The four-piece indie/pop group Enerate were founded on a fateful day in 2011 in Sydney. Their new single “Unstoppable” was recently featured in an MTV New South Wales Tourism commercial that airs internationally in the near future. Enerate is also in the midst of a short tour promoting their new single in Sydney and the area around Melbourne.
Interview by MusicNSW Intern Kyle Arrouzet.
How would you describe Enerate to someone who has never heard of you?
Enerate is basically an indie project we devised with the sole purpose of being super hooky and catchy. And lyrically honest. We love using big hip hop and electro production on quirky little acoustic pop songs.
Who are some of your collective influences?
We all come from far corners in terms of musical influence. I (Josh) came from a folk background with a love of 80’s punk. Matty was heavily into the funk scene, Ben is a jazz cat from way back and Therese has had opera training. I guess it’s our collective love of gangsta rap that brings us together, and what comes out is acoustic synthpop. If I had to name names i’d say, Damon Albarn, Beck, Neil Young, Kanye West, Metronomy and Jonti.
How did you make your break into the music industry?
We’ve built up a lot of momentum in the past year, what started as a solo project for myself, turned into quite a big bedroom production, and so we formed a band to play the songs live. And each member brought in their own take on the songs. It was brilliant. We’ve had a lot of love from FBi Radio and more recently Triple J Unearthed, and seem to be getting noticed in the Sydney scene. Our single “Unstoppable” has had a lot of attention, and we have just launched the video clip, so hopefully that’ll get some people excited.
We’re very psyched on how it turned out. Unstoppable has also recently been licensed for a Tourism NSW campaign airing on MTV in the US, UK, Canada and NZ. So we’re quite excited about that as well.
You have frequented a number of workshops and talks by MusicNSW in the past. What is the most valuable thing you’ve taken away from these events?
One of the stand outs for us was the music technology forum at FBi Social, a few months back. It’s hectic times, and it’s changing on a daily basis. Basically it’s good be well informed on new distribution methods. It seems it’s an amazing time for getting your music out there, but no one really knows how to make money off it. As the talk explained, Spotify royalties aren’t exactly a comfortable living for indie artists. So I guess it’s all about licensing and having a banging live show. That’s got to be one of the most valuable things we’ve learnt.
Your “VCR-Unstoppable” tour has just begun! Which individual show are you the most excited for and why?
Well we’re pretty darn excited about revealing the “Unstoppable” video to the world, which happens at the premiere party tomorrow night, We can’t wait to see what people think of it. We’re stoked to be on the road, playing to some new faces. Playing the Espy should be great. And very excited about the Melbourne launch party for the clip happening at Bar 303 in Northcote. Should be a brilliant night!