After 15 years together Rob Garza and Eric Hilton of Thievery Corporation still know how to stir the emotions of their followers. Case in point; the just released sixth studio album from the duo, Culture Of Fear, which finds Thievery Corporation throwing some curveballs into their tried and tested formula. To talk about the LP and Thievery Corporation 15 years down the track inthemix spoke to Garza on the eve of their Splendour In The Grass visit.

Hey mate, how’re you going?

Good, Dave, I’m in San Francisco right now so it’s a nice day.

I guess things are pretty busy for you guys since the new album has just come out and it’s touring season over in your hemisphere.

Yeah, it’s definitely picked up and it’s that time in our lives when we need to get on the phone to talk to people like yourself, get out there and play shows and get people acquainted with this new record. There’s a lot going on.

This is the sixth studio album from you guys so I imagine you would know what you’re doing pretty well by now.

That’s true. Y’know, we’ve been doing it for 15 years now so we’re kind of seasoned veterans at it! I still remember the first album we did and going over to Europe for the first time to play shows and do press and that was a really wild thing for us back then, we didn’t know that it would become a real part of our lives with each record.

You say you’ve been doing this for 15 years so how have you seen the album release process change in that time? The internet seems to have shifted things quite dramatically, would you agree?

Yes, absolutely, these days it’s really hard to focus on one album – one piece of work – when you can go online and download someone’s entire back catalogue. Everything has changed! But one of the things with Thievery Corporation is that we’ve always been a slow burn, y’know? We’ve never been that band that started out really big with one massive hit, we’re more like no hit wonders who have been able to have a career without any real hits to our name. But we’ve managed to develop this fanbase and we’re still here 15 years later playing to bigger audiences than we ever have in our career.

That’s a very interesting point because you do see a lot of artists come out with something really huge and hyped and then after that fades they can never match up to that, whereas you guys have gradually moved forwards.

I think to have success the trick you need to learn is to able to survive your success. You have to go beyond that and maintain a real career.

In that regard do you think the internet is good for a band like Thievery Corporation – where people who don’t need to hear you on the radio can go online and directly communicate with you through your website or on a forum?

I think it’s great for people who are into quite niche areas of music and if you look you can see fans of like new-disco and retro soul create these little kind of communities around those sounds and the blogs that are dedicated to those genres. In a way it’s perfect for a band like us.

Do you yourself get involved in that as a listener?

Yeah I do find myself following those people that collect a lot obscure music and I download a lot of stuff that I know I would never hear otherwise. If I like it then I’ll go out and try to find the actual vinyl too.