The Au Review's Bec Clark chats to Ben Plant form Miami Horror

Bec Clark: Hi Ben, what have we caught you in the middle of today?

Ben Plant: Nothing really. We have got the live show
tomorrow so we have got to finalize a few things for that

Are you guys going anything differently in terms of your
live show for this coming Holidays single tour?

Well we have had a bit of a problem recreating Holidays live
so we’ve just upgraded it to a new version which is a bit more extended and a
bit more party at the end. We are looking forward to doing that. We think that
will make a big difference to the live show and also, not for Adelaide, but for Melbourne and Sydney, we
have got additional lighting

Cool, making more of a live experience, sounds great. Getting
back to when things started, when did you decide you wanted to be a musician,
producer and performer?

I was doing music as a hobby and it started going well and
people started noticing so I took it a bit more seriously. That was about in
2007 and I did 5 remixes that year and just put out some demos of my own and by
the end of 2008 the EP came out. Since then it just took off, we were always
planning to move to some kind of live show, just didn’t know how live. After trying
this we decided it was the way to go, to make the album more live

How did you go about finding Josh Moriarty, Aaron Shanahan,
Daniel Whitechurch, the other members of Miami Horror?

Me, Josh and Dan were all separately collaborating on some of
the tracks and they were just the obvious people to go to

Where did the name Miami
horror come from?

I liked both words Miami
and Horror because they were visually strong with lots of double letters and repetition,
almost like symmetry. Also, both have very visual sub texts to them, Miami is quite colourful
and beach-y and horror is the opposite.  But
both of them together sum up the music I plan to make.

You released your debut album Illumination back in august, but
it was a long time coming

The aim was to make sure it was the best possible thing. Since
I was doing all the mixing almost myself, we didn’t use any other producers, I
just took a long time to make sure that was the case

Do you feel as though you have achieved something with
illumination?

Yeah, definitely. Looking back I’m still pretty happy with
all of it which is something that usually doesn’t happen. Almost immediately
after the EP I was a bit over it but the album is going really well and we have
put enough of our new sound and different and ideas to it

I guess you had a direction of how you wanted each track to
sound, so did bringing people like Kimbra, Tim from Dappled Cities or Alan from
Neon India on board change the direction of your songs at all?

Well Alan was the only one really there, beside the other
members of the band, and he was only there for a month so it didn’t have a huge
impact. It was more so on the vocals more than anything else

How did that come about, that partnership with Alan?

We have known each other for quite a few years we have
always wanted to work together. It was hard we only had a month and we worked
as hard as we could everyday, we both have simular ideas.

What about working with Kimba, it must have been hard trying
to find the right female vocalist for that song, how did you come across Kimbra?

We knew her very closely, so she was always a possibility. Because
her singing style is quite different the whole idea was that if she was going
to sing on the track she would have to pull it back a little to match the song.
And it ended up coming out pretty perfectly

Are there any underlying themes to your album or something
you want your fans to gain from Illumination when listening to it?

Just experience really, that’s the feeling. There was a lot
of effort in making something simple and not too complicated. There is enough
feeling that you could listen to it at different points of the day or when you
are going through different emotions or events so it can be a sound track to
peoples’ lives

Were there any of your own experiences that you drew on when
writing the tracks?

Not really, I more like to let people interpret it their own
way

What artists influenced you with your new sound, you guys have
got a lot of slide guitar on this new album I have noticed

There are quite a few songs that I would have never really
been up for using slide guitar on but Josh opened me up by using it on one song
and we decided we could make that one of our things. We have been using a lot
more guitar effects and chords, just generally being open to different things.
We ended up creating a more original sound but it depends how deeply you look
into it - at least in Australia
there are a few thing on the album that nobody is doing

Has hearing the response to the album giving you any
inspiration for a new direction?

I think we could have made a more poppier, dancy album but I’m
glad we didn’t and I think its more respectful to have made what we made. We
are working on other stuff now that possibly takes some of these ideas even further
where as our fans expect something from Miami Horror in a certain direction, so
with some of the new stuff we are not really sure if it would work for that or
if we are just going to throw together another EP under another name later this
year

Is there any pressure to keep performing as Miami Horror or
if you had a new song that worked more so as a solo track would you go back to
being a solo artist?

Definitely. It’s a quicker process in some ways but it just
limits the possibilities. It depends on what music your making, if I was to go
back to making house tracks or finishing off some of the older ones that I
never really finished, being a solo producer would be the best way to do that

You guys have already toured to the US and South America,
are there any plans to tackle Europe?

We have got record deals in every country except the UK on EMI. The
only reason we didn’t get EMI UK is because we have to be a pretty massive mainstream
potential act so that didn’t happen but we are pretty stoked to get the other
ones and we will just have to find another label in the UK

Any memorable on stage or dance floor experience from you Americas tour?

South America was probably
the best, very interesting in general. Santiago,
Chilli was the best show we have played out side of Australia. We have more fans in Chilli
than Sydney
almost, the show was 1500 people and it was a huge venue

Are you planning on getting back there? where are you off to
after the Holidays tour around OZ?

February we are going to Europe and maybe Brazil in December,
we are just working that our today. In March SXSW in Taxis and then a tour of America. We then
finally come back to play a proper, larger scale album tour in maybe April in Australia.