Just A Touch Of Love

Sydney's Touch Sensitive, aka Michael Di Francesco, has already had a big year for gigs. He's performed live at SXSW in Austin, Texas – and supported Disclosure and Cut Copy at home. At SXSW alone, Di Francesco was booked for countless appearances. “I don't think I've ever been so tired in my entire life – like, I had 11 or 12 shows while I was there,” he recalls. “I remember the very last show, getting to it and setting up. It was dark, loud – and just picking up my bass felt like the heaviest thing I've ever lifted. I remember thinking, 'Wow, I am exhausted.' But then once I started playing, it was fine. I was back to normal.” At Circo, Di Francesco, who these days rarely hangs out at shows, hopes to catch one of his favourite contemporary names. “I love [renegade French hip hop beatmaker] Onra – I'm very excited about Onra!”

There's a micro-trend in Australian music with hot acts evolving out of other (formerly) hot acts. Pond began as a Tame Impala side-project. Jagwar Ma's Jono Ma was a member of Lost Valentinos. And Di Francesco was keyboardist in Van She; he played on their two Modular albums, V and Idea Of Happiness. Nevertheless, Di Francesco has definitely left Van She behind. “I am not in it any more, and the drummer's [Tomek Archer] not in it any more – it's just Nick [Routledge] and Matt [van Schie] pretty much doing it. I'm not sure whether or not they're planning on doing new music or what they're doing. But they're still DJing and stuff.”

Di Francesco officially reactivated his solo Touch Sensitive guise with last year's Pizza Guy/Show Me EP on Future Classic, Pizza Guy becoming triple j's third most played track of 2013 (even the video went viral). A blog fave, he toured North America with his labelmate Flume. The year prior he'd cut a successful Anna Lunoe collab – the garagey Real Talk. Di Francesco relishes the autonomy of being a soloist. “It's all good – it's all been amazing. I don't regret anything, really.”

So far in 2014 Di Francesco has aired just the one tune, Slowments – what might be variously termed a remix, cover or reinvention of Art Of Noise's '80s synth classic Moments In Love, a record both beloved by Madonna and, bizarrely, sampled by hardcore rappers like Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's Krayzie Bone (on Murda Mo). “Originally that started out as an edit that I put into my live set so that I had more material,” Di Francesco explains. He then decided to release his “re-imagination” as a free download. However, Di Francesco does have fresh original music coming, and he's further developing a mode of synth-house that is simultaneously nostalgic and modern. “I have this internal battle, because one half of me wants to make music that no one else is gonna like, except for maybe three or four people, and then there's the other part of me that wants to make just house music. So I'm kinda trying to find a balance between still being groovy and still being… cool.”