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Shuffle The Deck

Cam Findlay

"What we strive for is to kind of sit in that middle ground."

More The Aston Shuffle The Aston Shuffle

The Aston Shuffle, ie besties Mikah Freeman and Vance Musgrove, haven't stopped in about a year. In fact, it's entirely plausible you've seen them twice in a few months, raring as they are to tour new music. Their last tour, for single Tear It Down, came hot on the heels of mega hit Comfortable, both coming from their latest album Photographs, which is just about to be released. The idea of an Aston Shuffle is a big one, renowned as they are for their constant DJing and remixing – the best of which has made them household names in Australian dance music.

“Right now, I'm having a bit of a day off with my family and Vance,” Mikah begins when asked how he's treating the post-tour – and pre-even bigger tour – times. “The lucky bastard is over at South By Southwest doing promo. And also just, you know, having a bit of a relax for a week or so. When I say relaxing, he's probably partying like a mad fiend and doing as little work as he can. If I was in the same position, I would be doing the exact same thing.”

You can't blame him. Like any DJ group at the moment, Freeman and Musgrove's plan last year was to make it to the US, the current Mecca of EDM and the exact place you want to find yourself should you want to make a name out of DJing to huge crowds. Forget Ibiza; Freeman agrees that America is now the home of progressive mainstream dance music. “We did three tours of America last year and yeah, it's such an amazing place to be an artist and DJ and just getting your music out there at the moment. There's such a hunger and thirst for electronic music over there at the moment. There's so many people just excited to be a part of the whole thing, if they're DJing or just going to clubs. It felt right to be there in that moment, like, to be part of something that's just gaining more momentum every day.”

More than anything, it gave the duo an idea of what it's like to be at the top of the game. Catching such huge acts as Deadmau5 and Skrillex was one part of that step; being a part of the whole experience was another. “We had some gigs in some really big EDM clubs, so we kind of got a taste for what the top tier is like in terms of the big commercial EDM stuff. But we also played some really amazing 400-500 capacity rooms that were hungry for more eclectic underground kind of sounds. Both sets of shows were just absolutely amazing in their own way. They were both equally awesome as a performer and DJ, you know what I mean? So yeah, it's kind of cliché everyone going, 'Oh my god, America is where it's at,' but I think it definitely is at the moment.”

Part of what sold them over in the US is something that Australian audiences have latched on to with The Aston Shuffle: their ability to bridge the gap between mainstream EDM and underground audiences. “I think that for The Aston Shuffle, what we strive for is to kind of sit in that middle ground,” Freeman explains. “As musicians we're into very different sounds, but we always strive to make sure our music can have that commercial reach as well, so someone who's not necessarily into commercial sounds can still appreciate our music. It's kind of hard striving for those two things, and I don't think many people are in a position to be able to do that, but it's something that we're constantly striving for and fighting for with our music.”

It seems that that middle-ground base comes from simply enjoying dance music for what it is. The two singles already released are pretty strong examples of this, and it seems the album is going to be more of the same. “We've been doing this thing for a few years now and with this album we really tried to make sure of it,” he says. “It's definitely an album that's rooted in pop music, but it's dance music first and foremost. We hope and feel it has a place on the main stage of a festival, in a nightclub, a sweaty nightclub, on radio or at home listening. It's kind of hard to catch all of those four things in whatever you do, but it's an Aston Shuffle mandate, you know what I mean? Whether it's a housey kinda sounding song or a clubby sounding song, or even like a down-tempo or an R&B song, it's something that we try and strive for in our songwriting.”