More Than Meets The Eye

The Presets

Kim Moyes is a little insulted. He's discussing the Sydney duo's polarising Ghosts. Spartan and abstract, The Presets' second single from recently released third album Pacifica overflows with strange ideas and approaches – segueing effortlessly from gang vocals and frenetic percussion into melting, cerebral refrain. Somebody (read: this guy) has just made the mistake of suggesting that the track's rhythm owes something to dubstep.

“I really don't think so,” Moyes practically splutters – seemingly caught between laughter and outrage. “I suppose I can kind of see where you're coming from but, really, the rhythms for that track are a combination of a few things. We went to Colombia and went to a club where they were playing this really fast merengue music with pop melodies and styles over the top. It was a very culturally specific music we'd never heard before.

“Then, there was this other style of music from Chicago we got into last year called 'footwork' – which is, like, super-fast, 160BPM, instrumental hip hop sort of stuff. And then the general feel of the song is kind of like a sea shanty and very Old World-y, in a way. We wanted to get this feeling of it being a little militaristic – like the First Fleet. We just wanted to throw all those elements together into a pop track.”

That exchange says a lot about Pacifica. The Presets' third album has arrived after four years of boundary-shattering success and maddening anticipation. It's not what people expected. Worlds away from the electro-house juggernaut that was Apocalypso, Pacifica is an album of abstraction and texture. Even when the band do hit the dancefloor, they do so with elegant, pulsing extrapolations – not grenades.

“When I listen to the first few tracks of Apocalypso, I actually feel... Well, I actually feel frightened,” Moyes says with a laugh. “There's like an energy level and excitement that I just don't know if I could still tap into as a creative person anymore. I guess I've mellowed out a bit. There was a real urgency in that music. It makes me kind of anxious to listen back to it.”

Apocalypso may always stand as The Presets' defining opus. Following the pair's modestly well-received 2005 debut album Beams, Apocalypso hit like a tidal wave upon release in 2008. From ubiquitous hit singles through to chart-topping debuts and a slew of ARIA awards – Apocalypso transformed The Presets from obscure electro-indie kids into bona fide pop leviathans.

“We were absolutely aware of the success of Apocalypso,” Moyes says. “It was daunting, at times. We were really aware of the expectation that we had to live up to – or, in some people's minds, had to live up to. It impacted quite severely, at times. In a way, it stifled us. Thankfully, we weren't stupid enough to buy into it completely and we were sort of able to realise what was working and what wasn't and for what reasons.

“Eventually, we got to a point where we were able to trust our instincts again and just go with the plan that we've always gone with – which was to make the music we want to hear and make the music we believe in. And once we sort of stopped cock-blocking ourselves, things started to really come together and really interesting ideas started to sprout – ideas that we were really proud of and excited by.”

The success of Apocalypso was problematic for The Presets in more ways than one. Both graduates of Sydney's Conservatorium of Music, neither Moyes nor vocalist/keysman Julian Hamilton were ever interested in pop stardom. Debut album Beams barely had anything resembling a conventional pop song on it. Moyes, however, denies that Pacifica is the pair's attempt at fleeing the mainstream. Initially, anyway.

“I mean, we always try to make our music as direct as possible. We don't necessarily want to confuse people,” the drummer weighs in. “We just want to put different ideas out there. I mean, I listen to songs like Fall and I hear a straight up pop song. Ghosts, really, is a straight up pop song – verse, chorus, verse, chorus. There's nothing that mischievous about it.

“With something like Ghosts, I agree it's not exactly conventional, I'll give you that, but it's not exactly avant-garde either. We kind of just do that for ourselves, though. That's just the sort of people that we are and that's how we hear the world. We like to experiment with styles and influences. I don't think it would exactly give me a hard-on if someone came up to me and listed all the different styles in Ghosts. It would probably just creep me out.”

Still, it's hard not to think a specific incident in the band's career that suggests otherwise. In the wake of the band's mutual discomfiture in attending 2008's ARIA awards, Julian Hamilton suggested that the band's next album would to be so weird as to ensure they would never have to venture into the limelight ever again. Given they then went on to release a six-minute acid-techno track as a lead single, it's hard not to be suspicious.

“Oh, I don't think it's a particularly obvious record. You have to kind of engage with it and let it happen to you,” Moyes laughs – with a certain sadistic pride, it must be said. “We haven't just given all the bags of lollies – 'Oh, here you go; here's a fun pop song, here's a fun electro song, blah blah blah'. We've tried to challenge people. We've tried to inject a little bit more art to what we do as opposed to just straight-up pop music.”

In actual fact, The Presets chose arguably two of the most difficult and confronting tracks on the album as lead singles. There are a handful of weirder cuts (Push, Adults Only) but a score of more immediately accessible productions (Promises, Fall, It's Cool). Yet, when asked to introduce their eagerly anticipated album to the world, The Presets opted for a six-minute track without a chorus – followed by a post-modern sea shanty.

“Yeah, we're trying to raise the consciousness and all that pretentious shit,” the drummer says with another laugh. “We definitely chose Youth In Trouble and Ghosts as the first singles for a reason. There was a strategy to it. We initially wanted to release Ghosts as the first single – because, really, that and Adults Only are the centrepiece tracks of the album – but we kind of realised it would probably challenge people a little too much. “When we finished the album, Youth In Trouble was just a favourite of everyone who heard it. So, when it came to promoting the album, we just kind of went, 'Well, fuck it, let's release a six-and-a-half-minute techno track, we'll make a crazy psychedelic film clip, we won't service it to radio, we'll just give it to triple j and see what happens.'“