Clubbing Magazine

Infusion – Australian progressive sounds

Infusion; Jamie Stevens, Manuel Sharrad and Frank Xavier have emerged as a world-class electronic act. The Australian outfit are currently finishing their second album, following up their debut album “Phrases & Numbers” from 2000. They have released numerous tracks and have remixed the likes of Bjørk, Kate Bush, Main Element and Buds Not Bombs. Their style is progressive house music and in the beginning of 2004 they did the Essential mix on BBC Radio 1 featuring a brilliant 2 hours set. On the 26th and 27th of March they will be in Denmark for the Heineken Green Room Sessions and they will return in July for the Roskilde Festival 2004. I got hold of Jamie Stevens to get the latest.

It's a really exciting time for us in putting together this album
You are now signed to BMG/Australia – what can we expect from you in the future? – I understand a new album is on its way – when can we expect a release? - It's a really exciting time for us in putting together this album. We're really experimenting with the music that we love and pushing what we do further into a sound that we can call our own. Making an album is a big task and we're seeing the final product as a big statement about who we are as Infusion. The signing has just really helped us realise some of the things we wanted to try out that we just couldn't afford to before. I know the album is due out mid year here in Australia and Japan but I'm not too sure about everywhere else. Will this differ in style from your first album “Phrases and Numbers”? - Stylistically we're really pushing ourselves and finding ways of incorporating all of our ideas into tracks that are, on the whole, more song-based. The three of us are very passionate about a lot of very different music and I think that came across to a certain extent on "Phrases and Numbers" but this album is a bit more daring. We really want to create just a really strong, musical album. It's been a lot of fun using very different instrumentation and playing around with different song structures, coming up with unique collisions sounds and styles that we enjoy. One thing we don't want is to be viewed as three guys who do dance music. I think the album will show that we do write music as a band and have a broader view of music than just club music for DJs. The first album “Phrases and Numbers” is very hard to find – is it out of print? If so - will it be re-released? - We're not really sure - sometimes people can find it, sometimes not, we don't have a great deal of contact with the label anymore. We are working on the problem, though - hopefully it might be more readily available later in the year.

