In putting together their debut album Moral Outage, Miller and Judson holed up in the latter’s Sonic Funhouse home studio in bushy Blackheath near the top of the Blue Mountains, determined to dust off some unfinished recordings from previous sessions in 2015, some demos and lyrics from as far back as 2009 and to bring new ideas into high-res.
The results are a baroque blend of new wave and post-punk, cold wave and avant-pop via synths, guitars and exquisite production – a sonic aesthetic that Miller and his accomplice were adamant about. “We wanted a cold wave feel and a brutalist texture. It’s not a bombastic album. It’s very measured,” he proffers. Though live drums and bass do feature on some songs, the rest of Moral Outage was built from scratch, many with jutting electronic drums, chiselled like a senior’s cheekbones in a John Hughes flick from the ‘80s.
