. This time around, their eyes are firmly set on sweaty club dancefloors. “Yeah, basically we're just working on straight-up house at the moment, and we're really focused on getting a live show together. So we're gonna do like a crossover kinda housey/techno, maybe even a bit of disco-house stuff, but just do like an hour of all-original material into a live set.”

The finer points of which the duo are still working out. “We will probably use Ableton in between for our drum beats. We'll probably use Maschine and a couple of VSTs, but we wanna get analogue gear and use samplers and things like that. Recording into loops and sampling it… we're still very much yet to get off the ground but that's the plan.”

Much of that has to do with the chaps' hectic schedules – Lloyd studying at university and Du Chateau working full-time. And then there's the weekends… “I play on Fridays every week from 3am 'til 6am at a [Sydney] club called Spice, and that gets pretty taxing. Especially if we have to travel somewhere on Saturday for a gig,” Lloyd laughs. It's not all bad though:“Having that weekly gig keeps me on my toes. You get to try new things and it's a really comfortable environment and there's no pressure to have every mix perfect every week.”

As for the future, Llloyd says there's no real plans for a Softwar album just yet (“I think at this stage, in terms of club music, an album where we're at at the moment doesn't really make sense.”), but we can expect more EPs, and perhaps some vocal collaborations. “We'll probably make a few more EPs and then a ten-track album that almost feels like a mix. It won't just be track for track…

“We're [also] definitely keen to get guest vocalists… We've definitely got a couple of people in mind who we'll be approaching for vocals, but yeah nothing confirmed yet. I think I have to keep that under my hat.”