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Set Mo’s top five artists that influenced their debut LP, 'Surrender'

30 January 2019 | 1:34 pm | Caitlin Medcalf

2018 saw Sydney duo SET MO have arguably one of the most jam-packed years in electronic music. The boys set out to give us a single a month, ending the year with a whopping 11 new tracks. Backing up these releases, they played a mammoth 59 shows all over the world and in amongst all of this, found the time to polish off their debut record.

Working across studios in Berlin, London, Amsterdam and here in Australia, Nick Drabble and Stu Turner have been traveling the world in search of the right tunes to include on their debut, and it's coming to us this Friday in the form of Surrender.

Look, we can't tell you much about it now because you've still got to wait a couple of days to hear it, but this record captures all aspects of the already explored electronica, vocal house, deep house and breakbeat and puts these sounds into new contexts.

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It's a massive one that shows the boys wearing their many musical influences on their sleeve, so in order to get a lil bit of insight into what we can expect on Friday, the boys have put together a list of five artists who have really not only shaped the Set Mo sound, but have really shaped the course of this record. Take a listen below!

The Chemical Brothers

This UK duo is one of our earliest musical influences. Dig Your Own Hole was one of the first albums we owned when we were barely teenagers. It’s full of such diverse and amazing tracks such as the album opener 'Block Rockin Beats' through to the epic 'Where Do I Begin'. One of the things that drew us to Chemical Brothers is how they don’t follow rules. They’ve definitely taught us to think outside the box.

 

Booka Shade

We first came across Booka Shade right around the time we turned 18 and instantly fell in love with this new music that we hadn’t really been exposed to before. Movements is a stand out album for us, it really showed us how strong emotions can be evoked without relying on vocals. We saw them perform this album at the Metro Theatre in Sydney in 2008 way before we were making music. Ten years later when they did an anniversary tour we were invited to support them on that same stage which was a bit of a pinch yourself moment.

 

Groove Armada

This is another act we’ve now followed and looked up to for many, many years. It all began back in the late 90’s when we came across their timeless tune 'Superstylin’'. Similar to The Chemical Brothers, one of the things we love so much about this act is how they’ve continuously put out these diverse albums which have lots of different styles and moods within the one body of work. This is something we really strived to achieve in our album.

 

Jamie XX

Jamie’s production is all class. From all of The XX stuff to his own personal music, he writes simple but intricate music that you can listen to over and over again. His album In Colour is a beautiful amalgamation of very industrial electronic parts and much softer more organic sounds, we had a lot of fun experimenting with this combination of sounds on Surrender.

 

MK

MK is a don. He’s done about a million remixes, been producing records for close to thirty years and in the last decade been touring like a machine. We’ve been fortunate enough to support him a few times when he’s come out to Australia. The thing we’ve taken from MK and his production is his pianos. He definitely knows how to write a big piano hook that drives a track and if you listen to certain songs on the album you can see how we’ve used this technique to create those hands in the air moments during chorus sections.

Set Mo's debut record Surrender is out this Friday, February 1 via their own imprint, Set Mo Records. Pre-order the record here.

Photo: SUPPLIED

Intro by CAITLIN MEDCALF

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