The Aston Shuffle

DMCWORLD checks in with the superstars from Down Under as they share with us Everything I Got…

Being from Australia, how would you compare the electronic music scene in your home country versus other places around the world?

The scene in Australia is super healthy, I think for a country of our size we’re punching above our weight in terms of the quantity and quality of electronic music we produce. We seem to have a sound in Australia that people really tend to identify and resonate with as well, which is something we always hear from people overseas as we travel, and is always super great to hear!
Tell us about the inspiration and production process in the studio that went behind crafting your latest release ‘Everything I Got’.
We started the instrumental for Everything I Got in Melbourne about 12 months ago or so, which is typical of how we work on a lot of our music – we both live in different countries now (Mikah lives in Canberra, I live in New York) so when we’re in the same place we’ll have a week or so where we hit the studio hard and come up with as many demos and instrumentals as we can. The vocal then came together over emails with the vocalist, Leo Kalyan, going back & forth with him a couple of times after hearing his initial ideas.
In terms of inspiration the general vibe was just to create a bit of a “moment” with the song, the chords in the breakdown and on the drops just had a special type of vibe going on so we wanted to bring that to the fore as much as possible.
Who are some up & coming artists at the moment that we need to keep an eye on?
I really love Lxury, he’s got a super distinctive sound and is doing some great new tracks lately. Icarus are doing great stuff lately and are just gonna get bigger & better, as is TCTS. Fisher keeps getting bigger and bigger with everything he’s doing as well.
Can you pinpoint your single favorite moment that you have experienced while playing a show?
That’s a super hard question, it’s easy to think of favourite shows but favourite moments within shows is way tougher! There’s nothing that quite compares to playing something of yours and seeing the crowd sing along to every word, I think every time that happens is a special moment for sure.
What do you currently having on rotation in your music playlists?
I’ve been smashing the new Beyonce & Jay-Z album a fair bit, also the Kids See Ghosts (Kanye & Kid Cudi) album. Just put the new Internet album on right now as I’m sitting down to write this!
If you weren’t producers/DJs, what career paths do you think that you guys would have taken instead?
I’m not even sure really, whatever it might have been I think I would have been pretty distracted by the urge to write some music all the time.
Do you have any plans on releasing an EP or an album in the coming months or are you more focused on releasing singles?
We’re assembling a nice pile of new tracks at the moment, the current plan is to release them as singles but an EP isn’t out of the question at all, I think the idea is to let the tracks come together and then figure out what makes the most sense for them as they get finished, rather than predetermining that you wanna release an EP or an album.
What do you guys enjoy doing in your free time when you’re not in the studio or out on the road playing concerts/festivals?
Cooking, eating, Netflix and/or chilling, hitting NY stand up comedy clubs, and then working on new music anyway!
The Aston Shuffle – ‘Everything I Got’ is out now