INTERVIEW: Sun City

We were lucky enough to catch up with Daniel of Sun City in the midst of their busy touring schedule!

Being a uni student, all I seem to hear from people is that they are either too poor, or that they don’t want to be at their part-time jobs, weird right? These people work maximum 12 hours a week and complain about how tiring their 4 hour shifts are.

They should try working 9-5 jobs and then making music in their spare time like the boys of SUN CITY. Tobias John and Daniel Mackey work their butts off all day and then rock out hard all night, playing their sweet, summery grooves to fans from across the globe. Most recently the boys travelled to Africa to play SalmonFest and also headline their own tour.

I had a chat with Daniel recently whilst he sat waiting for his next sound check, about his African adventure, and the highly anticipated Australian Tour which has just added more dates!

The ‘Set Alight’ EP sounds great, what did the recording process involve?

Well, we start off mainly doing our own thing separately so, brainstorming and basically our own song ideas and recording them and demoing them, and then we just get together and show each other what we’ve got and just sit in a room for a week and just see what comes out of it! Just try and build on our musical lives I guess. That’s the way we kind of write.

So you just mix all of your ideas together later on…

Yeah, we just show each other our own ideas and then pick what we like, and just make songs! We have this huge back catalogue of songs.

What was the inspiration behind ‘Set Alight’?

We did just step back after doing the first one there’s a lot of different sound on the first EP, I don’t know if you’ve heard it, but there’s a lot of different styles, we were trying to do something that had a bit more, what’s the word? Consistency. We wanted just a more consistent sound throughout the whole thing. We started when that Drive movie came out, with Ryan Gosling and we listened to that soundtrack and got a few ideas there. We took some basscore and built on and on from that really. We were using that kind of eighties, new age thing

Is there a song on the EP that stands out for you?

For me, it would be ‘The Follower’ there’s something about that song, I just really enjoy it. It’s not my favourite to play live, but I just love listening to it. I like how the song panned out in the end.

Then what’s your favourite track to play live?

At the moment? It kind of changes, but at the moment it’s ‘High’. I get to do a lot in that song so it makes it fun for me [laughs].

How shocked were you when you found out how successful ‘Set Alight’ was?

It kind of took me by surprise, it can only go up. We had a good feeling when we finished those tracks and we had like majorly sweet contacts to help us get the music out there. So once that kind of all, aligned we realized that this could be good, and then we had a great response from everyone who blogged it and we really appreciate all the support we’ve gotten from everyone it’s just really amazing.

So having playing over in Africa, mainly Zimbabwe, are there many differences from playing there to playing in Australia?

[laughs] [It’s] a lot different! We learnt to be very patient while playing in Zimbabwe, because they say “we’ll be five minutes,” and they end up being two hours. For our sound check, they didn’t have half the cables or the gear they were supposed to have there, and our sound check which should’ve taken maximum an hour, with all that time it ended up being four or five hours. They had to send people off to more gear and then plug it all in. But the shows themselves were phenomenal! For us, going to a town where we knew nobody, and then played shows to packed out venues with them knowing our songs is kind of surreal. It hadn’t even been out for that long, and it was just awesome!

What’s been a highlight show for you?

I think it’s on par with the first time we played with Ashton Shuffle in Perth, that was a huge leap for us, and then that’s on par with those shows in Zimbabwe they were amazing! The experience was just, of that next level shit! [laughs]

Is there a dream venue or gig that you want to play at?

I’d love to play Coachella one day! That would be a huge highlight for me. You look at the bands that play there and just the whole vibe, for me watching that festival I just sat there with it on my laptop, and it’s just an awesome atmosphere. I would just love to go there.

What are the best things about playing live?

That’s why we do music I guess. The production side of things is fun, but it can get really tedious and frustrating. Coming to the stage and just letting it rip, I love the energy involved. Especially when you get a good crowd and they enjoy it, I love that feeling when everyone’s on the same page, enjoying the music I just love that.

You’ve been touring a lot, and of course are now currently, do you guys get a lot of time to relax?

We had a couple of weeks off over Christmas, we had a bit off time off, I had about a week. I have a few things to do back home like, work wise, but only a couple of days off over Christmas for me. Toby had a couple of weeks off, doing nothing! But I’ve got other commitments so I can’t really take too much time off really, it’s all go, go, go!

So what do you do when you finally get a bit of time to relax?

When I don’t have anything I just chill out really. Beach, pub, friends.. beach, pub, friends!

What’s a typical day for Sun City?

[laughs] Well we both work full time jobs as well, so we like work during the day, and then when the evening comes, all I do is just mainly go on my computer after work and just write music. And then we have shows, when we have shows and we travel and so it’s get up, go to work, come home, eat write music. When we started the band we sat down and had a chat and said hopefully we can make something happen, and so far it’s been going really well and hopefully, pretty soon actually, this might take over full time. That’s the plan anyway! That’s the first time I’ve actually thought about that, that this could be a full time job. Wow…

So coming from Perth, what is the town like musically?

It’s pretty much, you’ve got your dance, indie-dance rock bands like Stillwater Giants, I don’t know I you know any of the bands, that’s one half of the scene at the moment, just those bands with a kind of electronic influence. And then you’ve got the Djing, that scene is quite big here, like massive! And somehow there’s us in the middle. There’s not many people doing what we’re doing in Perth there are a few young bands coming up at the moment that we’ve seen in the last few months and they’re doing some really cool things so the scene there is really exploding at the moment, it’s awesome.

So after all your touring, what’s next for Sun City?

In the next few months we’ll look at some options and hopefully get out of Perth for a while and we’re thinking of recording another EP or maybe just a full album. And then we’ve got some opportunities overseas to work with some management and a few other people, so we can expand ourselves a lot around the world. We’ll just play it by ear and hopefully everything just falls into place. We’re just taking it a week at a time at the moment, there’s so much going on it’s hard to think about everything. There’s things a lot further down the track. Opportunities in the US is the next step, there’s a few things that have come our way and we’re yet to make a decision on it, but that is quite a big possibility. This opportunity came up yesterday in South Africa, we’ve been asked to do a festival there, we’ve still gotta wait on some more information, but yeah things just keep popping up.