“It’s great finally being at home,” he says. “We landed in Sydney from Vegas, played a gig that night with The Veronicas, then woke up the next day and realised it’s relax time. Anything goes. We haven’t booked in any studio sessions or anything. I’ve just sat back and tried to regain myself. Get some rest. I think that makes the studio so much more fun, when you’re not forcing yourself. Today when I woke up I had ideas bouncing around, and just went in and started laying stuff down there and then.
“So you have a bit of healthy living, but mixed with heading down to your local pub each night for a few nightcaps. If you’re not drinking at all, well people are going to be a bit scared. You know what they say, never trust a man who doesn’t drink.”
Much of life seems to be about finding a balance between business and pleasure, and as Styles describes kicking back to play Grand Theft Auto V, you can’t help but feel the man has earned the respite. He and Adam Hyde began the electronic duo back in 2010, putting in a few years of ground work before cracking the top 40 with the 2014 single High (featuring Nicole Millar). From there came international record deals and touring, a constant cavalcade of festivals and clubs, and an ongoing evolution in sound.
“We’ve been doing a lot of festivals lately in America. There are little tricks you find on the way, things that we’ve accidentally done in one set and saw worked really well, so we’ve done them again in the next set. There are a bunch of things that become a part of the regular show as the show continues, stuff on the fly. But a lot of the time, if you do see us play twice in the space of a few weeks you’ll still see a very similar set. We might add a new tune into the set and ditch an old one every two weeks. Our change is a very gradual process. After maybe four months you should be hearing an entirely new set.”
When Say My Name was released, much of the surrounding conversation centred on how different it was from the duo’s prior releases. Regardless of how strong the track actually is, it makes you ponder how comfortable the guys are in their musical skin. Does the need to stretch out imply a fear of being tied down to a certain sound, or is it all part of a natural artistic evolution?
“As soon as you get to that point where you’re not really loving what you’re doing, switch it up. High, Take Me Over sound quite different to Say My Name and all the other songs we’ve been working on lately. Say My Name felt right because it was a step not necessarily in a rock direction, but a step away from what we’d found ourselves starting to get stuck in. That was great in a way, where people were saying, ‘That sounds like Peking Duk,’ but at the same time we might have boxed ourselves into a certain sound.
“There are lots and lots of directions still to go, and I think doing stuff like that will not only unbox ourselves for our fans, but will make us both happier in the long term.”
BY ADAM NORRIS
