Apocolypso Now! - The Presets

“Have you seen that Indian Premier League? It’s amazing, like cricket meets wrestling meets Hollywood,” spouts Julian Hamilton to us excitedly, one half of Aussie dance-pop duo The Presets. “Out here in the states we only get gridiron and baseball. Americans don’t really know what cricket is- I’m looking forward to watching a bit when I get back to Australia.” Not that Julian’s missing home too much. He and band mate Kim Moyes have just played to a Minneapolis club packed full of Presets admirers, and are about to set off on the 400-or-so mile journey from the Minnesota city to Chicago for another sell-out show. Julian is currently sitting in the tour bus toilet, ‘the only place I can get any quiet around here!’ At least the bus has got a bit better since Julian, Kim and a few others would pile into ‘well, not even a van really- just a little hatchback, and drive all the way from London to Glasgow. It was a bit of a nightmare.’

But the bus isn’t the only thing to have changed dramatically for the antipodean pair since The Presets’ inception in 2003 (following work with experimental pop act Prop). Exploding onto dance floors with 2005 debut LP 'Beams', The band showed a quirky poppy attitude to dance music; twinning bouncing melodies and instantly addictive beat loops with brooding lyrics on songs like ‘The Girl and the Sea’ and ‘Are You the One?’. It also helped that the band were signed to super-cool compatriot label Modular, whose trendsetting 2005 indie-dance anthology 'Leave Them All Behind' showcased them alongside label mates like Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts.

Thus began a manic two years of buccaneering across the world promoting Beams, and producing some energetic remixes for the likes of Howling Bells and Lenny Kravitz. In early 2007 the pair jetted off to Byron Bay, in their native New South Wales, to begin work on hotly anticipated follow-up album 'Apocalypto'. Described by Modular as ‘ranging from expansive, emotive techno, to future pagan house and choral space funk (!)’, Apocalypto has already raced to number one in Australia’s album charts (out here on June 23rd). It focuses much more on dance floor anthems than eccentric pop numbers, something Julian insists wasn’t a deliberate move: “I don’t think we really thought about it when we were writing it, but when we got people to listen to it we realised just how clubby it actually was. I think one of the factors is that we spent a lot of time in Berlin, and techno and dance is so much more a part of their lives; more advanced than back home or even in the UK.”

Julian is also aware the pair have moved away from the lighter tones which embodied 'Beams', and have created something altogether darker and more staid: “Overall we wanted the new album to be cleaner, starker and colder than before. Icy cool, but still with the pop elements left in.” Indeed, 'Apocalypto' is pock-marked with a plethora of eminent 80s pop legends- Depeche Mode, New Order and OMD instantly come to mind. “We love bands like The Eurythmics and The Pet Shop Boys, who made great pop music but with the dance floor in mind,” explains Julian.