Prepare for takeoff with Australian electronic producers Flight Facilities as they leave the tarmac for another round of live shows around the country.
Co-pilots James Lyell and Hugo Gruzman hit the skies with brand new music that they’ve been releasing piecemeal since the middle of last year. It all started with ‘Arty Boy’, followed by ‘Need You’ featuring Nika.
Now the lads have airdropped their new banger ‘All Your Love’ featuring folk singer-songwriter Dustin Tebbutt. “It’s another one of those tracks that’s a little bit brooding and is a mixture of a style that we’ve never really dabbled in,” James says.
“It’s got some folk elements in there, obviously Dustin coming from that world brought that vibe. It was really interesting because delving into that territory we weren’t sure what was going to happen, but we got a really good response and it’s a really cool thing to be playing live.
“It fits in really well with the other things and dynamically it feels good too to be able to play it alongside other brooding tracks like ‘Clair de Lune’ or even house-ier tracks like ‘Down To Earth’. It fits really well and we’re stoked to put it into the coming tour show and see how it goes.”
Flight Facilities have built their career on collaborating with other artists on their tracks and James says he and Hugo were having trouble finishing ‘All Your Love’ before Dustin became involved. “It started with Dustin getting in touch and saying he wanted to write,” he explains.
“Hugo and I were working on a track that wasn’t working out, so the main component of the track we gave to Dustin, which was just the chords you hear in the chorus.
"He came back with the actual chorus line pretty quickly and then we had a couple more sessions from there and the track came [together] pretty naturally.”
It's been three years of radio silence from Flight Facilities in terms of new music since their 2015 album ‘Live With The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’ and James says both he and Hugo had concerns too much time had passed under their wings.
“The golden rule is that you’re only as good as your last song, so if you’ve not been around for ages and come out with a whopper of a single then it doesn’t matter how long you’re out for before the focus is back on you,” he says.
“Not that we’ve done that yet,” he laughs, “but hopefully in the future we can do that, just keep a steady stream of music to remind people we’re there; we do what we do and we’re not trying to be anyone but ourselves. It’s something we stick to and [we] have conviction in the art that we do.”
For the upcoming ‘All Your Love’ tour Flight Facilities will be landing at terminals across Australia and James says he and Hugo have been busy tinkering with their live show to make sure they reach maximum cruising altitude.
“We’re getting into the studio to make a whole new show for it,” he says, “and we’re going to be bringing out some guest vocalists here and there, and a couple of surprises so it will be really cool to shape another live show creatively, which is always super fun to do.
“We’re excited about it and the last one we did was small because we were coming back from not touring for a while and this run is the size we love to do, so it’s real exciting to be back in these rooms again after so long.”
No doubt Flight Facilities tend to take extended breaks from our radars and James agrees, but says that even though he and Hugo may not the most prolific of artists, they wholeheartedly believe in the quality and craftsmanship of what music they do produce.
With a batch of new music idling in the hangar, James says it all comes down to how best to release it into the world.
“We’re surveying the landscape and seeing what it is we should do with all the music we’ve written, whether it’s an album, whether it’s drip-feeding more tracks over a longer period of time or anything in between,” he says.
“We’re having a look at what will be best for our project and the people that care listening to it. We’re going to be making some decisions in the next couple of months and see what happens after that but we’re really excited to keep making and releasing music, it’s a really good feeling.
“As long as we keep getting a good response, we’ll keep doing it; in what way they’ll be released is a mystery, even to us,” he laughs.
Flight Facilities Australia Tour 2018
22-24 Aug - The Enmore Theatre (Sydney)Sat 25 Aug - Wollongong Uni Hall
Sun 26 Aug - Newcastle Exhibition & Convention Centre
Wed 29 Aug - Forum (Melbourne)
Fri 31 Aug - Thebarton Theatre (Adelaide)
Sat 1 Sep - Fremantle Arts Centre
4-5 Sep - The Tivoli Theatre (Brisbane)
Fri 7 Sep - NightQuarter (Gold Coast)
13-14 Sep - Forum (Melbourne)
