Nicky Digital: New York City Party Life in Photos

NEW NOISE - Bag Raiders

I love Australians—their food, their denim (Ksubi!), their mentality, and of course, their music. Look at all the great dance groups that have come recently from Down Under: The Presets, Cut Copy, Midnight Juggernauts, etc.

So when a little birdie told me to check out Sydney duo Bag Raiders, I hopped on iTunes and bought their single Shooting Stars pronto (honestly! No illegal downloading occurred). I was not disappointed. The track is ultra-infectious; a lovely piece that verse-by-verse builds up into a joyous, feel-good chorus.

The guys just finished a month of North American gigs and are now back down in Oz, working on their debut album. They took a moment to answer a few questions of mine over email. Read on to get a sense of the band, hear about how they got together, their theory as to why Aussies are currently dominating the dancefloor - and make sure to check out the songs and videos for Shooting Stars and Fun Punch... It’s merely these two singles - not even a proper album yet - and a healthy body of remixes on which they’ve built their current momentum.

NICKY DIGITAL: So share a little background with me—how’d you two get together and form, etc?
BAG RAIDERS: We went to the same school. We used to sneak off and smoke cigarettes together in orchestra practice. A few years after we finished school we met up again and started hanging out, swapping music. We started messing around making music too. But it wasn’t dance music. At that stage we were both really into real electronic stuff (Warp Records, etc) so we were trying to do that. After a little while doing this (pretty unsuccessfully) we got into dance music. I guess we were both inspired by the party scene that took off here at around that time. I’m especially thinking of the Bang Gang parties that we used to go down to and have a lot of fun at. We started making bootlegs and edits that our DJ buddies would play at the club and I guess from there we started making our own dance tunes, doing remixes etc etc.

The Bag Raiders EP will be coming out this summer on Fool’s Gold with several new exclusive remixes!

And of course...How’d you choose your moniker?
Right when we first started out we made a mix CD with Gus from Bang Gang. We didn’t have that many records at that time so we just stole them from our other DJ friends and put them in the mix. We called the mix CD Bag Raiders and then took the name for our production too.

You’ve received loads of press and are currently touring—all of this on the strength of really only two singles. How is the tour going, given that audiences probably aren’t familiar with the majority of the material?
Ha. Yeah it’s true! We’re riding the wave right now. We have done a bunch of remixes though so I guess we’ve paid our dues. The tour in the Americas was amazing! We had so much fun. The shows were really varied. Like really, really varied. We went from playing to 3000 people in Colombia to 20 people in Chicago! Some of the best US shows were in the smaller cities - Madison, Sacramento, Atlanta (although that’s not that small, I know). I guess the Internet has changed the way that people access music now. It’s played a big part in allowing us to travel and tour when, you’re right: we’ve only had two original releases and both on vinyl.

Who/what are your influences?
We listen to loads of old stuff. Old funk and soul like Earth Wind and Fire, Gap Band, Hall and Oates, Bobby Caldwell. Old electronic producers like Jarre, Moroder, Hammer, YMO. And also movie soundtracks, cartoons, video games, chilli sauce, Bill Murray, ODB, the bird, big bird, this YouTube clip, Colonel Sanders and so on.

What can we expect from the full-length album? (And when can we expect it out in the states?)
Well we’ve just started working on it now we’ve got back from overseas. We’re hoping to have it out by the end of the year but it depends how fast we get it done now. As to what you can expect it’s hard to say because we’re not that far into writing it. I think there will definitely be some more pop orientated stuff on there. More radio friendly songs. I think everything we’ve been writing has been heading in that direction over the last year or so. Even our remixes have been slowly creeping away from the club towards the loungeroom. But having said that we’ve been getting pretty techno in the studio the last few days so who knows? We’ll have to wait and see.

Aussie dance is really making a splash at the moment - in addition to you guys, there’s Cut Copy, Empire of the Sun, The Presets, Midnight Juggernauts, etc. What is it about the land of Oz that seems to churn out such successful dancefloor tomes? Would you say there’s a bit of an australian music scene - are you friends with any of the the other groups?
They say that Giorgio Moroder once took a bath in the dam here so there’s a little disco inside everybody. Yeah, there’s definitely a scene going on here at the moment. We’re friends with most of the other bands and we’ve done remixes for a bunch of them too. The scene is really friendly, everyone is looking to help everyone else out. There’s no competition going on. EVERYBODY LOVES EVERYBODY.

You’ve also remixed several artists, including but not limited to K.I.M., Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy. How would you compare remixing another artist in relation to creating your own original tracks?
Remixes are fun. I suppose they give us an opportunity to try things out. And we don’t usually spend anywhere near as long on a remix as an original. With a remix you already have a starting point, something to go off. We did loads of remixes when we first started out but lately we’ve been saying no a lot because we’re trying to focus on doing a dope album.

What goes into producing your music video clips? How’d you conceptualize the Fun Punch and Shooting Stars videos?
We took a backward step for both of them really. The Fun Punch clip was all our buddy Beaufort’s idea. We conceptualised it and put the whole thing together. So we owe him for that one. The Shooting Stars‘ clip we just asked for a bunch of treatments and we liked Ron Winter’s the best. So we did the clip with him in NY while we were over there. It’s nice in a way to totally hand it over to someone else and let them bring their own ideas and meaning to the clip.

In addition to producing and releasing your own album...What lies ahead for bag raiders?
Right now the album is all we’re really thinking about. We’ve got a few months to knock the whole thing out and we want to make it as good as we can. After that we will hit the road again. Most probably go to Europe and hopefully back to Japan again. If we get the album out by the end of the year we’ll revamp our live show and tour it around Australia over summer. Hopefully after that we’ll get to take it overseas. We’ve only ever DJed overseas so far. I guess we have to hope people like the album. Please like the album…

Comments

1.  Be the first to comment! ↓

Leave a Comment