Infusion – the hottest electronic live act around and sought after remixers. They’ve been on the scene for quite a while now but the last two years were definitely a time of breakthrough. The 2004 Essential Mix season was initiated by the Australian trio. To see Jamie Stevens, Manuel Sharrad and Frank Xavier we had to go all the way from Warsaw to Budapest but believe us – it was worth it! Partly because we got a chance to have a chat with the band leader – Jamie. If you’re curious what the Essential Mix has to do with masturbation or who paid for Infusion’s first gigs overseas – this read is for you.

Sound Revolt: How was Miami this year?
Infusion: It was good. Particularly the Renaissance gig was amazing, which we did with Hernan Cattaneo, Dave Seaman, Marcus James and Phil K. The venue was full and the crowd went crazy so it was excellent.

Sound Revolt: Did you feel more recognized in comparison to the last year’s WMC?
Infusion: We had similar kind of experiences last year in Miami. It’s really weird when people you’ve never seen before catch you on a street and say “Hey, you’re Infusion”. My face is not in magazines, so how the fuck do they know we’re Infusion? It’s great that people know what you do but a little freaky as well when a random person comes up to you. We played a lot overseas last year and yes – I think we were better known this time. But that’s a good thing.

Sound Revolt: Did someone new shine this year?
Infusion: Due to our gigs and sound checks during the day I didn’t get out too much. Before we got to the Ultra Festival on Saturday we did a gig in London at Fabric. So we went from that in the morning, caught a plane and set up in the afternoon at Ultra. Basically we were quite tired so we didn’t get out that much over the whole event. I saw Zabiela and Lee Burridge doing their thing on Tuesday night which was really really good. I didn’t see any new DJs though. I was really looking forward to seeing Michael Mayer and Telefon Tel Aviv but couldn’t make it unfortunately.

Sound Revolt: You could make 1,5 half album out of you Essential Mix. How’s work on the follow-up of “Phrases and Numbers” (Infusion’s first album – editor’s note)?
Infusion: Well the Essential Mix probably has nothing to do with what we’re gonna do on the album. The album is quite a different thing for us. We just wanted to write music as three people writing music - as a band. Even though it’s electronic no DJ would play it. It’s not gonna be club music.

Sound Revolt: Something like “Frostbite” maybe? (a track on “Phrases and Numbers” – editor’s note)
Infusion: Yeah, close to that. We’ve got a string quartet, brass quintet, guitars. That goes with electronic beats and quite a big amount of vocals. We still love playing live and doing vinyls but with the album we want to explore different musical areas - the areas that you can’t really reach with the 12 inch. We’re trying to do music without even thinking about where it’s gonna be played or who’s gonna play it. It’s just doing a 3 minute track without mix ins and mix outs. It’s a bit of an experiment which we’re really enjoying and it’s going really well. We’ve recorded 5 of the tracks so far. We’re gonna master those in next couple of weeks and when after coming back home from this tour we’re gonna finish it off. We’re very excited about it. It still relates to “Phrases and Numbers” but going much further. It’s gonna be quite musical with tricky kind of beats and it’s got nothing to do with the Essential Mix. There might be couple of tracks there that might develop to the album but on the whole it’s gonna be slower and more interesting.

Sound Revolt: But your first album is not distributed in Europe. Do you still want to put it out here?
Infusion: We would like to but I don’t think there’s much point in releasing it now. We wanted to release it last year and the year before. If we do get a chance to put it out, we’ll do it maybe after this one’s released.

Sound Revolt: On a DVD triple pack
Infusion: Yeah! (laughs) Maybe we’ll release it later on with other remixes. We’ll see how it goes but at the moment the label that it was originally signed to still has the right to it and they hadn’t done anything with it. We can’t help it.

Sound Revolt: And what was your work on Freeland’s album – “Now and Them”?
Infusion: I was co-writing and co-producing. We worked in the studio making sounds, trying out Adam’s ideas. It was a really good experience, ‘cause he’s a very talented guy and he really knows what he wants to do and he’s really focused. He’s not one of the DJs that come with a bunch of records into the studio and say “I really like that record, I want make one myself”. He actually comes in with a particular idea. He gets on the synths, make sounds himself as well. Me, Adam and Frank spent three moths in the studio and made about 5 or 6 tracks. I think three of those ended up on the album.

Sound Revolt: So your almost a Free*land band member?
Infusion: Oh no. Not really. We’ve worked with couple of DJs before and we’re friends and it’s something that we were looking at doing but now the works for Infusion is really coming in and we’re tied up with our album. We want to focus the energy and creativity on our own music. That slowed down all the remix work as well.

Sound Revolt: The amount of remixes is huge anyway.
Infusion: Well it’s funny, because they were produced over a year but most of them came out at the same time.

Sound Revolt: Even though, you have two times more remixes than original productions.
Infusion: Yeah but you know - it’s easier to do. The other reason is that the remixes helped us pay for getting overseas and doing gigs. When you’re from Australia no one really wants to pay for your ticket over and pay for you to play and pay for you to go back home again. They’ve got their own artists. In America and Europe no one really cares. So we had make our own way over and show what we did and show that we can do it. We had to pay for ourselves and hope we get asked back. We had to make that first step.

Sound Revolt: Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that your first gigs overseas were paid by yourselves?!
Infusion: Oh yeah! Absolutely. Fortunately it paid off in a long run. It’s our forth world tour now.

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