Midnight's Children

Midnight Juggernauts are filling clubs of all kinds across the world.

For my money, Midnight Juggernauts are among precious few current Australian acts that will go on to have a significant international career. Yes, Powderfinger might sell out the Shepherds Bush Empire in London or Silverchair might sell out the Roseland Ballroom in New York, but these are parochial Australian bands predominantly playing to expat audiences. For the Juggerz – Melbourne duo Vince and Andy, who have lately been joined by drummer Daniel Stricker (ex-Valentinos) – things are already very different.

“It’s not our agenda for it to break through, to be heard in shopping malls,” Vince says of the duo’s forthcoming debut album, Dystopia. “It kinda feels like in Australia, it will get to the right people. We’re really focusing on Europe now.”

Chatting in their local pub, the Town Hall Hotel in North Melbourne, in the midst of completing the artwork for the album just a couple of weeks before they leave for their second European tour, Vince and Andy are in the eye of a modest but fierce storm.

“It’s all coming together now, we’re very underground, but the right people know who we are,” Vince smiles. “We’re still this small band from Melbourne, but we’re getting cool offers from record labels – and major labels as well – and we don’t know how they heard of us, but it makes you think about the power of the internet and MySpace. Bands don’t need big PR budgets or a big label to get their music heard. It’s a healthy time for independent music.”

Their European tour takes in some plum East London club nights (current nexus of the nu-rave club scene); a Vice magazine tour across France; the Eurockeenes festival also featuring acts like Air, Klaxons and Arcade Fire; the large and happening Razzmatazz club in Barcelona; two big regional UK nights in Manchester and Nottingham; and finishes with an Institubes label party back in East London. There is a very real danger of MJ becoming the talk of the town in Paris and London this summer. “We kinda organised the tour rather late, so we’re doing a lot of club shows,” Andy explains almost apologetically, “but I’m actually happy with all the shows we’re doing.”

“It would have been good to stay in Europe longer,” adds Vince, “but we have to get back here to put our album out.”

Their big electro tunes ‘Road to Recovery’ and ‘Shadows’ are currently being played in DJ sets to festival crowds by the likes of Justice, who along with the Ed Banger label are spearheading the revival in French disco and rave sounds. MJ have slowly been making a very good name for themselves with tracks on dance compilations like France’s Kitsune Maison 4, Germany’s DJ Kicks compilation by the Ksubi designers, the Cut Copy edition of the Fabric nightclub’s album series in the UK and Modular’s Leave Them All Behind. In terms of creating a cache of cool, being heard by influential tastemakers, and having their tunes spun on the European club circuit, Midnight Juggernauts are enjoying an underground buzz that some acts spend thousands of pounds sterling (or Euros) trying to create.

Remarkably, they have done this all on their own. Four singles have been released in Australia – two 12”s on Cut Copy’s Cutters label; the ‘Sounds of the Universe’ EP on their own Siberia imprint; and ‘Road to Recovery’, a track that defined the 2006/7 Australian summer, released on the small French 12” label Institubes.

However, it still comes as a surprise, (and a delightful one at that), to learn that Dystopia – a hugely anticipated Australian album, that comes off enormous Triple J support for the band, including an appearance in front of 15,000 at the Silverchair-headlined Cowra One Night Stand event – is to be released on the MJs own label, Siberia. Not for want of being wooed by record labels big and small, but simply that the choices on offer weren’t a match for what the band can do on their own.

“We like to dabble in dance, but when we went into recording this year, we came out with something different to what even we thought we were going to get.” – Andy

“Whenever we’ve met with labels, they were always cool, but there were always things we thought were never quite right,” Andy muses. “We still thought we could do it better ourselves. I don’t think we set out for it to be that way – we’re going to be an independent band and that’s the way it’s going to be – but as time goes on, it’s always felt that the best decision has always been, let’s do it ourselves. And that’s how we’ve got to this point. We’re managing,” he sighs. “We’re having to learn how to do lots of things at once. Like with the European tour, we hadn’t really thought about it because we’ve been trying to finish all this stuff with the album.”

