Winner of last years ARIA award for best electronic artist as well as receiving international acclaim for their groundbreaking album ‘Six Feet Above Yesterday’ and the singles

‘Girls Can Be Cruel’ and ‘Natural’ Infusion are well and truly entrenched as one of Australia’s best live acts.

“Exciting” really is the word when it comes to summing up Infusion’s live gigs. With a solid pedigree in live performance, these guys consistently deliver the goods onstage. Why else would they be perennial faves for major Australian festivals like Big Day Out and in the same year booked for such prestigious international outings as the Roskilde Festival and Creamfields UK, or Glastonbury 2004 (where they performed twice)? Then, there are the recent slots at Creamfields in Argentina, guest gigs at top UK clubs including Renaissance and Fabric, and a relentless touring schedule that sees the trio regularly tripping through Europe, the US and Asia.

- The last couple of months have seen you guys on the road, doing some keynote dates in the States, can you tell us a little about that ?

Well, we traveled to the US a couple of months ago and did about 8 gigs there. We played LA, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, pretty much all the major cities. It's pretty important to keep going back there and let people know that you're still around and we had to remind them that we had an album about to be released there! It's common knowledge that just going and doing a couple of tours in the US is hardly going to make a dent so you just have to keep going back and keep going back, really stick at it before you start to see people seriously noticing your music. Most of the gigs this time were really great and you can slowly start to see people coming to the shows that really know the songs!

- You have also done the Festival season again in the UK and Europe, can you tell us where you have played, what Festivals have impressed you the most and which acts have you seen that have really impressed you ?

The festivals this year weren't too bad, actually. We played Homelands, The Glade, Wireless (which was in Hyde Park in London), Creamfields and Avrika in Sweden with The Faint and New Order. That was pretty special meeting Peter Hook from New Order and getting to know The Faint guys. They put on an awesome show- really impressed with the energy of their show. Wireless in London was a particular eye-opener for us because we were on reasonably early in the day so you naturally fear the worst for turn-out. The tent was pretty empty, then we came on and filled up within 5 minutes, so much so that they had to close the entrance to the tent because it had reached capacity! We didn't expect that to happen. Also, at the last minute we got moved to the Main Stage at Creamfields to play at sunset right before Faithless and so seeing about 10,000 people in front of us was a real buzz! We had a good time up there!

- Your album is just about to be released in the States, what are your plans in the future there ?

The plan is to go back to the states for just over a month after we do a few smaller Australian shows. This time when we go back, we'll be playing a lot of cities we've never been to before so it will be nice to play to new crowds and we'll play all kinds of venues just so we can play to the variety of different crowds. We're lucky that the label (Thrive) who are releasing "Six Feet Above Yesterday" believe in it so much. It makes a big difference to us when you put a lot of your own time and energy into something to know that there are label people equally pushing as hard to get your album out there, to be heard on radio and TV and all that business. We think the album we have could do ok in the states if its presented to them in the right way- a lot of the slightly-left-of-centre bands that we love do quite well there even though they're not obvious chart fodder.

- I believe the single 'Natural' is also about to be released in the UK, along with a Meat Katie remix ?

That's right, it'll be out here at the beginning of October, I think. It's a bit disappointing because it should have been out earlier but sometimes there are things you have no control over, unfortunately. Whenever we've played it live here in the UK, it's gotten a great reaction so hopefully it might do ok… time will tell, I guess! And yes, Meat Katie and Elite Force did a mix for us as well as mix from an artist from Dave Seaman's Audiotherapy label, Stel. As a matter of fact, "Natural" will be on an episode of "The O.C."! We never would have thought our music would be on a US drama show, let alone two of our tracks but they do actually have a decent soundtrack so their in good company!

- You have relocated to the UK now to live for part of the year, how are you guys finding being on the road most of the time, are you missing home, or is it a case of having to travel where your career takes you?

We knew when it looked like the label in the UK were going to release the album that we'd probably have to spend a fair bit of time here. It's pointless to have an album come out and then not support it with gigs, so given our past experience of tours here, we thought it would make more sense to rent a house rather than stay in expensive hotels. It's nice to come back after gigs to a "home" rather than a sterile hotel room. It also allowed us to set up a temporary studio and get some work done while we stayed here. We're living in Brighton because it's cheaper than London, it's nice to go for walks in the day to clear your head and we have a few friends down here to keep us amused at the pub. It's been a really good experience and I guess there's that natural feeling of missing your friends and Australia in general because it's the best place in the world but I couldn't imagine complaining about playing amazing gigs, meeting new people and generally just experiencing new places. It's the best part of this career.
 
- Aside from your touring schedule you have also started your own label, can you tell us a little about that and what releases you have planned for the future?

Polaroid Recordings- Music For Vinyl was the original name for the label but the threat of legal action from a photographic manufacture forced us just to stick with Music For Vinyl. The idea of the label is to have control over the release of all our 12 inches and to release music from people I like. Basically myself and Danielle (our manager) run it, A&R it and 3 Beat in the UK get it out there. We've signed up tracks from Del 5 (who did stuff on Paperecordings and Shaboom) with vocals from the singer of Crazy Penis which is an awesome house track. We laso have a track from a pretty unkown Greek producer which is a great, minimal tech track and another brilliant piece of music from Astro & Glyde. A really funky vocal acid number and the remix is by none other than Luke Fair. We don't make much money at all from the vinyl but it's just a fun way of getting music out without having to deal with slow major labels.

- This question is specifically for Jamie ... You were quite seriously injured recently after a gig in Brisbane, that kept you out of action for a while, was that work related or were you running amok at the time?

Yes, I did get injured rather severely falling about 4 meters onto my head. I fractured 7 of my upper vertebrae, a rib, my left knee, thumb and toe. I was rather too close to death than I would normally like after I stopped breathing for a couple of minutes. It was probably the scariest day of my life. I was out with some Brisbane friends after a great gig and felt like celebrating so I drank probably a little more than average and made the bad decision to climb a tree. My footing slipped and the rest is history. I had to rest for a while and the doctors told me I should stay in bed a lot longer but it happened a few weeks before we were due to come to the UK. It just made me even more determined to limp onto the plane and make sure this UK trip would be worth it. The last thing I wanted to do was let everyone else down because of what I had done so it's just a case of mind over matter. My back still really hurts but I just try to put it out of my head.

- How are your plans coming along for the new album ... have you commenced recording?

We've been working on little sketches of ideas but nothing that concrete. There are a few very strong ideas so far which we're excited about and we've put some ideas for album tracks into our live set and are going down really well. So far we're keeping it all rather rough around the edges and that's how we're seeing this album heading- when we do start to work solidly on the album, we've decided to work fast and capture a lot more energy than we have recorded before. We want to make a really exciting album, nothing too shiny!

Jetting in for an exclusive intimate performance prior to their extensive US tour Australian world-beating electronic act Infusion play Ambar on Friday September 23.

Subculture presents
INFUSION LIVE
Friday September 23 : 10pm til late
Ambar