Progressive-Sounds: How is the tour for going for you guys?
Phil: Pretty good, it's been great. We've played loads of places with some new places we've never been to and it's been really well received. We are pretty happy for it to be over because we hate airports.

Progressive-Sounds: Is this a live set from the 'Because We Can' LP?
Phil: We were kind of aiming to do that but we had a couple of runs in Australia where we realized that we were stressing it too much. Neither of us had really played live. We both go out and DJ generally. What we realized when trying to play live was we just got so stressed out and we couldn't really enjoy ourselves. Half the thing when you are playing is you've got to exude an atmosphere of having fun. We couldn't really do that playing live and being so stressed out. We said, let's try to have fun more than anything and that will come through. So we've been djing and it's been great. We've never really dj'd with anyone, like one on one. We have an effects unit, we had a DJ100 on the road and you know, just looping stuff and being silly with things. It's been really good fun.

Progressive-Sounds: Are the sets inspired from the LP?
Phil: Well, its just stuff that inspires us generally I guess, like where we are right now in our heads musically. It's good, myself and Luke are right at the same place musically so it's pretty easy to dj with one another.

Progressive-Sounds: Phil, you are an ambassador for Pioneer ProDJ, what are your opinions on the future of djing and technology. Will there always be a place for vinyl?
Phil: Oh man, Ive been djing with cds ever since you could dj with cds. I mean being in Australia in the 90s, I've had these crazy friends coming out with these acetates and they would be playing all this mad music. I couldn't really cut acetates in Australia. People would give me stuff on cd and I'd be like "I really want to play this music" and if I can't use a cd player than I can't use this music. I had to get on board. I found myself playing a lot of cds before it was in vogue. With the 1000s it just made the process so much simpler and more natural feeling. It's easy man.

The whole mp3 thing is great. I'll just get in AIM or MSN and go to djdownload and beatport and places like that. Like, if we are half way into the tour and bored with what we are doing or have over played one record, I can just get online and between that night and the next day I have a whole new set of music to play. It's just really made life easier for us really.

Regarding vinyl, I am not going to sit here and hold it sacred like some will. For me it's always been about a format that I can play. As long as I can mix it then I can play it. I won't hold anything to close to my heart musically, stylistiucally or genre wise. It's here, it's now, its happening. Next year could be something else. If it makes my life easier than I am going to embrace it.

Progressive-Sounds: How is your dynamic on stage together?
Phil: When we are together on stage, Lukie will be doing a mix and I'll be doing effects over the top and even while we're mixing I'll be doing a mix and it'll be slightly going out and I'll find Lukie correcting it on the other cd player. So we are constantly helping each other out when we are up there. Luke will turn and say I need help getting out of this mix, so I'll come up with a plan of how to actually turn something that is quite full sounding at that point into something very minimal sounding so we can mix out. It's just really communication and team work while we are playing. It's been working surprisingly well.

Progressive-Sounds: Your LP took 2 years to complete and you like to create everything together, like a band. What do you think is lost from simply mailing bits and pieces back and forth as some other xxx do?
Phil: Being able to look at each other and have a laugh, or to comment "that is really sick." The whole intensity of when you create something amazing with another person. There are records I've done with Luke, for example, where we listen to a section of a record and we'll be sitting there for a whole day just listening to that section and looking at each other saying "Fuck dude." We seriously will just sit and listen to a section for a whole day and getting enthused about it.

Progressive-Sounds: Roots, then Burma, what is next?
Phil: We've got a few things that we want to work on at the moment. We have one thing currently up our sleeves that we want to work on for another day or two to finish it. Basically, we are going to be in Europe together in June. Hopefully we will have a studio set up.

Progressive-Sounds: Follow up lp?
Phil: We hope so, It's not really up to us, its up to GU. We'd love to do another one at some point, yeah.