“There’s positives and negatives,” Vince agrees. “We have full creative control and don’t compromise, but I suppose the only problem is that, other bands have a huge cash injection when they put out albums, which goes into paying for promo and PR. We’ve never had any money for anything like that. We’ve had to reply on word of mouth or the internet or MySpace. But I think the fact that our music has become really successful here, we take that as a sign that the music can speak for itself. That’s what has gotten us to this position. We haven’t needed to spend money on advertising.”

The other thing the band are keenly aware of, is that having made their name with Daft Punk-esque disco-house singles, some people might be a little shocked by the discovery that Midnight Juggernauts do not consider themselves to be a dance act.

“I’m sure a lot of people would have wanted us to continue with the dance elements of the music, to push that and become a commercial dance act – which is the last thing we’d want to happen!” Vince exclaims. “We’d hate to become a commercial act, I mean – a commercial dance act. The indie dance scene has more directions it can head into. But there’s so much cheese out there that we don’t want to be associated with. And those battles that bands always have with labels… We realised it was a really healthy experience for us, the way we recorded our album. We didn’t have to tailor it to other people’s tastes or to what someone in the marketing team thinks should be the single to represent the band.”

“We’ve always tried to be on that edge,” Andy continues. “We like to dabble in dance, but when we went into recording this year, we came out with something different to what even we thought we were going to get. And we’re so happy with it, and that we’re putting it out ourselves. There was no approval needed. The way the music changed in the recording space, there may have been a problem with a label, because it was so far removed from what we’d done. But to us that was exciting.”

“When we brought out the acoustic guitar, it was a test for us,” Vince laughs. “Are we really going to follow through with this? But we have got some slower tracks on there. I think we surprised a lot of people with our last tour in May because in between the dance tracks, we brought out the acoustic guitars, and glockenspiel, and people were probably thinking, what the hell are they doing? But people went along with us, and we’re happy to take those kind of risks, otherwise we’d never evolve as a band.”

For this hugely motivated band for whom things are going swimmingly well, Dystopia is a slightly surprising title for their first full-length missive into the world. And a warning: there is the hint of a prog ‘concept’ album lurking among the glut of endlessly entertaining, spangly dancefloor winners such as ‘Road To Recovery’, ‘Shadows’, ‘Tombstone’, ‘Into The Galaxy’ and ‘Ending of An Era’.

“It is a dark title,” Andy concedes, “but for some reason I take it as the world not being a perfect place. It’s more about saying things are not utopian.”

“We wanted to create a world with the album. A dark world, the artwork reflects that, a landscape that you traverse through with the album. It’s supposed to have glimpses of light on the path, though, as pretentious as that sounds,” Vince says slightly sheepishly. “It is dark and moody, but it is meant to have a sense of hope. The last song is called ‘Aurora’, who is the Roman goddess of the Dawn, so you could look at it as being a journey through the night and that’s the light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a complex mess we live in and music is this light above. Does that sound spiritual enough?” he laughs. “We’re actually doing the artwork today, and we’re having an aurora, these mysterious lights in the sky above the murky mess below.”

To get the right ’70s retro-futuristic, Moroder sci-fi vibe, the synth element was naturally of paramount importance.

“But it’s not like we’re synth collecting… I mean, we know a lot about the instruments and the sounds, but we don’t have a lot of equipment,” Andy insists. “For us it’s really worked when you have limited equipment and you spend your time learning that. You go through it so much trying to find a sound that really works. In some ways you end up being more creative. With a huge array, you more tempted to go to presets. A lot of the album is probably one synth, but we’re going through it trying to find something that works.”

It’s this commitment to making music that constantly evolves, to cultivating intensity within the music, and not being afraid to leap into the unknown that will give Midnight Juggernauts a shot at creating an international career for themselves. Initially on the risky side, their relationship with the French label Institubes is starting to pay off.

“When they first got in touch with us, we’d vaguely heard of a couple of their acts, but we didn’t know much about them,” Andy remembers. “But now, a year later, Institubes have suddenly built this huge underground reputation in France, and when we played their party it was amazing – really dedicated kids all wearing Institubes T-shirts and stuff. It felt like it had something that had weight to it. And now everyone in the UK is saying their profile has gone up so much, they’re taking label parties to the UK and Germany. It’s great. It’s at a club level and it’s all about 12”s. It is what it is.”

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