Oyster Magazine

miami horror talk disco-pop

It’s one in the afternoon, and Miami Horror frontman Benjamin Plant’s day has thus far consisted of a runny nose, a bunch of phone interviews, and working on an official remix of the latest Gorillaz track. It’s not too hard to work out which one of these he is most excited about… Josh Butler writes.

It’s testament to the meteoric rise of Miami Horror that, when asked what he’s doing between today’s tightly scheduled phone interviews, Plant casually tells Oyster that “I’m listening to the song ‘Empire Ants’ [from Gorillaz latest album Plastic Beach], which we’re remixing.”

“EMI Records approached us to remix the song,” he says with a trace of pride and a stifled sneeze, courtesy, he says, of a cold he picked up at Splendour In The Grass.

Miami Horror has certainly come a long way since a teenage Ben first began producing bootleg remixes from the confines of his bedroom. Once a mere solo DJ project – “I didn’t want to stay in clubs, I was sick of the music” – Plant’s brainchild has evolved into a full, live electronic band. Following the success of the infectious single, ‘Sometimes’, Miami Horror put pen to paper with the aforementioned EMI Records behemoth and just release their debut album; Illumination.

According to Plant, the LP is “a collection of the best things we’ve done, up to this point… I saved a lot of my favourite songs for the album. Some of those songs were written three or four years ago,” he tells Oyster. “So we’ve modernised them a bit.”

Wanting to move above and beyond the disco-pop of Miami Horror’s previous work, the Illumination sessions were long and difficult; an album’s worth of tracks were written, recorded, re-recorded, then scrapped, with Plant saying that he simply “got over” the disco genre.

“I knew that by the time the album was out, the whole genre would be past its peak… I just didn’t feel any emotion from those tracks. It was a style that we just got over.”

Recorded in Plant’s own studio, and produced on his bedroom laptop, the DIY approach gave the band the time and freedom to get the sound they were looking for; but at the same time, the Miami Horror front man says that the lack of restrictions also caused the band to “go in circles.” Originally slated for an early-2010 release, the mixing alone took six months, basically blowing the original deadline out of the water. As Plant looks back at the process, however, he sees the protracted recording as a blessing in disguise, allowing the band to gradually add new – and perhaps surprising – sounds and influences.

“There are definitely some seventies-style psychedelic sounds in there; that’s a big feature of the album,” Plant says of the band’s new direction.

“More pop psychedelic, than full-on psychedelic… that’s probably the most surprising element of the album, considering we didn’t show too much of that earlier.”

Featuring a United Nations of collaborations, from Sweden’s MAI and Pitchfork favourites Neon Indian, to Australia’s own Kimbra, Plant sees Illumination as a quantum leap forward for the Melbourne-based group. The most striking sonic difference between the Bravado EP and the band’s latest effort would be the addition of a distinct guitar sound.

“But not like indie guitar!” Plant is quick to point out, “more like replacing some synth parts with guitar.”

Asked to nominate one band as their main influence, he instantly brings up legendary British act Pink Floyd.

“We definitely took a lot of influence from them, but sort of modernised it.”

“Basically we were playing around with sounds in the studio, and it started sounding like Pink Floyd… having our own studio really helped, we were able to build on the tracks with new ideas, instead of having to rush through it.”

But as with any album, a delayed release date was soon forgotten after the tracks eventually saw the light of day. Lead single ‘I Look To You’ is receiving heavy radio airplay, and now Miami Horror are already planning their first proper global assault with a short run of American headlining dates in September.

As our scheduled twenty-minute interview nears its completion and the phone operator gives us the hurry-up, Plant quickly concludes by telling us that, with the evolution of the band’s sound, even their older songs have been given a facelift.

“Playing live, we only do two or three older songs, but we’ve changed them up, added guitar to all of them.”

“We want the songs to reflect what we’re doing now, as opposed to what we were doing in the past.”

More stuff!