Flux Pavilion - Breakfast Beats

One of dubstep's biggest acts, Flux Pavilion is returning to Australia this November for the national Stereosonic tour, which the man himself doesn't consider as business, but rather playing at his friends' festival. Pulse's Anneliese Pomering got on the blower to the guy whose Mum calls him Joshua Steele to chat about his relationship with the Stereosonic promoters, his forthcoming debut album, the ins and outs of his label Circus Records and cooking a good breakfast.

Pulse: Your debut album is coming out later this year, what stage is it at and what was the process in making it? Flux Pavilion: I’ve finished it and handed it in last week. I’ve been working on it for about 18 months, but I’ve also done a lot of things in between like doing loads of tours, remixes and collaborations, such as ‘Superbad’ and the track with Foreign Beggars and Skism, ‘Jump Back’. So I’ve been working on it for 18 months, but also actively producing. It’s been a long time coming, but I just gave myself a date to do it, finished it, and am stupidly happy with it.

Will it be what fans will expect from you? Yeah, I think it is purely a mixture of everything I really wanted to put in the record. I would hope that’s what fans would expect of me. I’ve only ever written music that I wanted to make and I’ve only ever concentrated on sounds and atmospheres and feelings that I’ve wanted to put in to it, and I’ve done the same with this record. I haven’t really tried to emulate anything I’ve done in the past. I’ve come up with new things, but it’s still very much made by me and created by me, so I would hope that fans would want that.

You just finished a song with Childish Gambino, how did that come about? Well I mean he’s awesome, to start with. I’ve been a massive fan of his and he was talking on twitter and I just hit him up and we started talking. I had loads of ideas about working with him. It’s quite strange, when you’re inspired by someone and you really feel their music, you can’t help but become inspired by that person. So I had already been inspired and written a few beats just with him in mind. I had no idea of him possibly getting on it and then he emailed me and was like “let’s get it together, let’s do a beat”. So I sent it to him and he sent me the vocals and we talked about what we were going to do, and put it together and now it’s on the album.

Would you ever produce an entirely different genre to dubstep and bass music? Well my history is more geared towards bands and I really started my passion within music through playing guitar and singing. That’s my thing that I’ve always wanted to do, and that kind of developed into electronic music because naturally that’s just the way it went. I started making electronic backing beats and singing on them and that was just a natural progression from my singing and songwriting, and then that turned into dubstep and bass music. So for me, moving onto something else would actually be me moving backwards in a sense, which is something I’m very much interested in. We’ve made a bit of contact with Sigur Rós, so I’m really hoping something comes together with them. It’s literally just an idea but for me it would be absolutely incredible. I also really want to hook up with Julian Casablancas of The Strokes to do something, and to kind of bridge the gap between dance music and rock music potentially. Because I come from a rock music background but I somehow just stumbled into electronic music. I just really love the way it feels, and I’d really like to take that vibe across to people within rock music and show them what I see in electronic music, and maybe make something cool.

You’ve talked before about how you fell into dance music and I know you’ve finished University. Do you see yourself doing music for the rest of your life? Yes, is the one word answer. There really is nothing else going on. other than hanging out with my girlfriend and making music and being with my family. They’re normal life things and then music, and then there’s nothing else I really find passion in. I love to cook a good breakfast. If I didn’t have music then I’d just spend my life cooking breakfast. That would be awesome.

You’re coming back to Australia later this year for Stereosonic - are you excited to play this festival? The past two tours I’ve done in Australia have been Parklife and Future, and this is the same kind of set-up with the style of shows. But every time I’ve come over I’ve met the guys from Stereosonic, I know them quite well now, and it’s a really awesome feeling for me to be actually coming and doing their festival. I keep coming over to Australia and meeting them, everyone’s really awesome I love coming to Australia. My girlfriend grew up in Auckland and lived in Sydney, so it’s my thing. I love it over there and I've got to know the guys from Stereosonic quite well and to actually be playing their festival is a really wicked feeling. It’s sort of a friendship thing for me, it doesn’t feel like business. It feels like the right thing to do, it’s cool.

Will your album be out by then? I’ve got a meeting tomorrow night to discuss the plan for the album so I can’t actually say anything solidly, but it will be quite close.

How has your label Circus Records evolved since you started it and how involved are you with its running today? The label was literally, we just wanted to create a platform for likeminded artists to be able to release whatever they want. Obviously it takes their amount of faith in us to sign them, but once they’re signed it’s “we like you as an artist”, not this one beat you make or this one thing you said in an interview, we just like your music. And we’ve just stuck to that. And it’s the same thing that works with me and Doctor P, we just write music, and it’s more of a community so our involvement is the same as always. Speaking to people at shows and trying to meet people and just hearing new music and just bringing it in. We’re trying to build Circus as a community of like-minded people that love writing music and don’t want to deal with all the shit of having to make a certain sound because radio is going to like it or the bassline has got to be more like this because it’s what the clubs like. Fuck it man and do what you want, you’re an awesome producer and we have faith in you as an artist, write whatever you want and we’ll get it together and we’ll release it. And that’s what Circus has been from the very start and it’s just growing, and I really hope it will always be here.

Flux Pavilion plays Stereosonic 2012 - buy tix here. Plus don't forget to enter our competition to win a double pass in the city of your choice.

Listen to Flux Pavilion on Pulse Radio