Scottish DJ Mylo has spent the last week or so flitting between cities as part of the Parklife Festival, and has even included a pit stop in Auckland, New Zealand for a solo show. We got a few minutes to talk to Myles MacInnes during his busy schedule, where he promised we’d be hearing a lot more from him very soon.
Music Feeds: How’s the Parklife tour been for you?
Mylo: It’s been insane thanks. I can’t believe I’m here at all. I’m really chuffed to get a main stage slot, an hour of early evening disco, the Melbourne and Perth shows were great. And then everyone else got a couple of days off, and I flew over to Auckland for a solo show, which was really off the hook. I’m back in Brisbane trying to do my laundry.”
MF: Hah! It’s not good when you haven’t got time to get that done!
M: It’s definitely gonna get worse! I’m doing an aftershow party here in Brisbane and then an early flight back to Sydney for the main one, so I’m gonna be in a wretched state for that!
MF: How are you coping? Is there anything that keeps you going?
M: Nothing much more than Berocca. I’ve got some melatonin too, so I managed to catch up; I slept about 10 hours last night. But yeah, you just try to get sleep where you can really?
MF: Has there been a particular highlight during Parklife?
M: I really love the line-up on the tour. There’s a lot of guys I don’t know particularly well so I’ve really enjoyed watching a lot of shows. I met with a friend who wanted to stay in the bar by the main stage so we ended up watching everyone after me: Diplo, Gossip, Duck Sauce; it’s pretty massive. I’m the only complete sadsack travelling completely on his own. Everyone’s got a girlfriend or a band. I do have a girlfriend but the schedule was too punishing. So I’ve latched on to whoever will hang out with me and have mid-week drinks, as if we needed it on a Tuesday night in Sydney. I’ve met up with the the Simian Mobile Disco guys and Sebastien Tellier. Sebastian’s the tallest French motherfucker you can imagine, just walking around his hotel with a beard, hat and 70s tennis outfit on.
MF: How do you construct your set for a festival audience? Is it significantly different to a club?
M: Recently I’ve been going down a bit of a retro and disco direction, a crazy mashup of the two, and we thought the time slot was really suited to a disco set. I was before Santigold, so that was the plan. Generally I don’t always know what I’m gonna play next. I have this really anal Ableton setup, a big virtual record bag where everything is arranged by key so every mix should be miraculously in key with each other, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
MF: It depends on what style of set you’re doing, but is there a song you couldn’t do any set without?
M: It’s got to be Drop the Pressure really, my track from all that time ago. I’d probably get in trouble if I didn’t play that. I had a bit of a moment – I was really spaced out by the reaction to that in Melbourne. It was my last track and I was drenched in jet lag and completely not ready for how it was gonna go off after all these years.
MF: It must be great to have a track that will probably always go down well!
M: It’s nuts! I’m just trying to remember what I had for breakfast that day and try to replicate it, but I wasn’t really prepared for what happened with the track, though I do remember when I made the track in Scotland. I had to call my buddy William around to listen to it and I was like “Oh my God! What have I done?”
MF: What goals have you got for the coming year? Anything special in mind?
M: Well, yeah. The thing that’s kept me out of the game longer than I planned was ironing out wrinkles with the label, which I’m not really at liberty to discuss. But we’re pretty close to sorting that and being able to get out there properly.
MF: So you’ve got some material ready for a follow-up to Destroy Rock & Roll?
M: Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of demos and these last 12 months I’ve been focusing on remixes and I’ve learned quite a lot in the meantime, so I’m gonna have to go back over those demos and re-cut them and hopefully they’ll be ready to go.
You can catch Mylo at Parklife 2011 on these dates:
Saturday 1st October
Brisbane (City Botanic Gardens)
Sunday 2nd October
Sydney (Kippax Lake, Centennial Park)
Monday 3rd October
Adelaide (Botanic Park)
