Casts No Shadow

s classically trained schoolmates, Perth lads Tobias John and Daniel Mackey experimented with orchestras and punk bands in their formative years, only recently moving into the field of electro-pop as Sun City, though quickly turning heads. “It wasn't until the beginning of last year that we decided that we wanted to sort of try our hand in a bit of, I guess, indie electro-pop sort of music. We were listening to a lot of it but we hadn't really had a lot of experience with trying to produce it, so we gave that a go…” says John. It took the duo three months to get a live show together; just a month after that they opened the main stage on the Perth leg of Parklife and launched their debut self-titled EP.

“We play a lot of instruments between two people on stage. So currently what we're gonna be touring with I believe is three synths, half an acoustic drum kit, an electronic drum pad and a guitar – and then we both sing on top of that,” John explains of Sun City's live set up. “It's been a fine balancing act – it's taken us ages to streamline and perfect it. It just takes a lot of trial and error because we haven't come across too many people in Perth, I guess, being isolated from the rest of Australia, that are doing the exact same sort of thing that we're doing, so it has been a lot of just throwing ourselves in the deep end and then figuring it out for ourselves.

“We've supported The Aston Shuffle twice on their tours, and we've also played two more festivals with them so we've been fortunate enough to become good friends with those guys; they're veterans and they've nutted out a lot of the bugs in how to pull off a really good live show, so they've been helpful. We also got to meet Bag Raiders at Stereosonic last year; [they're] another act that we look up to and again got some great advice from those guys. That kind of stuff really helps but at the end of the day you've just got to try it and see what happens. Everybody's different and it's a bit of an effort with all the instruments but it works for us.”

Their East Coast tour this month to support sophomore EP Set Alight, a back-to-back summer soundtrack mixing '80s pop references with contemporary dance music techniques, is the first chance the Perth duo have had to take their music to the rest of Australia. “We're really excited to get over to the East Coast; we know we've got some fans in some cities that have been really hanging out to check us out live and we're hoping that we're gonna be able to play to some new audiences as well and hopefully make some new fans and get to party with some cool new people…” he says excitedly.

It was scheduled to be their debut tour and their first appearances outside of Western Australia, until a Perth connection landed Sun City a spot as one of the international headliners at Salmon Fest in Harare, Zimbabwe at the start of this month. “It's kind of pretty random, I guess; it's not exactly how we pictured us making our international debut,” John laughs. “It's completely backwards – it's crazy! But I think we've probably got the point across that we aren't very conventional. It is what it is and we can't complain at all so we'll just sort of embrace it and close our eyes and see what happens.”

Sun City will be playing the following dates:

Friday 14 December - The Beresford Hotel, Sydney NSW
Saturday 15 December - Barsoma, Brisbane QLD