I sat down with Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes of The Presets before their second of two recent shows at New York’s Webster Hall. We learn that while they love creating their music, they hate listening to it. They tend to prefer Vivaldi and NPR.
Kim, how was your DJ set today at the Apple store?
Kim: Whenever you have an in-store thing like that it’s always a bit stupid. But no one came to listen. People were in there doing their thing and it was just empty. And what were they gonna do, start dancing? It was — I don’t know really what the purpose was. But someone thought it was a good idea and then someone else thought it was a good idea so we did it.
Video: The Presets peform “Talk Like That” in Melbourne, May 2008.
How was the reception last night at your first of the two New York shows?
Julian: It was good. It probably wasn’t the most rockin’ show we’ve ever done in New York. But it’s certainly … as we say in Australia, I’ve had worse and enjoyed it.
Kind of a backhanded compliment?
But you could say that about sex—“I’ve had worse and enjoyed it.” You could say that to the most beautiful person you’d ever have sex with, and still say “I’ve had worse and enjoyed it.” And it’d be true. It’d still be true.
But yeah, last night was great. It was really good. We always have fun in New York and yeah everyone was jumpin’ around at the right moments and doing all the right things. It was actually fun.
How do you represent your studio tracks on stage?
Julian: I guess we try and make the show a bit more of a live experience. I’ll sing live and play keyboards, and Kim plays drums, as well. We try to make it a bit more of a guttural, explosive experience on stage. And, yeah it’s always fun. Really good fun.
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The Presets - This Boy’s In Love [MP3]
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The Presets - My People [MP3 via JacuzziKillers]
A lot of music puts me to sleep, but you guys really do bring a lot of energy with your music.
Kim: I love that sleepy time stuff. I hate listening to our music. I like to play it. But I hate to listen to it. I’d hate to be a fan of us. But I love to be us.
Julian: That’s exactly right. Our music is really fun to create — obviously, because that’s what we do — and it’s really fun to perform, but I can not stand listening to it. And sometimes on stage as I’m singing it at a sound check I’m actually hearing what I’m singing and I want to stab myself. But … everyone really loves it and I love our fans and I’m so pleased that I have a good time.
What do you hate about it? Does it get old for you or is it the energy?
Kim: I think it’s the energy, yeah. I think it’s that thing where serial killers really like listening to soothing music and then the nicest people in the world are into like… cyber punk and death metal. It’s that kind of thing.
So you’re actually saying you’re pretty hardcore.
Kim: If you’re a wild beast, you wanna hear soothing music, but if you’re a fucking… nice, gentle lamb, you want to listen to, like … Ministry.
Julian: It’s funny, yeah, we’re out there doing our crazy thing and then we go home and it’s like, [sigh] … [Kim hums a classical melody] listening to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.”
You could go under a pseudonym and work on softer music.
Julian: I don’t want to make that soft music. It would bore the shit out of me. I just like listening to it.
Kim: We make music to punch you in the face. We try to punch through the crowd, not like… whack you with a feather.
Julian: But we love to be whacked with feathers.
Kim: Yeah, it’s quite the dilemma.
Are you guys both going to be at the after party at Santos Party House tonight?
Kim: Julian will be. I’m gonna be in bed.
Do you guys tag-team with events, since there are two of you… [meaning that just one can show up somewhere and promoters can say “The Presets” were there. I was misunderstood as referring to co-DJing].
Kim: Oh, you mean like double team.
Julian: We don’t normally tag-team. Sometimes I join in.
Kim: We used to. It used to be really fun!
Julian: You mean tag team…
Kim: Like we used to play one-for-one records.
Julian: Oh, You mean DJ! Yeah, something happened where we stopped doing that.
Kim: Probably just cause we got out of indie disco. And clubs got more concerned about… I don’t know. But if you wanna do it tonight, we could do it.
Julian: Thanks. I must admit, I’m slowly coming to the realization that not being good at DJing is probably one of the best decisions I ever made. Because it means I get to say “sorry, I don’t DJ. I’m gonna break something.”
But when these promoters put on these after-parties I always think, “we’re getting a raw deal.” When they use our name and they get a thousand bucks, whatever they pay. They’re getting a good deal.
Kim: A thousand bucks?
Julian: Whatever it is. Whatever they pay for the DJ.
Kim: It’s probably fuckin’… 50 bucks, if you’re lucky.
Julian: Fifty bucks?!
Kim: No, I’m just kidding. It’s thousands of dollars.
[Laughter]
Aside from all the business, are afterparties ever fun for you guys?
Kim: I love being in clubs with loud music and people walking around and, its just like–there’s nothing quite like it in the world. Being in a club in the day is so depressing. But being in a club full of people and everyone’s just running around in circles getting drinks, dancing, doing drugs, and the music is really loud–it’s so stupid, but so much fun.
A few other things we learned:
On Santos Party House
Kim: I’ve been there a few times. I’ve been to a couple of those Wednesday night parties that James Murphy puts on and then I’ve been there a couple other nights when the rapture guys DJ’d. It’s pretty slammin’.
On new media
Julian: There’s almost too much information for me out there. Too much going on. I subscribe to a couple of RSS feeds and things. Not so much pop world, but other things. But there’s too much content out there to keep track of. It’s crazy. You buy a magazine these days and they’ve got a website with extras. I don’t know who’s reading all this stuff.
But there’s that magazine The Wire in England. I get their feed and I like their blog. And there’s Alex Ross, who was the music writer for the Times. I like his blog.
On radio
With a few exceptions like Australia’s Triple-J radio, they think radio sucks pretty much everywhere. However, when in the states, both Kim and Julian said they listen to NPR, including KCRW.
Kim: I always listen to WNYC when I’m in a hotel in New York. I like it.
The Presets’ latest album Apocalypso is available now. The band recently launched a unique widget (below) that fans can embed on their Web pages. Visitors can type comments that will be displayed to others viewing the widget. The band says they’ll offer prizes to fans who type in special code phrases based on hints the band plans to drop around the web.
