With their 2007 debut album Dystopia having made a splash amongst the sweat drenched legions of beat driven partygoers the world over, The Midnight Juggernauts have been living up to their name, tripping the light fantastic around the globe touring in support of the album.
Finally coming off a two year tour circuit earlier this year, the boys have been writing their new album furiously and are now embarking on yet another tour this time to promote their new single This New Technology ahead of the new album’s release. Music Feeds was lucky enough to have a little one on one with Andrew Juggernaut, whose last name is not a coincidence.
Music Feeds: You’re touring the single, must feel good to road test that stuff live?
Andrew Juggernaut: Yeah it’s always interesting, you’re getting used to playing new songs, playing new equipment. It’s interesting to see how people react. I think we’re sick of playing older songs too, so hopefully it all goes down well.
MF: Speaking of that single, I saw the video. It’s every acid dream I’ve ever had.
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AJ: I know man we made it with these dudes Special Problems, two guys from Auckland. About a month and a half ago we went up there, and did some shooting, but we’re not even in it much, it’s just those guys doing their thing. I suppose there is a lot of eye candy there, its very visual.
MF: The song is sick too. So Dystopia came out in 2007, in the last two years has it just been writing, recording, touring?
AJ: I suppose the way the last album worked we recorded it and released it in Australia and it wasn’t released internationally. Then we did a whole lot of touring behind the record, in Australia. But then the international release was staggered, so we had to go again and tour it in different countries. So we only finished the end of last year and we went straight into doing some demos.
MF: Where’d you work on it? Home recording?
AJ: No we spent time in a couple of studios in Melbourne. Went to Sing Sing Studios, which was really good. It’s a different record, different to last one, a lot of it has to do with touring and how much time we spent as a band. It’s a lot more of a live record.
MF: The Juggernauts spent nearly two years flogging Dystopia, which is a good effort. But I’m guessing when it came time to finish up, there was some excitement?
AJ: Yeah definitely, we’d spent two years touring the same material. The album was going well but we just needed something new, wanted to get back in the studio, we realized that we just wanted to make more music. We got to try a lot of new ideas, new methods for recording and stuff, and we’re happy with the way it came out.
MF: The Jugs put all their frequent flyer points together and flew out engineer Chris Moore, of TV on the RADIO and Yeah Yeah Yeahs fame. He also worked with Scarlett Johansson. It seems the partnership was a loving one?
AJ: Yeah he was great, it worked really well. He’s from New York he came out to Melbourne, he’s very relaxed. He was engineering but we were producing so we had an arrangement. We gelled well, and he respected our ideas and vice versa.
MF: So is the album good to go?
AJ: Yeah after Chris left we’d pretty much finished it. Sat on it for a bit made a few small changes and now it’s all done. The single is out, we’re about to tour, early next year I think it’ll drop.
MF: I know a lot of parents begin to hate their children as they grow, is that what its like with an album, as it becomes older the relationship changes?
AJ: It’s interesting, right now because its coming to a head, the single, the tour, everything, its hard because you’ve been with it for so long. You go through periods and it makes it hard to get perspective on what you’re doing. There is a sense of excitement, but more relief that’s it is finished. Its hard for us, once we’re in that creative mode, its hard to detach from it.
But you get to a point where you spend so much time on something to make it as great as possible in the end you just want to get rid of it and move to the next thing.
MF: Playing it live is a whole new thing though, that’s another challenge
AJ: Definitely, most of the album was recorded in more of a live way, so coming to start rehearsing we’d kind of been playing them live already. But we started playing around, changing them, and improvising.
MF: What’s your take on the community music situation. The Hopetoun has shut down recently and I know you guys were involved with FBI, obviously something that’s important to you.
AJ: Yeah well I mean it wasn’t a hard decision for us to help out. FBI from when we first started, they were the first station to play our EP in 2004, they were always big supporters. So it made sense for us to do that, I think stations like FBI are really important.
MF: O.K… final question. Have you ever been to Venice, Italy?
AJ: No I haven’t.
MF: Well a friend of mine went recently and she was stopped by a guy selling t-shirts on the side of the road. He asked where she was from and she said Australia, he said you must know my friends, The Midnight Juggernaut, they stay at my house.
AJ: What the fuck, I’ve never even been to Venice. So wait was he selling t-shirts with our picture on them?
MF: No, that’s the best bit, they had a picture of his own face on them. T-shirts with his face for sale.
AJ: That’s weird man.
MF: Well you’ve always got somewhere to stay in Venice.
Midnight Juggernauts play Metro on Friday 6th November. Visit their Myspace page for more info.
