Empire strikes again
The eccentric yet electric dance duo return, writes Kathy Mccabe
LUKE Steele is having a mascara malfunction. As Emperor Steele, the supreme commander of Empire Of The Sun alongside Lord Littlemore, he is immaculately uniformed, coiffured and made- up. But assuming his character on a Wednesday morning has its trials, including a new brand of mascara that is irritating his eyes.
‘‘Snaps (his wife) just bought it and it’s not working,’’ he says, laughing.
Not irritating at all is Ice On the Dune, the much-anticipated second record from these eccentric music makers.
Steele and Nick Littlemore, alongside their team that includes PNAU’s Peter Mayes and electro-pop, go-to studio boffin Donnie Sloan, took their sweet time following up the international success of Walking On a Dream.
The Emperor was flat-chat touring it around the world while the Lord returned to his PNAU day job and hung out with the carney folk at Cirque du Soleil.
And now he is back on the road while Littlemore slips back into his studio cave.
Ice On the Dune got its live introduction off-Broadway in the US before two concerts at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Vivid Festival. Anticipation for the record is high, with their American label gunning for No.1 and the band booked for all the big entertainment shows there.
‘‘The shows in America were pretty awesome. For me it kinda felt like the day before your wedding – there’s so much running through your brain like flowers, cars, speeches,’’ Steele says.
‘‘For the show, it was costumes, setlist, music, the lights, do we have enough gaffer tape?
‘‘We were like the only live band on this festival called Electric Daisy Carnival. We got to meet (David) Guetta right before we went on. I think we are going to do some music together.’’
You can’t doubt the possibility. Walking On a Dream got shout- outs from the world’s most influential tastemakers including Jay-Z and Kanye West, while Guetta has already lent his talents to the second album with a remix for first single, Alive. Maybe Steele felt the pressure of following up a record that had done the business worldwide in the early recording sessions. He admits it took a while to hit their groove.
The Sleepy Jackson frontman dismisses any suggestion the awkward sessions had anything to do with Littlemore’s refusal to tour off the back of the first album or their weird conversations via the media in the months after Walking On a Dream first came out in 2008.
However, he does admit that having been the only one in the Empire team who experienced the energy of the crowds on the world tour may have contributed to feeling out of whack with the rest of the crew when they sat down to create the second album.
‘‘With this one, everything felt backwards. I would go to sing and it would come out in the wrong key, play a chord and it would come out wrong, shake Nick’s hand and he would be on the other side of the room,’’ he explains. ‘‘It felt like our heartbeats for a while weren’t in sync, but once the tyranny of distance got washed away, all the kinks were ironed out.’’
Steele and Littlemore have always spoken of their music, collectively and individually, in terms of the imagination rather than the monetisation.
Ice On the Dune is a concept, an animated musical yet to be filmed.
As Steele has explained, its story follows the theft of the Emperor’s headdress by the King Of Shadows, bringing chaos to the world. He doesn’t know why such high concepts should draw sniggers or cynicism.
‘‘I don’t know what that is; maybe some people’s ears are tuned not to hear and I’ve seen that happen so many times,’’ he says.
‘‘We wanted to do something that makes people feel good, something that has imagination.’’ Empire Of The Sun’s Ice On the Dune is out today.