Did you ever see yourselves making it this far?
No not at all, actually. To be honest with you, I guess I always thought The Presets was a thing that we loved to do, but it was never going to be the thing that really paid the bills. I thought we would always have to work outside The Presets, so I’m thrilled it is finally our main thing and it’s real and that’s what we always dreamt of. I never thought that we’d be winning ARIAs or anything like that. That went beyond any expectations we ever had. We love what we do and we believe in what we do, and we think we make awesome shit, but I never thought that other people would think that as well. It’s just crazy.
You guys have done really well in the Australia, the States and Europe. On your course of world domination is there anywhere else that you want to conquer that you haven’t yet?
Not really. I guess we never really wanted to conquer anywhere. It’s a weird thing. All we really wanted was to be comfortable, and make music, and we kind of have that now. Whether that meant just selling shitloads of records in Sydney and never touring anywhere else, or selling a handful of records everywhere in the world and touring all the time—whatever way you get there is the way you go. I don’t think we ever had plans for world domination. We just wanted to be able to make music.
How do you stop being complacent? If you would have been happy to just become big in Sydney, but you’ve moved further than that, how do you keep yourselves inspired to continue to better yourselves?
If you have to try to keep yourself enthusiastic about it, you’re not really in it for the right reasons. The music is inside us and we just feel like we’ve got to get it out. Not to be crass—it’s a little bit crass—but it’s like doing a shit. You feel better when it’s out and you’ve got to get it out. And when we get our music out of us we feel better. And that’s really what it’s like. We certainly don’t have to inspire ourselves to do it. We feel shitty and grumpy if we’re not doing it. So, for anything that happens in our world and our life, we can make it easier if we’re in a situation where we can just keep making music.
And just keep shitting?
Exactly. Just keep shitting all that stuff out and feel better.
So you said you’re going to change your show for the States. What kind of gig are you going to put on? What can crowds expect?
It will still be us two guys onstage looking awkward, but with really cool lights. Daft Punk’s lighting guy who does lights for Daft Punk and Kanye and Nine Inch Nails—he’s going to be doing lights for us on this tour which is awesome because he’s a bit of a fan, so we’re really excited about that. We’re doing a lot more dance remixes of some of the songs and we’re putting in a few songs that people have been griping for that we never play. Hopefully the fans will really enjoy it because there will be a bunch of stuff they haven’t heard for a while, or haven’t heard ever.
Catch The Presets at Webster Hall in NYC on April 3. For more info, visit myspace.com/thepresets.