I've never been able to pinpoint an "Infusion sound"
Your sound is very tough, but still melodic and for me already very recognisable – can you explain this sound and where the inspiration comes from? - I've never been able to pinpoint an "Infusion sound". I've always thought our sound is quite all over the place but I do think we do have a tough edge and that's pretty important to us in the club tracks that we do. We just find that the toughness is exciting. We like to make exciting records that have interesting layers to them and that probably comes from a combination of my love of soundtracks and Jean-Michel Jarre and Frank's old love of East Coast rap and Manuel's obsession with the Beach Boys and The Beatles. We like to make music that has a certain sinister edge to it; even our "lighter" tracks are offset with a hint of bleakness! Films, poetry, books and painting are just more interesting to us when they explore a darker side of creativity. Do you always agree when you are working in the studio? - Of course not! It comes from all of us having very firm views. The pushing and pulling of ideas and the arguments over what we produce creates the tension and difference that I think people can pick up on. We want to make sure that all three of us are happy with the result at the end of the day, but exactly how we get to that point can be a little rough sometimes. You have collaborated with Junkie XL, how did that happened? And are you working other collaborations? - I don't think he was really too aware of us until he was asked to remix our Legacy single - which he graciously agreed to do and did a fantastic job. He became pretty interested in our production work after that and then simply contacted us requesting a collaboration for his album, and to do another remix of Legacy for his album (now known as Aquaman). We didn't meet him until quite a few months after the album had been released. At the moment, we are concentrating on our album, and have decided to put any collaborations on hold.
It maybe meant a lot more to other people
	Being on a Paul Oakenfold’s “Great Wall” compilation with two tracks; Bjork – Pagen Poetry and the Legacy (Junkie XL Mix) track – what has this meant for you? Has your popularity gone up, are you offered more remixes and gigs than before? - I think it maybe meant a lot more to other people than it did to us! I mean, it's great that it happened but I don't think we've really felt a big impact that can be specifically traced to that compilation. Besides which, the Bjork remix isn't even credited as ours and the track that is ours is remixed by Junkie XL, anyway. Don't get me wrong, things have been building really well for us which is fantastic and of course we are very grateful for it happening but I don’t think it could be said that the Oakenfold compilation meant more than the Global Underground compilations or playing at Creamfields or Pete Tong playing our tracks on his show. It's been a great combination of everything, I think.
You have done two of my favourite remixes of 2003; Bjork – Pagen Poetry (released on RR1000) and the “bootleg” remix of Kate Bush’s “Running up that hill” – can you tell me a little about the background for doing these amazing tracks. - They were actually done as just fun, quick ideas. The Bjork one came to me on the tram here in Melbourne when I was listening to her "Vespertine" album on my headphones and I just started hearing these beats over the top and thought it would be fun to play around with. I got home, chopped up the track, made up some beats, processed a few sounds from the original tracks and put it together over a couple of nights. I like the way it turned out but had no idea it was going to heard by so many people. Just like the Kate Bush track. That idea had been sitting in my computer for about 5 years as just loops, a couple of basslines and a few odd sounds and I played the idea to Cass when he came to Australia and we were doing some work together. He said we needed to finish that right there and then. It was finished in about 4 hours! It was great fun and we were jumping around the studio thinking "this has so much energy!" But again, I wasn't even thinking about it being released or heard by too many other people! Do you approach a remix differently than doing one of your own tracks? - Definitely. For starters, we do appreciate that with a remix that a label is paying us for a specific service so we do keep in mind what they want out of the remix - sometimes they do ask for a specific direction and we'll always keep that in mind. However, whatever we do, regardless of being our own track or a remix, we put in equal effort in trying to make it a good piece of music.
The Australian scene
The Australian scene seams to me to be very strong with labels like Vapour, EQ and Audiotherapy and DJ´s and artist like Dave Seaman, Kasey Taylor, Meat Katie and yourself just to name a few. Can you tell me how you see the scene and compare this with what the scene looks like in other parts of the world. - I really don't necessarily think that it's stronger in Australia than anywhere else - I think perhaps it has developed that reputation internationally because it's such a nice place for DJs to tour, especially in our summer! Like anywhere else, clubs shut down, events have bad turnouts - there are a strong collective of talented producers here but really only a handful of labels. Has the Australian scene seen the same down fall of the big clubs as we have seen in the UK or is it still strong? Here in Denmark we are struggling – and people aren’t so much aware of the big names and all. - We honestly don't take a lot of notice when it comes to what people see as cool in Australia. We're lucky in Melbourne in that there are great places to go, there aren't any big brand name clubs dominating everything and people just enjoy going out. It's not really a topic I take a lot of time pondering but in my view, I don't think big clubs have really ever taken off in Australia, at least not ones that have been imported and tried to make work. Smaller clubs have always been the ones that seem to have a longer run, people are generally pretty savvy to that.

Unrehearsed house music
Infusion live – what can we expect? - Two hours of live, unrehearsed house music! We never know what we're going to play on the night, so we'll take it as the night comes. And finally how did you all hock up? And where does the name "Infusion" come from? - Myself and Manuel met very early on in high school - he sat down next to me in a class and by the end of the week we were writing music together and have been ever since. I later met Frank when he was working in a music store. It took him quite a while to be convinced to join Infusion. We all grew up in a very small town where the main industry is coal mining, but we probably didn't really 100% concentrate on Infusion until we moved to Sydney, and then later to Melbourne. I can't really remember anymore, it was decided on many years ago! I think maybe a friend of ours suggested it.
Audio part You can listen to the interview with Infusion here, the interview was done on the 26 marts 2004 in Copenhagen. Length: 15.49 min, mono 32kbps Size: 3.708Kb Format: MP3
Interview: Christian Almind	Thanks to Jamie Stevens and Danielle Moylan