Progressive-Sounds: Colin couldn't have said it any better regarding Theme from a Fairytale He writes "..if you are sitting focussed on it while you listen, it will most certainly send chills down your spine" Is that what you were looking for when you said "We hope that this album will make people listen to music differently"
Phil: We never had a game plan. All we wanted to do was approach every piece of music we did differently. Sit there and think about a concept on a piece of music and go "ok, this track we want this track to sound like this," you know, lets listen to Steve Wright or something and lets make a modern version of that. Or, ok this track Villain, was all about people who liked Burma, so we said "lets make this track in that vein." We didn't want a whole lp of Burmas, but we knew we had to revisit that theme again at some point. Simply, there we so many people that were into it. But generally there was no gameplan. It was just about making music that we were into that wasn't necessarily made for the dancelfoor. But again knowing that we were producing for a dance label we had to make tracks that were going to be accessible to the dance floor to a degree so we had to balance that between being self indulgent.

Progressive-Sounds: Theme from a Fairytale is really a great track
Phil: Demon Habersham came over to Australia and we were working on it one morning and Luke came in and heard it and was like uh..FUCK and it sorta went from there and by the end of the day it was done.

Progressive-Sounds: What did you think of having Sasha remix Burma and what did you think of his mix?
Phil: It was such a long time ago now, myself, Nubreed and Scott Carelli and Sasha, we were in Brisbane. Luke had already sent the demo to Sasha and I remember at the end of the gig Sasha came over and was asking about Burma. He said it was the sickest record and wanted us to finish it. So we did and he said we couldn't put it out until his next compilation. So we had to sit on Burma for quite a long time until the comp came out and it turned out well and we got a really good remix out of Sasha so it was great.

Progressive-Sounds: What is the word on your Sade remix?
Phil: We've got this two track sitting here from Logic session. Its somewhere, we will really have to dig deep to find that one. It is pretty lofi, I mean it was our first project together and the beats are pretty shit, but its Sade so its obviously got amazing vocals. But yeah, if we ever do find it and get back to it, I guess in this day and age, we could probably knock it out in a day. Who knows, there are no plans to do it but we may find ourselves inspired one day.

Progressive-Sounds: Will there be a follow up to the lp?
Phil: Part of our contract with GU is to do a mix cd for them, but again, we'd love to but it's not our decision to make at this point, that's GU's decision to take that option up. We'd love to.

Progressive-Sounds: Luke, talk about your new label Trojan Records. What do you have coming up?
Luke: The next thing we have coming out after Dan Mangan - Resorcerer is a basically a remix weren't quite right for the label, I already knew it when I did the remixes, I knew they weren't going to take them, basically it's a little a double sider, called the unreleased or something volume 1 and the first one, on one side, is Mad Arps 'Slow It Down' which is a remix I did the first day I got the parts for that track from black hole. I knew they weren't going to take it because I knew its not what they wanted so I did that remix that day and I had to do another version the next day. The other one is called Swedish Meatballs. Its basically a remix I did for Lost Language that um, there is this big confusion, long story, but um, I just ended up losing the vocals and then putting it out.

Progressive-Sounds: You have a new 'tracker' project with Shiloh. Can you shed a little light on what you are aiming for with it?
Luke: Loads of stuff happening with that. We are just looking for rappers and vocalists and were going to the publishers and trying to get vocalists. That project isn't really aimed at this industry, it's aimed at way more the commercial industry.

Progressive-Sounds: Any vocalists or rappers in particular?
Luke: We aren't looking for anyone in particular; we are looking for people that can do what we want

Progressive-Sounds: When you say aimed at the commercial industry, what do you mean by that Is it commercial like what BT did on his latest effort?
Luke: No, BT's not commercial, I'm talking like the Chemical Brothers.

Progressive-Sounds: Luke, you are also releasing the Addicted comp on Platipus, how did that go?
Luke: I did that remix a long time ago now, it had taken them a while to get all the tracks licensed but um its still goes with what I'm playing at the moment. It definitely does. There are a lot of the tracks by the same people I'm playing today - Thomas Schumacher for example.

I heard they got the cd back and there's a glitch in track 4. When the downloaded it from me they didn't actually check the tracks so they went and printed the whole thing. They are actually doing a little surgery on it. I am on tour so I can't help with that.

Progressive-Sounds: Hot tracks at the moment?
Luke: Anything by Thomas Schumacher, and anything by Huggotron

Progressive-Sounds: What was it like working with James Holden?
Luke: It was funny man, he giggled, like anyone else I work with its usually fun. We haven't even finished the project we were working on and I haven't talked with James for a long time because we are both so busy.