Q&A: Kim Moyes (The Presets)

The Presets – This Boy’s in Love (Lifelife Remix)
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Kimberley Isaac Moyes is the drummer and keyboard/synth player of the Australian electronic duo The Presets. On his own, he makes some enchantingly brutal, unorthodox dance music under the moniker K.I.M. He chatted with us on the phone from his hotel room in downtown New York before gearing up to DJ some gigs across the country. In September, The Presets and fellow Aussies Cut Copy will co-headline a North America tour (see dates below). We dug the last time they swung by Brooklyn, and for the record, so did he: “We had such a blast at that show, besides the fact that we were both sick as dogs. It was fucking great.”

EM: If you could have anyone remix one of your songs, who would it be?
KM: We’ve had some pretty good luck so far with the remix guys that we’ve chosen. We pretty much get whoever we pick, except we’ve been trying to get Maurice Fulton. We’ve asked three or four times. I would for him to say to yes once.

EM: How do you approach your remixes? Do you try to transform the song into something new or do you try to refine what’s already there?
KM: We’ve stopped doing remixes for other people—if we spend time doing music, we’d rather be doing our own stuff. When we did do remixes the plan was to grab the vocal or the acapella and build a brand new track underneath it. It’s not even remixes—it’s kind of covering the song, in a way, or writing a completely new bed for the vocal.

EM: What about remixes of your own songs—what makes a good one?
KM: It depends on the song, but generally we try to get a couple of different people to do different vibes. That’s the main thing for a remix, is to get DJs to play it. Because a DJ will generally not play an original—they always want to play a remix. It’s good to balance it out. We’ll try to get someone who’s got, like, a big club sound, something that’s kind of deeper and more spaced out, something you could imagine a mainstream DJ playing. Then smaller club remixes, which you could imagine more cooler DJs would play. More chin-stroke-y, sort of. Then you have sort of more clever—not necessarily dance—more artsy remixes or whatever. Get all those things kicked off in a 12-inch. It’s a pretty good package.

EM: How would you say the music you make as K.I.M. is different from the music you make as The Presets?
KM: Well, it’s very different. It obviously doesn’t have half the input from Julian [Hamilton] that it has as The Presets. It’s pop music in The Presets, so it’s geared towards that kind of goal—traditional song structures, choruses, a little bit of vocals. I guess the stuff that I do by myself is kind of like sketches, or like experiments that become fulfilled ideas. And it’s generally geared towards the dance floor. There’s no particular one sound that I’m going for. I’m trying to experiment with production styles, and musical and creative ideas that I have. Yeah, it’s quite different…I’m not following any rules when I do my own stuff. It’s really like absolute vomit.

EM: Did you just call your music vomit?
KM: Yeah, absolute vomit. Like the perfect spew.

EM: Haha, okay. How did you learn to play the drums?
KM: Well, when I was growing up, my mom was a crazy, crazy Pentacostal Christian and she would take us to one of those fucked up Christian church places, where they speak in tongues and fall on the ground. There was a rock band there and different players would teach different instruments. My sister decided to learn the drums. She’s six years older than me. I said I wanted to learn the drums too. We went to two classes and she stopped going. I found a teacher and I learned and learned and learned. I’ve been never played drums in a band until The Presets, actually. Like, I switched over to classical percussion and vibraphone and stuff like that. That’s what I learned when I went to high school and university.

EM: So a bunch of Australian bands are huge right now, like The Presets, Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts. Do you think there’s such a thing as an "Australian sound"?
KM: Not really. If you asked the other guys—who are all really dear friends of ours and we’re really big fans of—they’d probably say the same thing. They come from Melbourne and we come from Sydney. I guess we’re similar in the kind of clubbiness of all of these three bands, but musically it’s pretty different. And, yeah, it’s weird, for us guys in it…if you take away two bands in those three then you don’t have an Australian sound. I guess it’s just like one of those weird timing things. The more I talk and think about it, actually, The Avalanches—they had a big record about 10 years ago—I think they really had an impact on bands like The Presets and Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts. They are an amazing band that came out of nowhere in the time of, like, DJ Shadow and great sample music and pop music or whatever….It’s just like far out and great, and we kind of look at them as the real torch-bearers of what we do. It’s not really even similar music, but it is in a way because it’s kind of like pop music gone wrong, but done right.

EM: What are the top three songs that get you dancing right now?
KM: 1. Guy Gerber and Chaim—It’s kind of really spaced-out techno chants, which I really love.
2. A remix of one of our songs, “Talk Like That,” by Optimo Espacio, that will be out soon.
3. “What What (In The Butt)” by Samwell—It’s pretty gay.

The Presets and Cut Copy
Joint Headline Tour Dates 2008

SAT 9/13 – Monolith Festival – Denver, CO
MON 9/15 – The Record Bar – Kansas City, MO
TUES 9/16 – Fine Line Music Cafe- Minneaplis, MN
WED 9/17 – Metro – Chicago, IL
FRI 9/19 Sound Academy – Toronto, Ontario
SAT 9/20 – Club Soda – Montreal, Quebec
SUN 9/21 – Webster Hall – New York City, NY
MON 9/22 – Webster Hall – New York City, NY
TUE 9/23 – Paradise – Boston, MA
THURS 9/25 – The Trocadero Theater – Philadelphia, PA
FRI 9/26 9:30 Club – Washington D.C.
SAT 9/27 Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
MON 9/29 – Emo’s Alternative Lounge – Austin, TX
TUES 9/30 – Granada Theater – Dallas, TX
FRI 10/3 – The Glass House – Pomona, CA
SUN 10/5 – Mezzanine – San Francisco, CA
TUES 10/7 – Hawthorne Theater – Portland, OR
WED 10/8 – Showbox At The Market – Seattle, WA
THURS 10/9 – Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, B.C.