The past is a foreign country. Back in 2005, EDM was known as 'dance music' and molly was just 'pills'. Meanwhile, Sydney's The Presets were making a name for themselves. They were classically trained and steeped in electronic music, but they also brought with them the abrasiveness (and the drum kit) of rock music.
Within a year, they found a place at the vanguard of Australian electronic music's global takeover. They had a song in the 2006 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony. They soundtracked zeitgeisty teen drama The O.C.
Here, the crew tells us the story of the debut full-length album that made this possible, Beams. It's a story that's unorthodox, irreverent and Australian as hell.
Julian Hamilton, vocals/keyboards: So we’d already been mates and making music together for ten years before Beams came out. We met at university, studying music, and we had another band back then called Prop.
Kim Moyes, drums/keyboards: There were a couple of bits of material that were floating around in the Prop rehearsals that we couldn’t quite make fit with the instrumentation or the aesthetic of Prop. We would jam out really simple fun synth and drum ideas.
Julian Hamilton: We sort of realised that there was a thing. There was an element of music that we enjoyed making. We tried to fit into the Prop hole and it wouldn’t really fit. But we didn’t want to not do it. So we started doing it on the side.
Kim Moyes: The other thing as well around that time is that we were of becoming session musos and guns for hire. And seeing what other people were doing was really inspiring for us to go and make our own version of that.
Julian Hamilton: I don’t think we ever really distinguished between high and low art. It wasn't like 'This is classical music and this is dance music and this is jazz and this is post-rock.' It was all band music.
I don’t think we were ever thinking like, 'Oh I’m sick of doing all this classical music all day long. Let’s go make something that rocks!' But I think, in our heads, it was all very inspiring and satisfying – all those different styles of music.
The Presets became the thing that we really wanted to do.
Julian Hamilton: I remember it started in Kim's kitchen in Avondale. We’d just bought Pro Tools and a computer. I mean the whole idea for recording on a computer was very new to us. Beams was a process of learning, working it out.
Blow Up was definitely us blowing up, trying to… explode. Get it happening. Get things moving.
Jonathan Zawada, art director: I can’t remember exactly how we met. I think they were friends of friends and initially we vaguely knew each other from around the place. I got to know them better when I built a website for Prop
When it came time to release the Blow Up EP they asked if I’d like to have a go at designing the cover, after they’d had some unsuccessful attempts with some other designers.
I think I had preemptively written a defence and justification for the KISS logo font. Actually an early idea I had was to also put a photo of Annie Lennox on the cover. Suffice to say that wasn’t a particularly popular idea, but the fact that the guys didn’t need much convincing as to the merits of appropriating another band's logo was testament to the similarities of spirit that persist and made for ongoing happy collaboration.
Will Larnach-Jones, former manager: I met The Presets through my friend Jo Wilson, who has been the band’s publicist for over a decade. At the time I was between jobs: I’d just finished working with Bernadette Ryan Management in Melbourne on The Avalanches and New Buffalo – now Sally Seltmann – both of whom were signed to Modular. And Jo was publicist for both.
Through that connection I was hustling, writing press releases and grants for some acts – including The Presets. Jo mentioned they were on the lookout for management, so I flew up to Sydney and we met and took it from there. I liked them – they were funny from the get-go, and a nice mix of being unassuming but also very clear about their creative vision. I liked the fact that they were in their late-20s too. They’d been in bands before and had done a lot of session work, so they’d been around the block a bit.
I was hustling, broke as hell. I juggled days working on event management for a city council, bookkeeping for a fashion label and working in a clothes shop on the weekends. It wouldn’t be until a couple of years later that I was making enough to get by on solely from management.
Kim Moyes: We sent out two demos to two record labels and one of them was Modular. And Pav [Modular founder Steve Pavlovic] was really keen to sign us. So it was pretty easy.
The other label was Engine Room. They had The Vines and Holly Valance.
Julian Hamilton: They were doing big things. But they weren’t interested. This was before there was MySpace, before SoundCloud, before Facebook.
Kim Moyes: It was the last of the CD demos. Just after that it was just MySpace, and that’s how everyone got signed.
Julian Hamilton: We were touring overseas and then the Arctic Monkeys were doing their thing. Suddenly it was like record companies were over and it’s all about self-promotion and self-distribution. We're that last era of record companies, record contracts.