Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore, otherwise known as Empire of the Sun, are an indie- electro duo from Australia. Feverishly tipped for 2009, Tom Sargeant decided to make a long distance call to their famously unpredictable front man.
The voice on the other end of the line is not that of the crimson lovechild of Adam Ant and a geisha that stares out from the band’s promotional images, nay, it is just that of a bloke that’s had a bloody long day. Blow-by-blow, Luke Steele explains how he has been working on a new house designed for his wife and their three month old daughter: “I’ve been trying to learn how to plaster. Yeah, it seems easy, hey, like you just smear it on…but it’s not!”
He may be stepping closer to the picket fence now but Steele’s vocal persona originally twitched into the limelight when he fronted the Perth-based indie group The Sleepy Jackson (a band not particularly known for their family values). Having not released anything since their 2006 hit album: “Personality – One Was a Spider, One Was a Bird”, does Empire of the Sun spell the end for The Sleepy Jackson? “It’s always kind of moving”, says Steele, “I’ve actually started this week…the new record, doing all the demos. I’ve just got so many songs: some acoustic and heaps of electric from over the past few years, I’ve just got to sift through it all. It’s been kinda good having a break from it, I’ve been running it for the last ten years.”
Retrospectively it seems that The Sleepy Jackson’s album “Personality…” pre-empted the current electro-pulse, representing a strong shift toward the present Empire of the Sun single, “Walking On A Dream”. The singer agrees: “I’ve always loved pop production, I guess getting stuff that sonically sounds high-fly and you could hear on the radio was good.” The album certainly has an overriding aural dynamic, so is it a concept piece? “It (the idea) was just to make it all feel good. With the lyric writing of the songs to sort of hone in on those experiences that you have when you felt – I don’t know – like, really sentimental. Kind of like when you’re in high school and you’re going out with the raddest girl and you think it’s gonna last forever. Then she ends up with say…your best mate. I guess the song “Without You” is a good example. ‘No phones, no tones, no sirens or police, without you…there’s nothing.’”
Similarly to Steele, Littlemore is well known in the Land of Oz through his Sydney-based tech band Pnau. Their collaboration cemented an ongoing relationship designed and fed by the close-knit scene down under. “I met Nick back in 2000 and we’ve been working together since then but we’d never actually made a record or anything. We’d only catch up on rare occasions but when we did it was very special. Over the years we’d do more and more songs and each time it would get more and more exciting. A couple of years ago we were like, we’ve gotta capitalize on this”
Often seen as a heady mash of sporadic, barmy, tumultuously intuitive and generally in-orbit musical genius, the frontman had previously been known as secluded and would operate solo when creating work, but there have been rumours of yet another collaboration in 2009, this time with none other than Silverchair singer and Aussie royalty, Daniel Johns. True? “Yeah, we’ve been doing a record up at his house, north of Sydney. We did a writing session in 2004 at Daniel’s London house, it’s just about done but we’re remixing ideas and production. I think the thing with me and Daniel is that we catch up even more rarely than me and Nick would. I think that’s just gonna be another record that when it’s right…it’s right.”
Luke’s relationship with Daniel Johns spans back to 2003 amid one of many band re-shuffles in Sleepy Jackson, just prior to a support slot on Silverchair’s “Diarama” tour. Luke recalls the time: “The guys that were in the band before, they left and I had to pay them all this money and all that fun stuff. Yeah, I think they saw that like, through the exposure that they’d got through my name…it was the perfect timing to bow out and get a record deal. You get a thick skin being in the industry. One of the guys was like my best friend, the two years before we hung out every day, literally every day. It’s taken me until now, which is like four years later, to get over it…it breaks your heart.”
Hearing Steele speak about something he has worked at, constantly, for all his life, the fantasy world that his music creates seems less far off and somehow less imaginary. One thing is certain though: whatever and wherever this decade has taken him, the Empire of the Sun has only just begun.
Empire of the Sun’s debut album “Walking on a Dream” is out now.
Words by Tom Sargeant, February 2009.
