Of A Sound Mind

The music that greets your ears when Ice On The Dune begins is like a soundtrack to the unimaginable. Lux shimmers and twirls. It darts around you and dances before you. It's grandiose and entirely over the top, but it's also the perfect introduction to the sophomore release from Empire Of The Sun. The record that follows is a pulsing ball of swollen energy, the glittery production of Nick Littlemore taken to places euphoric when coupled with Luke Steele's childlike vocals. Nothing sums it up better than this simple refrain of Alive: “Hello to my people/Say hello to the future”.

“We're continuing the journey [with this album], but this time around initially we had this whole thought; we've come across the kingdom again, and everything's cool y'know, everything is going great,” Littlemore laughs, turning a comment that seemed originally straight into a slight piss take. “I think you have to look at it objectively – it's one thing to invent these things, but it's another to control them... they become living things, y'know. When we first came up with Empire, we didn't have an audience, but now there is one and there's demand and there are all these other responsibilities.”

From the imagery of the record – the frozen ice sheets, jagged mountains and iridescent aqua tones – it seems that Ice On The Dune is potentially the flipside to the galactic desert world their 2008 debut Walking On A Dream was found within. Littlemore is quick to put such an assumption to bed, however, expanding on the ideals of what seems to be an extended journey not only into the world of Empire Of The Sun, but also to the depths of their own minds.

“I don't think musically necessarily – I don't think it's cold. We were still hitting the same, I guess the hole in the storm or the honeyed light is still there, the essence or whatever it is that people respond to in the songs from Walking On A Dream,” he informs. “But I don't know, I think the clothes [have] maybe changed, the environment somewhat... But I think with the story, there's always two paths; there's the fantastical elements but a lot of them are metaphorical pieces about one's life and the record is really all based around the word 'aspire' – it's an aspirational record. [Let's remove] all those limitations, those insecurities that everyone has in their own lives and their own worlds – we want to empower people.”

But behind all this sanctioning from the “kingdom” remains an album that Littlemore is still coming to terms with, and it's easy to relate. After all, there again seems to be much more than music that comes with Ice On The Dune, the cover art, costumes and film clips taking this traditional full-length and turning it into a fantastical adventure once more, like a Hollywood blockbuster has been refined down to a single batch of tunes. But this is a view from the outer sanctum looking towards the inner reaches. As for Littlemore, this album's success – and the duo's – is still inevitably driven by songs. Without them, all the additional colours amount to nothing.

“I don't celebrate the ceremony of a release so much as the bedding in of the music and the way it can come back to you,” he reasons. “[And] you can rediscover your own music [through] an ad or a film or [while] you're travelling – it can be very bizarre. I remember being in Italy one time and hearing a song; there was all the announcements and then the song came on. It takes me a while to realise, 'Hey, that's my song'. It's just so weird, it's cool. And it's funny, they always sound so simplistic when you hear them back a long time after the process when you're anguishing over everything and all the rest of it.”

These days, such moments must be all too frequent for Littlemore and Steele though, such is the global reach of Empire Of The Sun's music. Forming the band in 2008 merely as a studio project, the two prodigiously talented individuals created more than just a record; they bridged the gap between the east and west coasts of Australia (Littlemore is from Sydney while Steele's origins are in Perth), and in doing so removed the divide between the stage and the dancefloor. Walking On A Dream can almost be viewed as the crossroad where rock and EDM collided in our country, with the influence of that record now apparent in so many of today's young acts, from Strange Talk to Gypsy & The Cat.

The popularity of that debut forced the group out onto the stage, with their live show presented for the very first time as a part of the 2009 Parklife festival. Only thing was, Littlemore didn't feature, and still hasn't. While Steele crisscrossed the globe with a crack stage band and dance troupe, Littlemore threw himself into the role of musical director for the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil, working on their magic-centric production, Zarkana, an experience that – although unintentional – has benefitted Empire Of The Sun's sophomore record no end.

“I think the main thing that I got out of Cirque was the discipline and the way we worked; redo something, rewrite something, make it better, work harder, refine it,” he notes. “In more of a professional way I think I really learnt that craft. I'd never really worked for a boss and I think it helps working in that environment. I mean it helped me – I didn't like it – but I got through it and I learnt a lot from it and I find it invaluable now. It's one of those things my parents always told me, grandparents whatever y'know, 'Oh, you should do this, it will be hard but you'll thank yourself'; all that stuff that they say but you don't really believe, but you come through the other side. And I think doing this Empire record, it was great, especially doing big sessions and large recording sessions because I did a lot of that with Cirque, and I'm very confident in those rooms – y'know fifteen or twenty people – to get stuff happening and not be meek.”

This self-assurance and conviction also guided the knife when the duo were removing the fat from Ice On The Dune. As a result, the album continues to throb forwards and holds a consistency cover-to-cover that – for all the acclaim and sales – their debut somewhat lacked.

“We found how important it is to strip away anything unnecessary,” Littlemore remarks. “The first album was built that way because we just didn't simply have the time, we just did something very quickly. This time around we spent more time so there was that feeling to layer and layer and do all that stuff. We tried to go back and find the message in things.”

Unlike Walking On A Dream, where the pair were very much grounded in Australia and localised “working in Redfern, living in Marrickville”, Ice On The Dune was recorded in various parts of the globe – London, New York, Sydney, Miami – in and around their various other artistic pursuits. “I think a lot of that was travelling for a song,” admits Littlemore. There was one location, though – the songwriter's current base – where the lion's share of the full-length was completed, which ironically was aided by its familiarity of home.

“We made a lot of the record together here in Los Angeles; we got a studio, a pretty basic room, but it was large and comfortable so we stayed there [and] with a finer blade [we] carved it out,” he recalls. “[LA] reminds me a lot of Australia which I like, because that's something I haven't experienced in a long time. I've been living in London and in Montreal, New York, which are all – weather and lifestyle-wise – very different; it's been five years since I've lived somewhere like Australia and it's nice.”

How Empire Of The Sun's voyage will continue is anyone's guess. But one thing is guaranteed – this group has defied every musical convention on how to succeed and remain successful. And whether you're holding the keys to the kingdom or simply looking to come inside, it seems that the surprises are yet to cease.

“Our lives have changed a lot and a lot of things that we cooked up in the cauldron of imagination back then, about how our lives could be if we made this amazing album, and then all these things happened which is just quite bizarre and crazy,” he humbly admits. “Even things like Luke saying, 'Oh, I want to do something with Beyonce', and then he did. It's almost like alchemy we were messing around with, we had no idea about the bigger picture that was maybe laid out in some kind of fatalistic path.”