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At a Muscles show, it’s common to hear the entire crowd, male and female, chanting “Hey Muscles. I love you. I want to have your babies.”

At a Muscles show, it’s common to hear the entire crowd, male and female, chanting “Hey Muscles. I love you. I want to have your babies.” Those lyrics, from a track on 2007’s Guns, Babes, Lemonade, are certainly nifty, but it’s last year’s single, Girls Crazy Go, that has been whipping up a frenzy on Australian airwaves all summer.


His first single, Ice Cream (back in 2007), was picked up by Triple J a whole six months before he had a record deal. When he finally was nabbed by Modular, alongside other Aussie electro stalwarts Cut Copy and The Presets, his first album was a resounding success, debuting at number 14 on the ARIA charts and reaching number one on the Dance Album Chart in its first week.


That’s not bad for the Shepparton-raised guy whose guitar teacher told him he wasn’t very good. “When I was three years old, someone recommended to my parents that I take up an instrument, so I started classical piano,” he says. “At school I did a bit of drums for four or five years and I did guitar for one year as well, which at the end of the year the guitar teacher told me that I wasn’t very good and I should probably just stick to piano.”


This multi-instrumentalism has stood him in good stead, though. He’s toured with some of the biggest names in dance music including Daft Punk and the Chemical Brothers, as well as embarking on a number of his own headlining tours. But, he says, one of the best shows was with the notoriously wild Girltalk. “There was like maybe 500 or 600 people in the venue and by the end of the night the entire crowd were pretty much dancing on the stage,” he says. “Girltalk was half naked and half of the crowd was half naked as well. That was probably one of the funniest shows.”


As a Victorian, he’s also proud to say that his appearances at the Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre have been among his favourite shows. He opened the first ever Golden Plains Music Festival and performed after MGMT’s set at the 2008 Meredith Music Festival. “That was like a wild dance party at midnight with lasers and a light show and the whole everything,” he says.


Considering that he describes his own music as festival-style, it’s not surprising that he enjoyed these performances, and is also looking forward to next weekend’s Sounds Loud Festival, where he’ll be among the headline acts. “That’s kind of where I’m at my strongest,” he says of festivals. “This is my first year. They asked if I wanted to be a part of it and I said yes strait away. It’s a free festival and having it be underage as well is very rare. I’m really, really looking forward to playing an all ages crowd.”


Playing all-ages shows is something that he plans on doing when he’s touring for his next album, which will hopefully be finished by the end of March, he says. To achieve this self-imposed goal, he’s relying on routine and perseverance. “I’ve been doing a lot of DJ sets in the last few weeks and a few live shows and I’ve been pretty busy so any second or moment I can I’ve just been working on the tracks for the new album,” he says. “I’m slowly becoming a robot; slowly becoming like a machine because I’ve got a routine. I wake up every morning and listen to music, and I’m always checking the iTunes charts and reading Pitchfork and lots of blogs and stuff and usually I’ll record four to six hours in the afternoon.”


This dedication is an indication of Muscles’ obsession with music. “I’ve always got music on my mind,” he says. “The only way I can break free from that is going to the cinemas and seeing a movie. It’s the only place where I can kind of relax for two hours and maybe meditate while I’m watching the movie and I’ll usually come out at the end and just write a song.”


As a film fan, he enjoyed the gig he played at the legendary Parisienne restaurant, Maxim’s, where John Travolta was ensconced while the Modular party performers waited for him to leave before they were allowed to set up. “We had to wait for them to finish their dinner and they cleared out before we could set up this party in this four story mansion place, so that was pretty crazy.”


Also in the Modular family is Swedish pop songbird Robyn who, says Muscles, is lovely. He played a show with her in the UK that made a lasting impression. “I walked through and she was doing sound check and she stopped the sound check and came up to me and gave me a hug,” he says. “Pretty much, she’s the most awesomest girl on the planet. Music wise, songwriting, everything. Her latest three albums are just on constant rotation on my stereo.”


Muscles may be older and wiser after all of this international touring and partying, but his Younger & Immature EP was released in October last year. With beefier guitars and bigger sound in general, it’s a grown up version of the party tunes he’s best at, despite the title. But, he says, it’s still very ‘Muscles’-esque at its core. With no release date as of yet for his still-to-be-completed album, it’s this EP that is sustaining many fans.


However, Muscles predicts that next year will be a bumper one for dance releases. “When my first album came out there was this huge Australian wave of hype and a lot of bands becoming successful overseas,” he explains. “Midnight Juggernauts’ album came out, then Pnau’s album came out, my album came out, there was Cut Copy and the Presents, Empire Of The Sun and Miami Horror and now there’s Art Vs Science… There’s kind of been a bit of a lull this last year but now all of these artists are gearing up for their second, third or fourth albums and I’m really looking forward to the end of this year and I think next year’s going to be a really big, exciting year of music.”


And in the meantime? He’s just content to enjoy the superb Australian music scene like the rest of us. “There’s always a band on, even if it’s a local band or an international band, or a DJ from overseas or here – there’s always something on every night and I try to go out as much as I can, at least once or twice a week to see a band… I’m doing a lot of rural towns in NSW at the moment and kind of just getting an overall vibe of where Australia’s at the moment music wise and what people are listening too and… I forgot what the question was… I’m kind of just rambling on now.”

 

 

MUSCLES is playing at the free and all-ages Sounds Loud Festival in Queens Park, Moonee Ponds on Saturday April 9 alongside Oh Mercy, John Steel Singers, Illy and more. For more information visit soundsloudfestival.com and check out Muscles at musclesmusic.net.

 

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