There's Only One Plan: Do Something Over The Top

Peking Duk are prepping the most anticipated Australian dance music album since The Avalanches' Wildflower - and, before that, Flume's Skin. But, come September, the Canberran DJ/producers will hit the Sunshine Coast's 2016 Maroochy Music and Visual Arts Festival (MMVAF), joining other homegrown draws like Matt Corby, Allday and George Maple.

Reuben Styles and Adam Hyde have been quiet since they unleashed the brilliant prog disco stomper Say My Name (with the mysterious Benjamin Joseph) in mid-2015. Still, earlier this year they toured the country with The Meeting Tree (TMT), those self-proclaimed "Godfathers of ADM". A jetlagged Styles has just returned from the US - which explains why, unusually for a professional partier, he's doing a 9am interview. "I'm on LA time," Styles drawls. "We've been waking up in LA at about 2pm every day - which is around now."

Meeting as teen skaters, Styles and Hyde initially generated buzz online with a bootleg remix of Passion Pit's Take A Walk. After a spate of club singles, Peking Duk crossed over in 2014 with the future garage High (featuring Nicole Millar) - it went multi-platinum and won the ARIA for Best Dance Release. They followed with another anthem in Take Me Over (sung by SAFIA's Ben Woolner). Today the Duks, now Sydney-based, are in demand on the international circuit. Last year they premiered at Coachella.

"We love writing music. It's finishing songs which we don't like. Being the writers and the producers - it's a heavy workload, doing an album."

Lately Peking Duk have focussed on recording their debut album for Sony Music. They've enjoyed an epic writing trip - spending three weeks each in Europe and North America. It's a surprisingly pop manoeuvre given that the pair have previously been so autonomous, working in their own studios. "We'd never, ever gone on a writing trip," Styles enthuses.

In March Peking Duk told triple j's Zan Rowe that they've collaborated with Aussies such as Daniel Johns, Julia Stone and Jarryd James - plus Swedish femcee/singer Elliphant. "She's a legend - probably one of the biggest legends in the music world," Styles says. "When we were in Stockholm, we had a couple of sessions with her. We've now done a few songs with her, which is cool. She's just awesome to work with." "Elli" impressed Peking Duk with the story of how Mick Jagger ("some old geezer") watched her perform from stage-side in London.

Styles is typically vague about when an album (or new singles) might appear. "There's no timelines. It'd be cool to put it out tomorrow... But we wanna make more songs so we have more to choose from. There's a lot in the repertoire, a lot that we can choose from, but we wanna be able to choose from even more. It's fun. We love writing music. It's finishing songs which we don't like. Being the writers and the producers - it's a heavy workload, doing an album."

Say My Name represented a huge, if risky, sonic deviation for the Duks. "It was just another song that we'd been working on," Styles maintains. "We never plan anything with our music. Obviously, when it comes to which song we put out next, it's good to keep everything sort of similar. But I think we wanted to break the mould of what we sound like a little. We wanted to put out a song which shows we can do a little bit more than just straight-up dance music. It's fun working on different songs. We've been working on some soul, some funk... Over the last year we've just been on an adventure doing anything but dance music. But in the last six weeks we've upped our repertoire with a bunch of bangers which we know Peking Duk fans will wanna hear. They were very confused by Say My Name - but in a good way, I think."

Say... attracted unlikely supporters. Ariana Grande tweeted its viral video, starring Matt McGorry of Orange Is The New Black fame. And the song has been licensed for a Bose headphones campaign. Peking Duk may have started a dance trend with psychedelic "feels", The Avalanches going hippie on Wildflower. ("I have heard it - and I love it!," Styles raves.)

In the interim, Peking Duk have been involved in The Meeting Tree enterprise, mastering tracks. Hyde lent his vocals to 2015's alt-trap banger R U A Cop. Yet even Styles was astonished by their split. "I'm not gonna be the one that says I doubt they broke up but - I mean, if you take anything they say seriously, you're a bit of a goose. But, in saying that, that's the thing. You never know. It could be dead serious."

Peking Duk set the standard for festival antics pre-TMT. As for the party mavericks' MMVAF plans? "I guess we've just gotta make it the opposite of whatever Matt Corby will do," Styles teases. "He'll do something beautiful, so we should do something disgusting (laughs). Something ratchet. Something over the top. Something to really accentuate his beauty and our ratchetness."