The duo with the infectious radio friendly hit of 2004 are coming down under with the Big Day Out tour in 2005. After completely too many DJ tours to count on both hands, this will be the first time the Freestylers have managed to bring their full live show down under. Aston checked in from his bed in London to let us in on a little freestylin’ philosophy.
Raw as F**K is my album of the year! I love the diversity of it, was that a deliberate thing or just the way it turned out?
Our ethos as music makers is that we are into so many different styles of music and I think we like to put that across in our own music, you know, so if you listen to our third album, if you listen to ‘We Rock Hard’ or ‘Pressure Point’, there is a pretty diverse mixture of styles and ideas on there. I think when we made ‘Raw as F**k’ it might have been even more [eclectic] because it wasn’t originally going to be an album, it was just a series of tracks because we didn’t even know if we were doing an album.
Raw as F**k features some great collaborations, my favourite being “Get a Life” with Onnalee. How do the collaborations tend to come about, do you seek artists to collaborate with or do they just kind of present themselves?
A bit of both really. We’re managed by a the same manager as Roni Size, and Onnalee was singing with Reprazent and doing her music with that lot. Basically what happened was we had the backing track, which was just a loop, and it was sounding quite drum & bassy and our manager said, “why don’t you try Onnalee coz it might suit her style”, and so it just went from there. We gave her the backing track, she went away and did some vocals at home and sent us this track back. We thought ‘wow that sounds pretty mad’, and it kind of fitted the style of the backing track so we just went along with it.
Push Up has been the song of the past year, are you sick of it yet?
I dunno I probably haven’t heard it as much as you, but sometimes the process of making music is really weird because I could go into the studio today and I’d be making a track and I’ll be listening to it over and over again. You know when you make a track you listen to it just over and over and then when you’ve finished making it you listen to it over and over again because we DJ obviously so we are playing it out regularly and then with the band it happens again, so you kind of become a bit numb to it. You don’t go and make a record thinking it’s going to go in the charts or whatever, you make your record believing that it’s a good tune. But the way that Australia has embraced that record has just been phenomenal!
Yeah we even had someone from Australian Idol, a really really bad entrant….
Yeah I know, I know!
Have you heard it?
No, but I’ve been getting emails and texts from some Australian friends of mine saying ‘you don’t know how massive your record is. They are even doing it on Pop Idol’. Bloody hell!
So you’re coming to Australia for the Big Day Out tour, what can we expect from your shows?
For the first time we are coming to Australia with our whole band, so I’m really looking forward to that. There’s six of us so it’s full drums, bass, guitar, a couple of vocalists, and it’s gonna be off the hook…. well I hope anyway.
How does a Freestylers live gig differ to your DJ set, vibe wise?
Basically with DJing I just turn up with my box of records, me and Matt, and just go with the crowd and see what’s happening. Doesn’t matter if I’m a bit too drunk… But with regards to the band there is a lot more involved. It’s team work basically, and obviously we only perform our own tracks - from the past 3 albums. We are promoting the newest album, so we’ll be playing a lot of tracks from there, but it’s organic and it’s also electronic sounding so I describe it as the album in 3D.
Well, it’s sounds really exciting.
Yeah it’ll be good, definitely.
Your music has such an eclectic mix of other genres around breaks and hip hop, even some drum & bass. What’s hot in the record box for you guys right now?
There’s this tune actually called Red Out by Aquasky. Someone’s done a remix which is really hot. I’d also say there are a couple of people who have done remixes of our tunes, there’s Breakfasters remix of Warrior Charge which is really hot, and there’s a Deekline remix of Boomblast, because that’s our next single over here in the UK.
What’s the ultimate get-up-and-dance track for you?
Oh god, I’m not one for getting up and dancing!
Oh come on! DJs that don’t dance, what’s up with that?
I know! DJs don’t dance – it’s not cool! Oh god, probably something like an old Beastie Boys record for a bit of a mosh.
You’ll be able to do that on the Big Day Out tour then.
Yeah exactly, I look forward to seeing them! I’ve actually seen them ages ago but it’s really mad how the only one group I’ve ever been mad about was the Beastie Boys, you know in 1986 I was like 16 years old and their first album came out, and to think that I’m now actually going to be doing a tour with them is absolutely bizarre. It’s great that they’re still going, like late 30s and they are still going strong, it’s pretty mad.
So where too next for you guys in terms of musical direction? I feel like you could go any which way from this album, so I’m excited about what we’ll hear.
I dunno really, we are actually going to start working on the fourth album… in fact we’re supposed to have started work on it already but I’ve just moved studios and we’re in the middle of building… I think it will be a lot more song based, but really I don’t know.
Is that what you do, just get in there and see what comes out?
Yeah, well kind of. I think there’s got to still be a couple of dance floor friendly tracks in there… I said to someone the reason why I think ‘Push Up’ did really well, although its quite commercial, is that it does actually sonically sound really good, it’s a well constructed record. Not that everything’s going to be sounding like Push Up, but maybe some more crossover material that sounds really good as well.
Can you recognise that when you are making it? Can you listen to it and think, ‘oh yeah, this is it’...
Well generally we have our own certain sound, so you know when we are making music we are aiming at clubs. You know the beats have got to be fat, the bass lines have got to be booming, and the vocals sit on top of it. I guess that’s why they all sound the way they do, because if it was being made for radio you don’t really have to worry about a bass drum and bass line too much. But because we’re aiming it at clubs it has to sound like that, and fortunately they sometimes crossover as well.
You can catch the Freestylers touring Australia as part of the Big Day Out in January and February:
Sun Jan 23 – Gold Coast, Big Day Out (SOLD OUT)
Tue Jan 25 – Sydney, The Metro (BUY TICKETS)
Wed Jan 26 – Sydney, Big Day Out (SOLD OUT)
Sun Jan 30 – Melbourne, Big Day Out
Mon Jan 31 – Melbourne, Price of Wales
Fri Feb 4 – Adelaide, Big Day Out
Sun Feb 6 – Perth, Big Day Out
