BACK WITH A BANG

PNAU are back and ready to Go Bang in Hobart next month, as Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes told Kane Young

AUSTRALIAN electro-pop pioneers PNAU “want to take you to another dimension” with the sounds of their long-awaited new album, Changa.

Speaking to Pulse from Los Angeles recently, the night before they flew back to Australia for the ARIA Awards — where their single Chameleon received the pointy trophy for Best Dance Release — PNAU’s Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes said the diverse Changa would take listeners on a trip back to the good old days of dance music.

“Changa harks back to a time when electronic music was not so compartmentalised,” Mayes explained.

“It harks back to a time when you could go out and hear a bunch of different styles. There wasn’t a uniform you had to wear. There was people of all different ages doing their thing.

“That was our teenage years, and it had a huge influence on us. These days we don’t really focus on whatever’s happening in electronic music, especially because we make albums — we’re not putting out singles every month. Your albums are your legacy.”

“And that’s also how you get your best stuff,” Littlemore continued.

“If you just make the one or two [songs] that shine, you don’t travel the length and breadth of your artistry, learn new things and challenge yourself.

“We’re always trying to come up with something new. If it’s futuristic it will still have something vintage, and if it’s vintage it’ll have something from the future.

“It’s always going to coagulate or assimilate together into a new form. PNAU are interested in new forms — new forms of energy, new forms of euphoria, new forms of magic.

“Even though this record is, at times, stridently techno, it still relays a dreaminess or otherworldliness at all times. We want to take you to another dimension.”

Released last month, Changa is PNAU’s first album since 2012’s Good Morning To The Night. Made in collaboration with their mentor, Sir Elton John, Good Morning To The Night debuted at No.1 on the UK

charts and in the top 5 in Australia.

Prior to that PNAU had already established a reputation for writing sure-fire club bangers, as found on their albums Sambanova (1999), Again (2003), PNAU (2007) and Soft Universe (2011).

Changa marks a successful comeback for PNAU, with fans getting right behind the ’90s rave-style single

Into The Sky, triple-platinum summer anthem Chameleon — which hit No.4 on the ARIA charts and has clocked up more than 25 million streams on Spotify — and latest single, Go Bang.

Changa is also the debut of PNAU as a trio, with Nick Littlemore’s brother Sam Littlemore (aka acclaimed songwriter and producer Sam La More) coming on board as a permanent member of the group last year.

“He approaches things kind of differently than us, but kind of similar,” Mayes said.

“Our abilities and our aesthetics cross over a lot, but he’s really good at the macro details. He really gets in there — I can’t even describe to you how detailed he gets, redrawing wave forms, really highly technical stuff which has a huge impact on the final result.

“We’ve done it before with him — he did a lot of work on our [2007] selftitled record — but this time he wasn’t doing much other music himself, so it was a good time for him creatively to bring him in and collaborate with him more closely.”

But Sam Littlemore hasn’t been the only recent addition to the PNAU camp, with Los Angeles-based Guyanese singer Shakira Marshall — formerly a backing vocalist for Lauryn Hill — sticking with the band since being brought in to sing on Chameleon.

“We’ve always wanted to have someone up the front with me, singing — ideally a girl,” Littlemore said.

“Kira wasn’t necessarily the character we were looking for, but wow, once we found her there was no looking back.”

Mayes added: “She did a backing vocals session for us a few years back, so we thought ‘Why not try her?’

“Then we wrote Chameleon on the first go, so it really worked. It has just been great, we’ve been touring with her all year.”

Marshall has added yet another new layer to PNAU’s renowned live show, which they’re bringing back to Hobart on New Year’s Day for their first Tasmanian performance in several years.

“We love Tassie, all our road crew are from there,” Littlemore said.

“We haven’t been in a while and we really miss it,” Mayes chimed in.

“We’ve actually always had quite a good time down there, and last time we had a bit of a wild one. There’s so many stories … It’s a fantastic place, and the people are up for it. We’ve had very enthusiastic audiences in Hobart over the years, so we’re very excited.

“New Year’s Eve is great and everything, but it’s no New Year’s Day.”

PNAU will Go Bang in The Goods Shed at Macquarie Point from 7pm on January 1. Tickets are $44.90, go to www.oztix.com.au for bookings.