It’s Not All About Writing "Bangers"

"It’s not as intense now, it’s kind of weird getting recognised in places and having fans.” Fletcher Ehlers says the duo is still adjusting to the exposure they’ve received after a huge 2014 that saw them releasing their debut EP and scoring massive love from triple j in the process. “At the same time, it’s not a level where it’s crazy or anything. It’s surreal, and it’s just nice to know that people out there listen to your music and they come up and say hello and take a photo. It’s awesome because we love speaking to people who enjoy our music and it really pushes us to write more.”

Ehlers, who meddles under the solo guise Fellis, and Morgan Then, who is a classically trained musician with a Diploma, have enough experience to really know what they’re doing. “We have this ailment where because there’s two of us, we end up writing two songs inside one song, realise that there’s way too much there, then painstakingly go back and decide which parts to take out,” says Ehlers. Then explains, “It’s a good position to be in; we like having a lot of ideas and then picking the best.”

“We definitely learned that less is more,” Ehlers continues. “Listening to a lot of the successful tracks out there, you realise that they really have hardly any sounds in them – it’s just a few things put together very carefully in the right way that makes it sound great. That’s one of the most important things that we learnt: production by reduction. The importance of writing songs as opposed to bangers, too; we both come from a heavy electronic music, big club, filthy bangers type background and what we wanted to do for the EP was write music that wasn’t just a song built to drop. We wanted melodic elements, hooks, verses and stuff people could really relate to rather than just pressing play on SoundCloud. We really learned the beginnings of how to do that.”

The duo had lavish plans of moving to the East Coast but, after experiencing a bit of the travel, they decided they wanted to remain in Perth after all. “In the beginning, we had huge dreams of maybe moving to Sydney, then going to LA, but after touring, we realised we need to do everything we can in Perth in the meantime, skip the whole Sydney thing and just commute between here and America. Perth is laidback and we wouldn’t say we’re completely laidback because we work very hard, but we enjoy being laidback, because it gives us a clear head space to think about our next move.”

The lads are heading to Bali to perform for the first time: “We’re gonna get an EP out at the end of this year, and obviously a bit more touring, but most of the stuff we can’t really announce yet. We’re really excited”