The Aston Shuffle  

The Aston Shuffle’s ascent to the top of the Australian dance music totem has been nothing short of startling. Only three years ago the duo of Vance Musgrove and Mikah Freeman were the sole toast of the Australian capital, before their unmistakable blend of big dance floor vibes and aurally striking hooks landed them on the radar of eager listeners and tastemakers alike, locally and abroad.

Raised in the darkened depths of DJ booths of Australian clubs, the ‘Shuffle have mastered their own club creations, canvassing some truly epic moments of sweaty, floor-stomping euphoria into the hearts and minds of many. Their early singles For Everyone, Stomp Your Shoes, and Do You Want More were trend-setting, altering the perceptions of the music community with a mash of references but their own truly unique sound. The boys tweaked their style even further with I Wanna See You, showing off a grittier side and giving a first taste test of their debut long-player release. Their latest gem, Your Love, fuses the group’s love of razor-edged electro breakdowns with an enslaving vocoder refrain – the single bubbles, sizzles and smokes, sparking like an overpowered dance floor bomb.

Showcasing their immaculate club pedigree, The Aston Shuffle triumphed in the 2010 instalment of Australia’s biggest DJ poll, the inthemix50, emerging victorious at not only the state, but national level - snatching a majority of some 65,000 votes to claim the treasured bounty, the title of Australia’s #1 DJs.

While they may’ve cut their teeth doing an infinite amount of late night club sets, DJing isn’t the only performance outlet for our heroes, with the duo set unveil a brand spankin’ new The Aston Shuffle Live show later this year, something which the twosome have laboured on for over a year now, twisting and tuning all the live components to meet their perfectionist standards. The Aston Shuffle’s live plans will see the group expand their horizons with a peerless, sensory altering and visual-heavy production show. There will be lights. There will be sound. Uniting in a hypnotic collage of colours, cues and pixels which will remain tattooed onto the retinas and etched into the soul.

Launching just in time for the Australian summer, The Aston Shuffle will premiere their polished live extravaganza at the iconic Shore Thing New Years Eve party at Bondi Beach, where the boys are headlining alongside house big guns David Guetta and Armand Van Helden.

Before unveiling their full live show plans for the summer, Musgrove and Freeman will no doubt be furiously tweaking the final elements of their debut album, due for release through Downright Music / Ministry of Sound Australia in early 2011. The first teasing strike from the LP, Your Love, caused sparks across the nation’s airwaves, hitting high rotation on both Triple J and Nova, while other stations are drawn daily to the magnetism of the release. Even in light of this, The Aston Shuffle are yet to show the extent of their electronic arsenal, as they go about crafting a record stuffed with enormous energy and the group’s own recognisable personality.

Now is the time of The Aston Shuffle. Their meteoric rise to this point in space and time has merely been a courting of aural foreplay, a tease of talents which this duo posses. Armed to the teeth, destruction is imminent.