1. Growing Up
During my childhood, I remember waking up each Saturday to Rage (or buying cassette tapes) and listening to the likes of Michael Jackson, Bobby Brown, Roxette, Milli Vanilli, Fleetwood Mac and Quincy Jones. My folks were avid fans of Roy Orbison, Dean Martin and Elvis. Mum played the piano and she bribed me with hamburgers to start lessons – it worked for a year or two. My childhood definitely made me passionate and open-minded about music, and gave me a good appreciation of melodies and rhythm.
2. Inspirations
My favourite musicians/producers include Michael Jackson, Daft Punk, The Killers, Gypsy & The Cat, Maxwell, Coldplay, Phoenix, M83, Fleetwood Mac, Axwell, Dirty South, Hard Rock Sofa and Alex Metric… just to name a few. The one common theme in their music which inspires me (apart from being good music) is they all manage to fuse/conjure emotions with warmth and melodies. My girlfriend, a bucket of ice cream and the destinations I visit also inspire me!
3. Your Crew
Those Usual Suspects comprise of me and my partner in crime Atridge D’Costa. We’re both Melbourne boys, and we produce together but only I DJ. I got into music back at high school thanks to my choir teacher (a good 20 years ago… apparently I had the voice of an angel until it broke) and started DJing when I was 16 years old. Music production ended up being a natural evolution of that. We both moonlight in other jobs which help keeps us grounded and driven – I work as a lawyer and Atridge is an entrepreneur/digital marketing guru.
4. The Music You Make
We started off producing funky/afro/soulful house (as it was known back in the day) – similar to what the likes of Louie Vega, DJ Gregory, Bob Sinclar and Martin Solveig used to produce. That Defected and Africanism sound. Slowly our sound evolved to more of a tech/progressive house sound and now we’d probably just call our sound Big Room (definitely none of that Melbourne bounce sound hoohah!). You can check out the evolution of our sound at soundcloud.com/thoseusualsuspects.
Artists who we play a similar sound to are Axwell, Dirty South, Hook N Sling and Nicky Romero. Just fun, warm and uplifting big room music.
5. Music, Right Here, Right Now
I think the music scene at the moment is really healthy and artists are being pushed (like never before) to be innovative in order to stand out. Otherwise your five minutes of fame is short lived. This is especially the case with the amount of new music being released and the fact that music production software is now accessible to all. There are no barriers to entry anymore. Probably the best thing about the local scene is there are no egos to deal with.
Those Usual Suspects play Marquee At The Star with EDX on Saturday September 14.
