Such a morning of relaxation is rare for this half of electronic duo Slumberjack. Ehlers and his partner-in-music Morgan Then have been incredibly hard at work these last few months.
2016 was Slumberjack’s breakout year, with the release of singles Open Fire and RA propelling the duo to national festival appearances including Splendour in the Grass, FOMO and Mountain Sounds Festival, not to mention international opportunities at Lollapalooza and HARD Summer in the US.
Yes, Slumberjack have been popping up all over the place and the madness is not yet over. With the release of their EP Fracture, the duo are bouncing around the country on tour. “The last couple of weeks is like a culmination of everything we’ve been working on,” says Ehlers. “We took three months off at the start of the year to build this new live show and we just premiered it at Groovin’ The Moo. It was so good to see it finally come together.”
Just as the production for this tour came together, so came news of shows selling out, something which had Ehlers floored. “It’s surreal,” he says. “We were a bit nervous about the venues we chose to play and to see them sell out – Metro [Theatre, Sydney] sold out in a few weeks. It’s pretty mind-blowing that the fanbase is here and people want to come out to the shows.
“The shows will be different from our usual DJ shows. There’ll be instruments on stage, a lighting element, brand new production. There’s also a visual element – we made a whole new visual show which we worked really hard on to accompany the music. That’s why we’ve been so busy over the last three months, putting this whole thing together. It’s going to be a full audio-visual experience, rather than just two guys playing music on DJ decks.”
Try as they might, Slumberjack have had a hard time letting people in to help them produce this stellar show, preferring instead to try and do as much of everything as they possibly can. “We try to get people to help us and then we realise, Morgan and I are such massive micromanagers,” he says. “We don’t deal [well] with having someone else create content so we taught ourselves, we put together the video editing and the visual stuff ourselves, which was a really fun experience.”
It’s a highly anticipated show, that’s for sure. The single Fracture, a collaboration with Vera Blue, has completely blown up. “We can’t be thankful enough for the support triple j has given,” says Ehlers. “Now Fracture has come out, already people are singing the chorus at shows. It’s surreal because we’ve played these songs only a few times and all these people around the country know the words and know every part of it, it’s fantastic to see. It’s amazing triple j have given us that reach and support.”
There’s a more mainstream hook with Fracture and the EP it shares its name with – that was an intentional move on Slumberjack’s part, Ehlers says. “In the early days we were making really heavy electronic stuff, which was really fun for us and went well in the clubs we were playing but we found that it wasn’t really connecting as much with a radio audience.
“We challenged ourselves to make music that people could listen to in all walks of life – schools, cars, clubs – and I think Fracture was the first step in that direction, to give people a hook they could sing along to, but also the dancefloor style drop that people can go crazy to. We’re really happy we went in that direction because we’re seeing people listening to it again and again.”
