Return To Oz

"Oh, dude. We are so pale. You have no idea,” Jimi Wall laughs. “We were in London for two years and, because of visa issues, we've just moved to Berlin in the past two months. And it's great. It costs like, 80 cents to get a beer here. It's ridiculous. However, it's very cold and we're very pale.” The Loops Of Fury began in Brisbane, Queensland as Hyperion. Beginning in high school in the '90s, they were respected veterans on the local scene. Still, many were skeptical when they announced their plan to rebrand as The Loops Of Fury and take on the world at the end of 2009 – many had tried; most had failed.

“I think that's when we started to actually take things seriously,” Max Clarke says. “You know, we'd been doing stuff as Hyperion for years and we'd made all kinds of music before that but I still think of it as us messing around, really. We didn't really start taking things seriously until Loops Of Fury... We knew most of our fanbase was from Europe and we knew we kind of made more sense in Europe. In Australia, there's a really narrow bandwidth for dance music acts. Like, there's triple j and Nova,” the producer explains. “Whereas, in Europe, there's a lot more freedom.”

The success they've found has been shocking. After some promising releases as Loops Of Fury, 2011's I Need single saw them embraced by an entire cross-section of the dance community. Carl Cox, Tiesto, Sasha and Moby have all thrown support to the pair in recent years. “I Need was definitely where it began for us,” Clarke recalls. “And yeah, it's still pretty shocking. We knew it was going to be special. I don't think I'd ever worked that hard on a production. It took us months. Still, when Carl Cox played our music after that, it was… Man, I don't even know.”

“He's just such a legend,” Wall interjects. “Like, I remember seeing him play in Ibiza and, at one point, he just cuts all the music and says '1, 2, 3, 4 – dance' and everybody loses their shit. I mean, you had to. I got the feeling if I didn't, he'd just come down from the booth and stare at me until I apologised and danced.” The diversity of their sound has seen them embraced by all manner of communities. They've got touches of trance, electro, techno and house spread all throughout their productions. There's even hints of rave and breakbeat leftover from their days as high school ravers. “I don't think we really have a set sound,” Wall says. “Most of the time, we're smack-bang between techno and electro but we've got our own stuff going on, I think. I mean, in the middle of I Need, you have an amen break – and that was really an overt tribute to our rave days.”

They've actually started their own label (Lotus Recordings) on account of that diversity. Rather than tailoring their eclecticism to specific labels, they're free to explore all avenues. In a testament to their success, their debut release for the label is a full-fledged collaboration between Loops Of Fury and Moby – Para. “Yeah, it's been amazing working with Moby,” Wall says. “We're really proud of Para – because most people don't actually know about Moby's early rave material, just the crossover stuff. We were really keen to kind of bring it back to the dancefloor and it's just amazing how it turned out.”

“I think it's easily the hardest thing he's done in years,” Clarke agrees. “And it's really humbling to be a part of that.”

The Loops Of Fury will be playing the following dates:

Friday 29 March - Good Friday Boat Party, Sydney NSW
Friday 12 April - Ambar, Perth WA