We caught up with Greg and Jeremy from Erik Omen about the beginnings of the band and the release of Grade E/Payphone.

How did Erik Omen come about?

We had both just returned to Sydney from our own respective journeys – one of us was travelling around the world while the other was riding his motorcycle to Perth. We were eager to play some music after our time away and that’s when it started.

The name Erik Omen is somewhat deceptive, why did you decide on it?

Our first release was an EP, which told the story of a man who surfaces from the underwater hotel of Atlantis to cross the ocean and find his love. It was from this story that we came up with the name Erik Omen in Atlantis. We liked the character and the name and so we continued with it.

Your new single "Payphone" features the seductive vocal work of Bridezilla front lady Holiday Sidewinder; how did that collaboration come about?

We were living with Holiday about a year ago and had always been fans of her work. We soon became good friends and the next natural step seemed to be collaborating on something together, so we asked her to contribute to one of our tracks. Before we knew it we were recording her vocals in the living room. She nailed it in a two takes.

Listening to "Payphone", it’s a difficult one to pin down, genre-wise; where do you tend to pull inspiration from, how broad of a spectrum?

Very broad. Wouldn’t even know where to start.

When did you become part of the Siberia Records roster?

After the blogalainfinkielkrautrock(run by Dirty Sound System and Pilooski), posted a video of ours it must have caught the eye of Siberia Records, who we ended up meeting with soon after. This was late last year.

Your first ep, Erik Omen in Atlantis was released as a cassette-tape; why did you decide to release it this way? Any plans to possibly re-release it again, maybe in a different format?

At the time we were writing this EP we were listening to a lot of DIY artists who have released several cassettes, which definitely inspired us to do something similar. It’s available for download too but it seemed like a good idea to have the cassette option there for people who still had a tape deck. There are no plans to re-release this EP, but we will definitely be putting out one or two tracks from it on vinyl – the first being Grade E, which is available on our recent vinyl release, Grade E/Payphone.

On the Grade E/Payphone vinyl you have very recent released, you have a few remixes of each track; do you have a particular favourite? Are there any artists you have remixed?

It’s tough to choose a favourite from the bunch – it depends on the mood really. Either way we are very happy with the artists who contributed and feel privileged to have their work on our release.

As for us remixing other artists, we have recently completed one for TristesseContemporaine who are based in Paris and signed to Dirty. The remix and their single, “I Didn’t Know”, will be released digitally on 5th January 2012. It was an absolute pleasure to be a part of this.

There is not a lot of information about you two on the internet at all; is this strategic?

Not at all. We just like to spend most of our free time writing music.

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Watch the clip for Erik Omen's "Payphone" featuring Holiday Sidewinder here!