The music scene in Sydney in rapidly changing, with clubs closing down, secret parties popping up everywhere, electronic music is becoming more dominant as the years go by, and these boys are proving it. Cosmo’s Midnight are Sydney music producers/twins, Cosmo and Pat, they talk about how their creative upbringing has formed them into the successful producers they are today, their mentality behind creating music, and how they think the Sydney music industry is developing over the years. At twenty-two, they have two EP’s released and just ended their Walk With Me tour. They are definitely a great duo to keep your eye on.
Interview: Beth Carmody
Photography: Liam Burnett-Blue
Beth: How did your upbringing influence you both to start producing music?
C: Both our parents are artists, Mum was a musician and composed for films back in the day, and our dad is a painter, so it was natural for us to get into something related to art. When we were younger we also sang in a choir and learnt musical instruments, you can’t really say any of those things inherently helped us make music, but I’m sure it helped out or pushed us in the right direction.
Beth: Did your parents encourage creativity when you were young?
P: We used to paint on the walls in our house, and draw on the roof of our parents brand new car, and they kind of just let us do it.
C: Our parents weren’t like “Oh my god why aren’t you doing something real” or “why are you just sitting at a computer making music why aren’t you out there doing your job” they were always 100% supportive, especially now, since we are making something of ourselves.
Beth: Do you think that being twins rather than not has improved your relationship or is it a bit harder to get along?
P: It’s not that different because we have another brother as well, he’s overseas but when he returns its perfectly normal and not weird between us because we are twins and he isn’t.
C; Its just like having another sibling, he could be younger and I wouldn’t really care or know, that’s just my brother, especially because we are un-identical. We looked very similar when we were younger but now you wouldn’t necessarily guess straight away “oh they are twins”. But we get along really well because we have the exact same interests and went to the same school.
Beth: I heard you used to be Cosmo and Pat before you started this project, and have moved away from the type of music you used to make, would you ever go back and reshape those sounds to suit what you make now?
P: Probably not, we were in year ten when we started that and we would just make anything that we were into at the time. We grew out of it, it was just a good way of developing our skills, and it isn’t really something that I would ever want to go back to. We only put the music up publicly because we liked showing our friends, and had a Facebook page with other music producers to all share what we made. Wave Racer and Basenji were on there; they used to make disco house music.
C: It was just us recreating music that we liked at that time, we weren’t in the same mind frame we are now making our own beats.
Beth: How did you decide to shape your music to be the upbeat electronic sound it is today?
C: Snare and Walk with me are very house, but I would definitely say the rest of our music is a bit different, people just come up with names for genres and then that’s just what your music is.
P: I don’t think “oh I’m going to make a future trap love song today” we just make a tune and it turns into something. We like to make off-center pop music, using KUČKA who has such a nice doll voice, and then putting a funky slowed-down house beat with it and it just works.
C: If you can’t dance to that BPM (beats per minute) then something isn’t working, but when you are making it, it comes naturally.
Beth: Who would you say is your closest musical friends? I know you toured with Wave Racer and Basenji, would you say you got to know them a lot?
C: They are our best friends anyway, even out of the music industry, we have known them for years, from when we were Cosmo and Pat.
P: You make so many new friends through music, Australia is so awesome, everyone who works in the music industry, promoters too, people at labels, and everyone is just so nice. Whenever we go to a different state we have someone to hang out. In Brisbane we hang out with UV Boi and Young Franco, Perth we have KUČKA and the Pile Rats crew, and Slumberjack as well. Everywhere we have cool people to hang out with.
Beth: Do you think they influenced the style of some of your songs?
C: We definitely all influence each other; we all just discover new music together as well.
P: We still have a Facebook group where we share all our music.
Beth: Explain the mentality behind the Walk With Me video, who thought of the idea?
C: Our friends Chester and Finn, they did the Snare film clip as well, they just sent us a brief and we thought it was cool. It was more about making a vibe and not so much doing a story. It’s meant to be very suburban America with the wide streets. It always seems like you are looking at a photo in frame rather than watching a video.
P: Its Just surreal and upbeat, one of Chester’s signatures is using really static shots, the camera isn’t handheld he always has it on a tripod, and it is usually people walking in and out of the frame. People are always moving in and out of the shots instead of the camera following them.
Beth: Do you think it was a reflection of your personalities? Or rather what the song discusses?
P: The video is more of an aesthetically pleasing video with no deeper meaning, just a lot of things happening that make it cool, but you can read into it however you want, or look into the lyrics for meaning if you want to. But the video itself is pretty chill.
Beth: What is your creative process when making songs? Do you let the ideas flow to you or do you need to inspire yourselves in a certain way?
C: You sit in a studio all day to get one minute of inspiration to write 20 seconds of a song. That is usually how it works.
P: Most of the time I’m not inspired constantly, I’ll be out, and I will think of something then make the beat into my phone, and then I would go home, listen back to it and write it into the computer before I forget. I’ll wake up the next day and it will either be good or not great. Or sometimes I will be by inspired by the feeling of a song, and I will write to that feeling and see what happens. I record sounds I like off my phone, then, I will hear a noise in the background on the phone, that will then inspire me to write that into the song. Someone shut a door once while I was recording a song and I heard it and added it as percussion into the track
C: Yeah we thought, “that sounds great let’s do it!” and we spent ages trying to replicate it perfectly. That was in Snare, no one would know at all. The noises all have a tonal quality that make them sound like someone playing a musical instrument in the background, that’s our LIFE HACK.
“You make so many new friends through music… Whenever we go to a different state we have someone to hang out.”
Beth: How has the Sydney music scene changed since you started being apart of it?
C: It’s more about producers now; there were only bands around for so long. We didn’t know what electronic music was when we were younger. Acoustic music is still a big part of it but I am just glad there is room for us to do our thing now. Instead of having to move to America to write music, especially in L.A. because it was the only option for a while.
P: In terms of Sydney, the club scene has also died down a lot, which encourages more creativity with music and events, bringing out something new. It also encourages fostering more online presence for producers, which could lead to a more worldwide success.
Beth: In saying that, do you think it is possible to have a successful music career in Sydney?
P: There is a lot of underground artists who played at the Plastic World party and at warehouse parties and events that are doing well, artists who only have about 100 copies of their music and people still come see them play. If your music is good, you do find a way to be successful in Sydney, talent gets rewards in the end.
C: You could be the smallest act or be really prolific and still be someone who can put on a really good show.
Beth: Do you believe the music industry will change in the upcoming years? How so?
P: It is already changing, for example we got signed to Sony, who wouldn’t usually sign producers, and I could only imagine that before they would only sign pop artists. They have also signed UV Boi, because the industry is changing and they want different artists. These days it is all about the independent labels and smaller labels like Future Classic, and it is all about building a culture, they are like a family and they have people who want to come to be apart of it and buy their merchandise, where as if you are a major label you wouldn’t say lets go to a Sony Party…But the major labels are figuring that out.
Beth: If you were to become a trio instead of a DJ duo, who would you want the third member to be and why?
C: A singer for sure, someone who would make us seem cooler, who could be the face of Cosmo’s Midnight.
P: Or maybe a drummer, just something super random. But we would bring a singer for sure.
