As diverse (and diversified) as today’s Australian music scene is, some things just seem to stick together. And, like Cut Copy and the Midnight Juggernauts, for Melbourne band Outrun the world-beating sounds of 80s-tinged electro are pretty much the sound du jour. That’s not to say the trio are merely hooking into some general trend. Talking with Dan Preston (synthesisers, backing vocals) and Josh Armistead (lead vocals, synthesisers) at Preston’s Richmond ‘bubble’, where he works from home as a graphic designer, it’s clear that the Outrun sound has been a long time in coming. “Josh and I met down in Torquay around 10 years ago. We always used to just muck around on synths. And he was the one that could sing the best so, when this band started out, it naturally progressed that he would be the lead singer”, Preston says.       

The long process of working together has clearly paid off for the group. On debut full-length FutureNature, which has just been released through Inertia, Outrun conjure something as organic as could be hoped for from a band using primarily electronic instruments. “The whole album was recorded live with our collection of analogue synths and drum machines, basically just kicking back at my home studio, steering clear of the modern digital sound”, Preston says. Citing the filmic prog of Italian soundtrack band Goblin, Trans Am and Giorgio Moroder, the Outrun sound is as low-key as it is directly danceable. Songs such as ‘Runnaround’ and ‘Fire It Up’ pulse on 4/4 707 beats and are definite floor fillers, while ‘Neuromancer’ and ‘Overdrive’ are what Preston calls ‘journey songs’.

Living in Japan last year, Preston told me that seeing the Chemical Brothers live in a festival environment was a great inspiration. “While doing our record, their new stuff really influenced me. It’s something you can really dance to, but the writing and structure is great too”. As lead singer, Armistead, who performs solo in a more folk vein as well as in on-again/off-again collaboration TeamYes! (recently featured in WB’s 10 Bands To Watch), has the kind of low, resonant and foreboding voice perfect for minor-key electro atmospherics. Knowing his previous work, I thought there must be some plan behind this, but Preston assures that this isn’t so. “It just seemed to work out pretty well. Because we avoid that kind of shouty indie-electro and use his voice like another synth, it all sits pretty nicely in the mix”. On ‘Out of the Ashes’, a stand-out for FutureNature, Armistead’s vocal is as fore as it is back, a re-assuring human presence to lose yourself to while the beats kick in.

For fans of the band, it may seem odd that FutureNature is just now being talked into public consciousness. Strangely enough, Preston and Armistead had readied the album for self-release, even launching it successfully to a packed house at Roxanne Parlour in May earlier this year. A few days after the launch, flagship company Inertia came calling with an offer of promotion and distribution. “Like most record labels, I think they like to wait and see how dedicated you are, how much momentum and underground fan base you have. I think they like to see bands who really push themselves and don’t rely on a label. So word got around to them, and it went pretty smoothly from there”, Armistead says. In spite of having pressed a number of copies themselves, the group say they learnt a lot about industry machinations from the experience. In addition, Outrun were actually able to include three new tracks on the Inertia version of FutureNature, which Preston considers ‘the bigger ones’.  

In a live setting, Preston and Armistead are joined by Mark O’Keefe, who adds live bass to a mix of live synths, vocals and backing beats and samples. “Mark’s from a jazz background so he’s a bit of a genius and does really well playing the arpeggiated bass lines live”, Preston says. Having honed their chops playing a number of private warehouse parties as well as club nights in Melbourne and Sydney, including a recent date at Melbourne’s Billboard with local stalwarts Infusion, Outrun believe they have just about gotten their live sound down. “We actually cracked a few cones at clubs before our sounds were properly honed. Now that we’ve figured that out, we’re concentrating on just writing more stuff”, Preston says. And since finishing FutureNature over six months ago, the band has new material they hope to put out within the next half year. “The new stuff is getting a good response live, they’re fun to play and an easy formula to dance to. But at the same time we’re really trying to push ourselves, creating interesting journeys in an electro style but which still incorporate vocal hooks… There’s a lot of bands doing the vocal electro thing that we are really into, but we tend to go down well in a club environment, so I guess we’ll stick to that”. Outrun plan to move to Berlin in 2009 to ‘have a crack at the Euro scene’, but until then, they are hoping to take FutureNature around Australia. “We’re talking with people about these big plans, and Inertia have a lot of connections… but it’s early days yet”, Preston concludes.