R – “Initially we met through our kids. Our wives, Lou and Cath met before we did through our children and we were introduced through them. My wife Louise found out about ‘Delicious’ and Craig. She suggested I go down and meet some new people. I’m a trained musician and I’d been making music at home for a long time. I went down to Delicious one night to meet Craig and gave him a CD of some music I’d made with the view that it would nice to get a gig there. That’s initially when we met. The human side of it was good because we met through our children.
As soon as I met Craig I knew he knew a lot about music. I always had a passion for House music, Disco and electronic music. Craig was the first person I met who totally got what I liked and he liked the same thing. His depth of knowledge and the musicology part of things far exceeded mine. He has a really good ear production wise, especially with tracks for the floor. If I was doing a track on my own I might not tend to make a track go so long or you know different lengths of time which is important for the floor. His knowledge in those areas is unmatched in any other person I’ve met.”
C – “As is his technical ability.”
R – “If I’m not making music I have a passion for art and design. I want to do more video relating to our music. I’ve been a nurse for a long time at St Vincent’s. Caring for people is my job and music and art are my passion.”
C – “I’ve always loved music. It’s been in my heart and soul for a long time ever since I was kid, making mix tapes on the old stezza. I immersed myself in the Sydney dance scene in the early to mid 90’s and the Byron dance scene when it first blew up. I was introduced to dance music by two pommy boys who came through Byron and I then moved to Sydney. Eventually I got into DJing. I moved back to the Northern Rivers in about 2001 and after a few years we formed Frou Frou Productions. Beats, Bowls and Blingo came from that and Delicious also formed from that.
I’ve always had music in my head but I never had the technical ability to get mixes out of my head. I went and did a course at the Conservatorium of Music here which really ignited a passion to take things further. Not long after I ran into this cat. I remember when he walked into Delicious and introduced himself. He gave me the CD and there was one song that stuck out. I asked him if he’d be keen to get together and do a mix of that song. Next minute we were making an original track together. Richard has an incredible ability to make music production wise. To work with someone like that and to be able to get things out of my head is a bonus.”
R – “Having played in bands for a long time, with groups of people you get to a point where there may be conflict. You may want to go further, someone may leave, lifestyle changes, relationships falter, all that. Where we are both at now is we have stable platforms in terms of relationships, family and friends so we can take those next steps. We never argue, we talk around things. We’re both of the same mindset. We want to achieve that next thing. We don’t force it either, we are just steadily pushing along.”
C – “Sometimes it’s good to try and fit a round peg in a square hole, you can get amazing stuff out of that. Most of the time it’s like pushing shit up hill. I’m a real Cancerian so I hate letting go of stuff but Richard’s taught me in music production to let go. Lot’s of people don’t finish tracks but we strive to finish them and send them off to labels. You get a knock back every now and then but we get an 80 – 90% hit rate for sending a track to a specific label and them signing it. We’ve been together for nearly 6 years and we had our first signing in 6 months.”
Just recently we had 3 tracks in the top 50 in a radio show in the UK. We didn’t submit any tracks, they picked them. We had a remix of one of our originals come No 2. To be here in Australia, this far away from the European scene, we are quite well known over there. We are way bigger in Europe than we are in Australia which is weird. We started on a small label just to get a foot in the door and now we are working with artists from Berlin, remixing peoples music from Spain, England and Ireland.”
R – “For longevity we don’t want to tie ourselves to the latest bandwagon and that’s reflected on our album release which is on Hellyeah.
The music on that album is what they call Balearic which is a fusion of music. It tends to be a slower tempo. We have a saying, we make slowed down music for grown ups. When I first started it was almost about, that you could do it. 50 percent that you could make the music at home and 50 percent what is was. Now anyone can do it at home so it’s even more important to do it well.”
C – “Connecting to that human element! Anyone can go out and make a dance track and that’s not dissing anyone. If you don’t have the human element you’ve just got another track in a plethora of tracks. It’s hard these days. People think it’s easy to get a release. Bandcamp is a fantastic facilitator. We have our own page. There’s so much more music out there now and that’s why you have to put the effort in to make it good.”
R – “Just the other day we were approached by a fairly big label. We’d often thought we would like to release on that particular label but we’d never approached them. They were asking if we had some tracks that they could release on their label so we’ve moved up into that next peg. Slowly, slowly.”
C – “Here in Australia we are technically, traditionally about 3 years behind the European scene and people like Flume are paving the way for Australians. We are in our own little world which can be really healthy as well. We were making Slow Mo without realising that is what it’s called. We also play down in Sydney at S.A.S.H, Home and Rotary Disco which is cool.
Our new album Yantar is release on Hellyeah which have everything from Techno, House to really dreamy stuff. There’s some tracks on Yantar that are 4 years old and some less but they still sound fresh as. Some have never been released. It’s timeless and that’s what we are about. The album cover was hand painted by an Italian artist who incorporated local Lismore buildings and Byron Lighthouse.”
R – “Hellyeah is an extremely hard label to get on. One, just be on there and two, to have him like our music is just amazing for us. Even though the label itself is not massive, it’s a label that your peers way bigger than us look up to. Yantar is sitting at No.10 today on Juno and in the top 50 in Beatport. It was written and produced in Australia, mastered in Berlin, published and artwork done in Italy. That’s pretty cool for a couple of guys from Lismore.”
The S&W Soundcloud Page has a heap of tracks and Dj mixes.
Craig recommends the “Dream Chimney” Podcast Mix for afternoon listening pleasure. 