Melbourne duo SYDE are one of Australian music's exciting new prospects; two lads barely out of high school who are paving their own way into the indie-electronica scene.
It's no more teachers, no more books for Will Hyde and Mitch Stephens. If their names aren't familiar, their new song 'Above The Clouds' will more than likely be having been picked up for VISA's latest advertising campaign.
We catch up with Will and Mitch to talk new music and what's coming next from the dynamic beatmakers.
It's been a quick rise for you two since being Unearthed; is it strange to think that only a year or so ago you were both in school?
It’s definitely been really weird adapting to a full music schedule – with lots of studio sessions and rehearsals – so in that way it has been strange.
But we’ve always looked forward to taking music seriously post school, so we eased into it pretty well. It’s a great ‘job’. The hardest part is being our own bosses and knowing when we should give ourselves breaks in the middle of the craziness.
What have been some of the biggest changes in your lives since getting your music noticed?
The biggest change in our lives is probably having us and the people around us take our music more seriously. We’ve also learnt how to appreciate achievements, but also set the bar higher for what want to do in the future.
We’ve definitely received a lot of validation by the fact that people seem to vibe our music. So from a production standpoint, we feel like we are a lot more confident in ourselves and our creativity.
Do you share any concerns of burning out or losing the momentum you've built up so far?
Music has taught us that things will slow down at times, but we’ve learnt to be patient and back ourselves with the records we’ve put out there as well as knowing that we have a catalogue of unreleased records that we think will definitely help build up momentum in the future.
It’s been a wave in the sense that our momentum has come and gone in between releasing tracks, but it’s just one of the risks of being an artist. It’s all worth it in the end.
You released the debut single 'Orbit' in 2017; what did you want to achieve with your new song 'Above The Clouds'?
With ‘Above The Clouds’ we really wanted to write another song that connected to people like 'Orbit' did. We didn’t know how people were going to react or how it would be received, but the response from our friends and family and people from all around the world hearing the song was so positive.
It was pretty amazing/ unexpected hearing it all over the radio and TV too. We underestimated the feeling of hearing it around at home; it feels really nice.
What was it like working with Olivia Reid for vocals on the track?
Liv was great to work with, she’s so talented. It was a super-easy process. Like Ashe, we found her on YouTube and we couldn’t have been happier with the first demo she sent us.
The final record sounds pretty much like the first demo, besides our changes to the production. She’s amazing.
How did you two approach the creative process for producing the video clip for 'Above The Clouds'?
We sat down with Liv and bounced ideas off of each other, although with a small budget we found it a struggle to fit all of our ideas into the one video.
We eventually found Simon (the director of the video) who pitched an idea with a similar concept to ours, having people run around and being free, which is the core of the track's message.
He also came up with the idea of having a juxtaposition of the actual message of the track, where the interpretation of doing what you want can be for better of for worse, with the sinister ending which is at the end of the video.
Are you two working on new material, say for an EP or album?
Last year we wrote a decent amount of ideas, so we’ve spent the last few months finishing off all of those records and also starting new ones.
Being out of school now, we have so much more time to write. We’ll probably work towards an EP, because we feel like that’ll be our next step as an artist. But for the moment we’re keen to keep releasing singles.
Being quite young, do you feel looked down upon by older bands/ artists or listeners?
For sure, and also the fact that we haven’t studied music in a traditional sense, rather teaching ourselves, is always going to mean people will have opinions about our musical ability. But we write what we feel and with passion, so we don’t see ourselves as being any different.
Have your parents gone on tour with you previously?
We haven’t actually toured yet, we’re still putting our live show together, which we’re super keen to debut in the next couple of months.
What is your vision for SYDE into the future?
Our vision for SŸDE includes releasing all of this music we’ve been finishing as well as touring heavily later in the year. Playing shows is something we really want to start doing, as we want to be able to interact with the supporters of our music.
