Photo by Dylan Reyes // Written by Josh Herwitt //
Growing up, Benjamin Plant had always seen Melbourne as his home. As a native of the Australian city, he immersed himself in its music scene at a young age, DJing at house parties and clubs around town.
But a lot changed for the Miami Horror founder and bandleader when he moved to Los Angeles nearly three years ago — and for the better.
“I think life is a lot groovier and easier,” he says about his LA lifestyle now. “People are just a lot nicer and happier, so it allows you to find your own space when you’re away from your scene.”
Plant wasn’t the only one in the band who chose to leave the dreary streets of Melbourne for the sunny beaches of Southern California. At this point, all but one member in Miami Horror lives in LA, where the majority of the quintet’s second full-length album All Possible Futures was recorded and where they’ll play to a sold-out crowd when they take the stage at The Roxy Theatre this Friday night (June 5th).
“This is our reintroduction tour,” Plant says about the 17-date run that ends in Chicago on June 30th and includes an appearance at Electric Forest. “It’s our opportunity to show what we’ve got and what we’ve become. We’re a lot more mature now.”
It’s been quite a bit of time — almost five years, in fact — since the indietronica outfit released its debut Illumination on British multinational label EMI, and things were much different back then.
Plant, for one, wrote most of the songs that appeared on the 12-track LP that came out in 2010, including “Sometimes”, the first single off Illumination that put Miami Horror on the map with frequent radio play and numerous remixes around the club circuit.
The songwriting process for All Possible Futures, on the other hand, was revamped. This time around, the entire band was involved rather than only Plant coming forward with song ideas. What results is a record that boasts plenty of futuristic pop and uniquely combines elements of both house and funk in a more traditional rock band setting.
“We wanted to make sure we made an album that covered all bases,” Plant says. “You have to keep fans, impress old fans, make new fans and be happy with yourself. There are so many things going on that you have to cover everything.”
It had Miami Horror — made up of Plant (production, synthesizers, bass), Josh Moriarty (guitars, vocals), Aaron Shanahan (co-production, guitar, synthesizer, vocals), Daniel Whitechurch (piano, synthesizer) and Kosta Theodosis (drums) — shedding their producer-centric approach to study bands like Talking Heads, as they aimed for the stars during the recording sessions in LA and Melbourne.
“We were definitely more inclined to writing a flashy kind of hit,” Plant admits. “We were almost imagining and hoping we could do that. For quite a while, every song we made was directed as a single.”
Coincidentally enough, two of the first three tracks on All Possible Futures were tabbed as singles, with “Real Slow” and “Love Like Mine” setting the stage for other dance-pop hits “Wild Motion (Set It Free)” and “Colours in the Sky” later on. That said, with 15 tracks and over an hour in run time, the finished product remains more comprehensive than one that simply will be remembered only for its singles.
“We wanted an album that you could listen to for five years rather than two months,” Plant says. “We focused a lot more on songwriting, like learning about chord progressions, changes and structures of songs. We just really wanted to push ourselves there.”
Looking toward the future, after all, is something that has always preoccupied Plant, to the point that it largely became the inspiration behind the band’s new studio effort.
“I’m constantly thinking about the future, every different direction you can go and every way your life can turn out,” he says in discussing the meaning of All Possible Futures. “There are always a million directions to go, and you have to choose what the right one is.”
So far for Plant, that direction has been east — Melbourne to LA while never looking back.
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