Empire Of The Sun talk about their epic/insane Parlkife debut

We think we finally ‘get’ Luke Steele. After keeping us glued to our seats for over a year now with Empire Of The Sun’s debut album, a cavalcade of hype and stunts, and a massive build up to their live debut at Parklife, we reckon we’ve finally got nailed down the oddball Emperor. Simply put, he’s a trickster. He’s bounding along, pan flute in one hand, psychedelic head-dress in the other, beckoning us down into his wonderland of fantasy and spectacle, and we can’t help but follow. Now he’s gone ahead and let off another outlandish bombshell, this time about Empire Of The Sun’s super-sized live shows at Parklife.

According to local industry portal TheMusic.com.au, Jay-Z’s BFF Luke Steele told the Daily Telegraph that he’d had to reign in his larger than life stage ambitions for Parklife, apparently scrapping his plans to include an array of animals onstage, including tigers and elephants. Why scrap ‘em? Well they would’ve cost the Perth muso $12,000 and $14,000 respectively!

While we don’t doubt that Steele would want to incorporate some wild beasts into his suitably bananas live act, we can tell he’s got his tongue firmly glued to his cheek on this one. After all Steele is known for distorting the truth during interviews, just like last week when he told triple j that Angelina Jolie was looking to book Empire Of The Sun for a private dinner party. So we’ll chalk this one up to Steele having a laugh at the mainstream media’s expense, something we don’t mind encouraging!

Of course, whether Steele’s set to perform alongside wildlife, robots or electrified sex dolls, we can rest assured that the Empire Of The Sun live show will be all kinds of weird and wonderful over the top mayhem, much as we’ve come to expect from the project.

Indeed, we’ve just seen the clip for the shiny new version of Without You, which serves as the next single for EOTS. Following on from past epic film clips, Without You sees Steele in sequestered in some kind of post-modern, Kubrick inspired orb, chilling out and waiting for his buddy Barack Obama to come ‘round for a snifter of port and a game of galactic chess. Run o’ the mill stuff, really. Check it below.