Belgium duo Aeroplane produce Disco-dusted Dream-Pop to soundtrack chance encounters with beautiful strangers. You could blame it on the levity, the grace or the down tempo chug; all psychedelic guitars, sepia synths and elastic basslines beamed from space. As a Production team they’ve remixed the likes of Friendly Fires, Cut Copy, MGMT and Grace Jones but thankfully, for fans of lower BPM’s, there’s a debut album on the way with a keener focus on live instrumentation. Pedestrian recently caught up with the group’s multi-instrumentalist Vito De Luca to discuss new albums, Australian holidays and epic toilet DJ sets.
What have you been up to today?
Not much. I’m actually on holidays here so shopping a bit and laying down at the beach. And now I’m having a nice dinner with the Future Classic guys and Trevor Jackson, just talking music.
So what brings you to Australia?
My girlfriend actually lives here that’s the reason why.
Ah so you met an Australian girl?
Yeah I met an Australian girl. We met at Parklife the last time I was here.
Any fond memories from Parklife?
Oh my God the whole festival is a fond memory. It was one of the best experiences of my life. We were surrounded by friends like Erol Alkan, Pedro Winter, some people we met at the festival like the Junior Boys guys – Joakim was there. It was more like a school trip for old kids. Just having fun with tour managers to take care of us. So the whole thing was really funny and really amazing.
Do any specific memories stand out?
I have this memory from our last DJ set in Adelaide. Pedro was playing maracas with us, Tiga was playing maracas as well, Erol was playing drums – while we were DJ-ing. If you search it on youtube there’s a funny video of us all playing. Then they ended up in the front row like hands in the air. That was a really fun moment. Then also at the Adelaide gig during the last half hour of Tiga’s set we all got on stage and played a record. I can actually remember that I played the last record of Parklife. It was kind of random but I played “Pocket Piano” the Joakim remix. I can remember we were all there hugging each other, thinking that’s the last record, this is the last gig, time to go home tomorrow and being pretty emotional about it. They’re some of my best memories. Parklife Sydney is where I met my girlfriend, it changed my life in a way.
Awesome. So I take it you’re not used to Summer in January.
Not really. I had a few gigs on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. I played Icebergs at Bondi Beach on New Year’s Day and it was quite funny to play New Year’s Day with people in swimwear when in Belgium it’s minus 12 and snowing. Your body clock goes a bit funky.
I guess the big thing for you guys now would be the debut album. Obviously you’re known for your remixes so talk us through the process of cutting an album’s worth of original material.
Well we’re holidaying in the whole month of January because we basically haven’t stopped working in a year and a half so we thought it was time to take some holidays. But as soon as we’re back in Belgium we’re going to finish the final mix of the record so probably by the end of February that should be done. Then we can start working on something else because we’ve been working on this album for two years now.
That’s exciting. What kind of vibe are you guys channeling?
If you remove the dancefloor pressure that you have when you do remixes it’s closer to our own influences and the music we really love and the music we listen to at home. It’s really more poppy – even if we don’t consider ourselves a dance act but a pop act with dance arrangements – it’s a true pop record. All the songs are around three or four minutes no twelve minute disco odysseys. Half of the album has vocals and the main difference is that everything is played live. There’s no computers involved, no plug-ins involved. Everything you hear on the record even a cowbell, tambourine or whatever has been played live by me in the studio. That’s what’s going to make the sound different from everything you’ve heard from us before.
Would we know any of the vocalists?
Yeah. We have the girl from Au Revoir Simone singing on the album. We also have Sebastien Tellier singing on the album. We have some cool old-school singers that we spotted in the US. This girl Sky Ferreira from LA. It’s not big obvious singers but I think they’re people that are going to be huge next year.
You’re DJ-ing at The Civic Underground on Friday and I assume you’ve played at crazy festivals and parties all over the world – what’s the weirdest party you’ve ever played?
I can think of two. Probably the weirdest one was a party in Sweden for Absolut Vodka where we played in the toilets of a five star hotel. Like when they showed us the DJ booth we were like “Is this where we’re going to DJ?” and they were like “Yeah”. And people were going to the loo in and out and we were just Dj-ing there and people were having cocktails in the toilet. It was one of the weirdest sets we’ve ever played. And the other one was one of the weirdest but one of the biggest sets we’ve every played. It was in Glasgow in a mathematics student club the kind of place where people go and study together. And the whole thing was weird. When we got inside it was so quiet and there were like 50 people but when we started playing the music suddenly went really loud, the room filled up all of a sudden and actually everyone who was there was waiting for us. And that DJ set was one of the biggest sets we’ve ever played and one of the biggest crowd reactions we’ve ever had. It started as the weirdest and ended up being the best one.
Aeroplane play Beck’s Festival Bar this Friday as part of Future Classic’s Sydney Festival showcase. They’ll be joined by Playgroup’s Trevor Jackson, Yen (live) and Future Classic DJs. Check out all the details here.
