Why Slumberjack Will Never Have Onstage Equipment Failures Again

"The Perth scene is tough, really tough," muses Morgan Then, one half of future bass duo Slumberjack. "People like a lot of really, really heavy shit there, like drum'n'bass and dubstep and heavy trap. I love dubstep. Fletch and I are always chasing that feeling like when we first heard Bangarang by Skrillex. But a lot of dubstep that's coming out now is very cookie cutter."

Then and I are chatting mid-Groovin The Moo tour - he's in a Melbourne cafe about to attack a seriously orgasmic looking pork thing (he sent pics) and his co-'jack, Fletcher Ehlers, is already occupied with his lunch. Following on from this run of festival dates, Then and Ehlers are continuing on with their own headline tour in support of their second EP Fracture.

The coinciding tours mark the first time Slumberjack's songs are being performed live — "We bought crazy-expensive equipment to even accommodate the show. And this equipment isn't even the centre of the show — people who froth on it are people like me and Fletch — nerdy tech guys. The fans and the audience see the end result and they don't understand the hardware and technology that goes behind it. It's insane.

"When things go wrong, when they can go wrong, they will go wrong."

"We have this one thing called the switcher, and it switches when a laptop fails seamlessly. We have two laptops running the show, and if a laptop fails, Fletcher and I won't even notice that there was a problem in the set... And we've got two racks travelling with us. The whole thing has cost us a lot; a lot of money, a lot of frustration — but no frustration anymore because now when you're on stage, nothing fails!"

Did they find out the hard way that they needed a switcher? "We have, our second year of Splendour," he laughs. "We were DJing, we had the laptop on stage and the tracks were playing fine. But when we were doing the next one it started playing backwards. And so Fletcher had to run back off stage and pick up a spare USB, so we weren't running off the laptop anymore. When things go wrong, when they can go wrong, they will go wrong," he says sagely.

Though their current Fracture tour is Oz-bound, the boys have worn tracks on festival circuits around the world. How do Aussie festivals and audiences differ from those they've experienced overseas? "Different," he says decidedly. "I think America in general actually is more interested in the artists that are playing... We play shows in America and fans who have never heard of us before would do their research and listen to all our music and find out all about us... Australians also have a reliance on press and radio.

"People here — not in a bad way — but they're used to being spoon-fed music... We tend to be more laid-back because we know we're gonna be served commercial music or mainstream music and independent music all at the same time and we get to take our pick. In America, most things on the radio, it's very, very mainstream. So sometimes the dance music fans get sick of it, and they've learned that if they want new music and new artists they're gonna have to do their own research."