Fletcher Ehlers takes us through Slumberjack’s Asian tour for Music Matters & the Ultra Music Festival

For Perth electronic duo Slumberjack, September saw some pretty hectic and invaluable experiences come their way, with their first trip out into the South East Asian market bringing them to Music Matters and the Ultra Music Festival. Having become a larger name in the States through this year especially, for Fletcher and Morgan, 2016 has been a year of levelling up and taking their music to more people around the world.

Reflecting on their trip, Fletcher lets us in on what Slumberjack learned while on the road and what experiences they’ve brought back home with them.

How did your Music Matters experience treat you this year and how did it feel being part of what was a diverse and talented Australian contingent of musicians representing?

We were (I think) the only electronic act from Australia and it was quite refreshing to be taken into that different environment and have the chance to meet up with a bunch of local Aussie bands who are doing great stuff. We’ve already met up with some of the vocalists we met over there to do some writing.  

Were there any significant lessons or high points that you took away from the event that you’re going to apply to the Slumberjack project moving forward?

Through the conference, there was a strong focus on bringing music to South East Asia; it’s a market that can be so easily overlooked in our very Western sphere of experience. We’re definitely going to focus a lot more on making sure we can reach fans there and are eager to get touring in that part of the world.

How receptive would you say crowds in Asia (from what you’ve experienced) are becoming to Australian crowds and electronic music?

We met up with a few fans after one of the club shows we did and learnt that, although its been slow, more and more people are starting to listen to the types of music we like making. At the moment, it seems to be a bit of an underground culture for bass music which means that the real fans are super excited and keen to come out to the shows.

I see you guys also did the Ultra Music Festival – for anyone who might not be familiar with the event, can you tell us a bit about that vibe and how it may have matched up (or didn’t) with your original expectations for it? 

Ultra is a pretty impressive festival worldwide and this year they ran it for the first time in Singapore. It was impressively hot and humid but all round a super fun show. Being in the heart of Singapore, there was limited space to work with so the festival had a nice compact feel while still having the great sound and stage production of large scale festival.

Slumberjack is becoming a name known around the globe now and it’s no surprise as to why – has this growth in profile been one you’ve noticed much, or have you guys been pretty good at keeping focused? 

It always feels slow to us. Morgan and I are both always thinking about the future and the next steps to get us there; so much so that we never really give ourselves a chance to think about how far we’ve come since our clean shaven, gelled hair days.

Being able to travel with your music and meet so many different type of people has to be a huge part of having a career in music that you’d absolutely love – what’s been a particular high point of your touring year this year?

Meeting new people is always good for the soul – everyone has such interesting stories to tell and we’re lucky enough to now have a network of friends in places all over the world so we’ll never feel alone when touring. Because everyone in the industry is always travelling, it’s so easy to keep in touch with everyone, you never know who you’re going to see in any given city – I almost see my mates from the other side of the world more often than my mates from the other side of the Perth Swan River.

It’s nuts to think about the reach music can have with audiences in so many different music markets now; do you think having so many platforms to share and create music, especially the sort of music Slumberjack does, can be a bit of a hindrance as well as an advantage?

The more the merrier for us! Having more platforms isn’t going to make less people listen to music so overall it has to be a positive move. I guess it’s a bit of an annoyance when it comes to actually getting the music onto all those platforms, but luckily for us we have an amazing team who handles that side of things. 

Can you tell us a bit about what you’re currently working on at the moment and what you’re looking forward to the most as 2016 winds up?

We’re most looking forward to releasing new music; after all that’s what this is all about. We have a bunch of great material which we’re really happy with so it’s just a matter of rolling it out in the best way possible.

Keep up to date with Slumberjack HERE.

 

 

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