Melbourne 3-piece live electronic act Continuum consist of brothers Scott and Brent Miramz along with longtime friend Andy Kidd, who together have a fantastic ear for producing progressive electronic sounds. It’s their lvie show which has been turning the most heads – an audiovisual experience that moves seamlessly between organic minimal and industrial techno soundscapes, they’ve already got performances at Earthdance, Rainbow Serpent, Cairns Winter Solstice, Maitreya and many more under their belts.

So where does the inspiration for their sci-fi sound come from? “We like to think of our sound as sort of ‘hyper-reality’ or ‘super-reality’ sounds,” they told ITM. “By this we mean that we try to create sounds that have an organic quality, but are embellished to sound supernatural. Like if we were creating a trumpet/horn type sound we’d want it to sound as if it were coming from a horn who’s bell was 10ft in diameter and was mounted to the side of an alien ship that was using it to signal they were about to attack, sort of… you got any more acid?” ITM goes into more psychedelic detail ahead of their show with this Friday at Tune in Tokyo with Kazu Kimura.

Your group is very focused on the live experience, what can your audience expect?

We like to involve the listener and audience to share the experience with us, we enjoy feeling the energy in the room and we want to translate that energy to the dancefloor to create some kind of communication between ourselves and the audience, making it a real experience for us both. It also helps having three of us because we can expand the live performance visually.

You’ve played numerous festivals so far including Earthdance, Rainbow Serpent and Cairns Winter Solstice, what stands out as the highlight of your festival experiences so far?

We really enjoy playing all types of parties, from small clubs to the larger festivals. What we play indoors can vary a lot in comparison to what we might play to a dancefloor in an outdoor setting, playing at different parties has taught us what can work and what doesn’t in different environments. Rainbow Serpent is an amazing festival, very professional and globally recognized for good reason. We recently returned from the Cairns Winter Solstice Festival, and that gathering was amazing, beautiful area and amazing people. We would recommend making the trip up for this party!

You’ve had considerable support from DJs and acts around the world, who were you most surprised to hear was playing you music and why?

Well we haven’t really heard much of that talk ourselves, but we have been lucky enough to work with some very talented producers and DJs including Moonbeam, Steve Ward, Uone and Gavin Martin. There’s also some future remix collaborations with Shades of Grey and Daniel Dreier in the pipelines so look out for those.

What’s your usual routine for working and making music, is it very rigid or is there a lot of free thought and playing with sounds?

We really don’t have any specific routines when producing, a lot of the time its just experimenting with sounds, and seeing what works, the great part of being in a trio is having three times as many ideas that we can experiment and work with, but on the other hand there is three different visions and artistic expression, but we work very well together and usually always come to an enjoyable compromise. A lot of alcohol is involved with most studio sessions, which generally is fun, but a little dangerous.
You’ve a debut album in the pipeline right now from what we’ve heard. Are there any tracks you are particularly excited about and can you give us a bit of history to those tracks.

The album might still be a little while off – we have been doing a lot of digital releases with different labels, Disoma Records, Planetaria Records and Vinyl Pusher out now on Beatport and other digital music download sites. We also have more upcoming releases on Bus Records, Beef Records, Subsonic Music and Steve Ward’s label Chameleon Records, so in terms of an album it’s on the horizon but for the time being we’re concentrating on the releases that’ll be coming out over the next few months.
What have been the biggest challenges to your recording career so far?

There is constantly challenges when getting it all together, especially with a live set, keeping updated with new software is almost impossible, keeping up with other artists, there is some really amazing music coming out both locally and internationally at the moment, and that is great for everyone and it really inspires other artists to push the boundaries a bit more.

Where do you see yourselves heading once your debut album is done and dusted, are there any opportunities out of Melbourne you’d like pursue?

We are defiantly looking at traveling some more and expanding to a larger audience, and seeing more of Australia, we would also love to travel to Europe and play some parties over there…

How long did it take you to get your first track signed and released and how did it feel to finally get your music out and listened to?

We started writing together as “Continuum” around 2006 after a few different projects, and played our first live set in late 07. We released a remix with talented Melbourne based DJ/producer U-one, who has been an great inspiration to us along the way and Pavel Khvaleev who is one half of Moonbeam from Russia, which was released on *Disoma Record*s, run by Pavel in August 08.

Any disasters so far on stage? Can you laugh at it now or is it still just too embarrassing?

Well, there have been many and I am sure many to come! Probably having our MAC shut down 5 minutes into a set was our most devastating moment….and once we played this party where all these beautiful women were up onstage rocking it with us and Andy got pretty close with one, a little to close only to find out she was a man! Pretty funny for us but not for him…

Catch Continuum this Friday July 31st at Tune In Tokyo at Miss Libertine in Melbourne.