Deja

Tell us about your music - how did you develop your sound?

We've been making music together for quite a few years, so we have slowly refined and developed our sound over that time. These days we describe our music as 'future pop', mainly because we try to make our production as progressive and experimental as possible. Because of this our sound is pretty eclectic and ranges from pop to psychedelia to electronic. We both sing and often blend our voices together to create a layered boy-girl vocal sound, but some tracks feature just boy or just girl vocals. We love heavy beats and lush synths, weird sounds and a blend of digital and organic elements.

You’ve mentioned working in home studios. What’s your creative and recording process like?

All of our work is done out of our home studio. We often start with a beat (most of the time dreamed up by haxx at 3am in the morning while he's in owl mode) and build a song from there. Once we have a beat we'll flesh out the track with cords, synths, etc, then figure out song structure and vocals. Lyrics often come last, after everything is pretty much done. We often record scratch vocals to test out vocal sounds and ideas, and then once we're happy with that we'll write the lyrics and finish recording the song, adding harmonies and little details. We're a bit manic though; sometimes we take a song all the way to the end, even get it mastered, and then never release it because we've moved on from the idea or think we can create something better. More recently instead of just ditching tracks we've been trying to think of ways to rework them, or transform them to be used in different ways for different projects.

What’s a DEJA live show like?

A DEJA live show is pretty fun; we play with some really rad musicians, and take turns in playing different instruments like guitar, keys, percussion etc. Both of us sing. Like our recorded tracks, the live set is a real blend between digital and organic.

What are you doing when you’re not DEJA-ing?

We try to chillllll. Haxx plays a lot of 'Quake Live', Rromarin is into animals and the natural world, and both of us spend way too much time watching shows like Seinfeld and Archer. We also spend a lot of time in the studio working with other bands.

What’s coming up for you in 2013?

2013 is looking pretty exciting, mostly because we're going to release our debut EP in July. We'll also be releasing more music videos, playing a bunch of shows throughout the rest of the year, and working on the side as haxx and Rromarin in different music projects and collaborations. Who knows, we might even squeeze out another EP before 2013 is through…stay tuned!

Australian music is…?

...super original, world class and kicking massive goals right now.