More often than not, electronic music with romantic vocals is quickly dismissed as being one-dimensional and transparent. In some cases, this may very well be true, however Melbourne outfit, Hamish proves that you can create emotive intelligent music, using vocals to great effect. Consider Hamish Cowan the voice while Brian St James the beats. Together the two reach a state of musical synergy with their complementary skills and style. Hot on the heels with a new album, Hamish chats to Palu about all things musical, historical and controversial.

“Don’t mind me, I’m just drunk, you’ll have to forgive me. We’ve just been celebrating with the record company. We’re just really happy.” explains Hamish. It’s not surprising that Hamish is gushing with happiness seeing as their debut album “Homesick” has been receiving fantastic reviews across the globe. Meanwhile new artists struggle to get noticed whereas Hamish steals the spotlight. What’s their secret formula? Simple, an inimitable male voice waffling over forward thinking beats and bleeps. “It’s a male driven emotive electronic record.” Hamish elaborates “There’s not many of those that exist, if any at this point in time. To find a female vocal that wafts over nice chilled beats is easy but I think this is a bit more confronting. In terms of themes on the album, there’s love, life the usual. Homesick to me, even the title is an extremely romantic notion. I think lyrically and emotionally, they’re quite confronting tracks as far as electronic music goes.”

Before his love affair with dance music, Hamish was part of a well known rock band called ‘Cordrazine’. However he slowly found himself enticed by dance culture at that time and evidently became inspired by Brian. “I met Brian before ages before we worked together. I was a stalker really and I used to go and see him play under the guise of spiritualist. I think 93 was the first time I saw him play and I was indulging myself in the sub-culture of that time before it became the dominant culture of electronic music. At that time, this was the music that spoke to me. Brian along with people like Oliver Lieb, Energy 52, Cosmic Baby and Orbital were my soundtrack for discovering electronic music. And as a result Brian was one of the people who shaped my move into that scene. He became one of those heroes for me.”

After deciding to collaborate, Hamish and Brian released a cover of U2’s ‘with or without you’ for the ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ soundtrack. Consequently, working with Brian meant, Hamish had to shift from a rock angle to dance. Was this transition difficult? “The transition from rock to electronic wasn’t really that hard because I had been in love with it for so long. What was hard was singing to electronic music as opposed to music made by people with instruments. You have to be a lot more disciplined when singing for electronic music because you have to get that same emotion which is perfectly in time with every beat. That was probably the most difficult transition.” Along with training his voice to adapt, Hamish also noticed that the record was much more appreciated overseas than in Australia. “Australia is extremely difficult for an act like us to perform. We’re not a pub band but at the same time, we’re not a club band. We’ve done a couple of DJ things and at this point in time the record has been enjoyed internationally more then it has here at the moment. Unfortunately we’ve been focusing our attention beyond the shores. The record’s being doing really well in dance charts around the world. It’s a little bit disappointing that international shores can far be more supportive of an act than your own country”

Certainly a lot has changed during the time that Hamish and Brian have been around. Nevertheless they manage to stay afloat by keeping things original. Moreover, how would artists keep alive in a scene which is constantly evolving? Brian shares his views. “What we’ve noticed is that dance music has gone from being a subculture to a dominant culture. It was an exciting time to be a part of that because you could actually affect the way the culture was perceived by how you dressed in the early days. It was like, if you weren’t there, it actually made a difference. Now it exists whether we’re there or not. So now it’s the case of confronting people with the possibilities of electronic music as well as doing something that isn’t passé and adding new dimensions. “


“Homesick” is out now through BMG Australia.