Together, cousins Simon Lam and Chloe Kaul form Klo. The Melbourne-based duo have made a massive impact in 2014 with their bright new partnership. Their debut Cusp is about to drop via Dot Dash/Remote Control, and THUMP has first listen of "Under Lie", another intriguing and addictive track from the EP.Ahead of the release we caught up to talk music, food and bond over our collective hangovers.
Liam: How did you guys come together in the first place, apart from the fact that you are related? Were you on different musical paths to begin with?
Simon: (pause)…sorry, I haven't my coffee yet.
Chloe: We did a couple of little family band things.
Simon: Yeah, we put a band together for my mums 50th. That's the first time we would have played together.
Chloe: Simon was always on the drums, and I would sing. Our musical direction was completely different.
Simon: Yeah I was just doing the band thing – kinda rock band to rock band. Chloe was more of a solo singer.
Chloe: I just had the acoustic guitar and played keys and just kinda wrote originals that weren't really going anywhere.Liam: Was it always the plan to come together?
Chloe: Nahh.
Liam: How did you fall into it?
Simon: You know how mums have all these great concepts? Mine was just like, "Simon, I know you've been doing this for a while, but I've got all these great ideas." So I sort of went along with her idea that my cousin Chloe had grown up now, and she was a really good singer and I should help record her. Yeah, mum said record one of her songs and that's when it started.Liam: Had you been recording before you started audio engineering?
Simon: I was studying at the same time, so I thought, yeah, it'd be good practice to record something. So, Chloe came over and played a couple of originals and I was instantly like, ah, this is probably the first good idea mum has had.Liam: Any other highlights in Mum's idea catalogue?
Simon: Yeah, she named my first rock band ever, so that was pretty good. We were called The Choice Cuts.Liam: So how did the early individual work of each of you lead to what you produce now as KLO?
Simon: I think at the same time, separately, we were both falling out of our origins and going more into the electronic side of things. I know mine began when I started playing with I'lls.
Chloe: I played guitar and keys, and I had a really shitty old keyboard. I'd always just change the settings to mimic proper synths. I was getting really into it, listening to a lot of James Blake and stuff. At first, Simon and I didn't really think we had the same taste in music, but we realised pretty quickly that there were similarities. It all started after that day when he recorded my vocals. He actually sampled them and made False Calls.
Simon: Yeah, that was all from those original recordings.
Chloe: He just sampled my voice and cut it up. I didn't really understand it, it was very fast and there were no breaks or anything. Simon believed we could make a song out of it though, so I rolled with it and from then on we started working together more consistently. It literally began there. It was meant to be a one-project kind of thing and then it just all started happening.Liam: Yeah it seems like it happened super, super quick.
Chloe: Yeah we didn't even know we were going to be a duo. We saw it more as a quick collab, but it kind of just worked. Even our press shots and stuff – we had no idea what we were doing for anything, we took a selfie of each other on Simon's camera because we literally had no one else to take it. We just edited it on Afterlight. After that our now-managers contacted us and asked us what we had. At that point we had False Calls and Make Me Wonder, and yeah had a meeting with them. It just happened so quickly; we didn't think any of it would happen.Liam: How long ago did you put those tracks together?
Chloe: Around December, 2013.
Simon: Yeah, we finished them in December, had them mastered while I was overseas and they were fully finished by late February.Liam: Is KLO a project you are both going to pursue indefinitely?
Simon: Absolutely.
Chloe: Yeah, I'm pumped. I mean there is so much ahead of us, and the longer we play together, the more stuff that we have coming up. It's growing, but it's still so new. It's kind of funny that everything we have put out is literally everything we've made. We don't have anything to choose in our sets, we just play the songs that we have. We try not to stick to any structure, so I just don't know what's coming.
Liam: I suppose that's important to keep it engaging.
Chloe: Yeah, totally. We've got our EP coming out in a couple of weeks, but the next song we are working on after that is really R&B. So it's good that we can cross a lot of genres.Liam: It feels like Melbourne promotes that culture as well. A lot of young electronic artists, take Oscar Key Sung or Andras Fox, are demonstrating that there is no singular way to be with regards to production. You can change it up here and people will adapt. How significant an influence is the Melbourne music scene on the two of you?
Chloe: It's definitely influenced us. I'm a big fan of Oscar.
Simon: I was lucky enough to go to some mix sessions of his last EP, and get some insight into his production. He's a really talented producer; his new stuff is really different as well. It definitely inspires us not to corner ourselves. I guess it's just a reminder to keep things as fresh as possible all the time.
Chloe: Yeah I deferred uni last semester for KLO. When they called me again this semester, I had made the decision to stick to my guns. If nothing happens in four years then I've got nothing, but I may as well take the risk if that's what I want to do.Liam: Where do you pull your inspiration from if you're cutting down on time outside the studio?
Simon: I think it just becomes a vicious cycle of just being stuck in the studio. To get inspired these days, you don't really have to go further than YouTube or SoundCloud.
Chloe: I think we get a lot of inspiration from cutting up the lyrics as well. I'll do harmonies; Simon will sample it and then put a beat on it and let it flow from there. A nice sounding synth always helps too.Liam: Do things flow naturally when you work together?
Simon: It does now.
Chloe: At first it was a bit…
Simon: Yeah I would hold a cassette player to Chloe's face and make her sing into it, but now she does that herself.
Liam: How does the family element play into that flow?
Simon: It's good.
Chloe: It's really chill.Liam: Where is your workspace?
Chloe: Simon's bungalow, at his house. I just go over there when we need to get stuff done. We have a lot of food breaks.
Simon: That's probably where we get most of our inspiration from. A lot of the time it's like…"okay, we'll put in another half hour and then we can have lunch." That's the half hour that we work the hardest, knowing that there is food at the end of it.Liam: How different is the creative process working from home?
Chloe: I definitely want to move out, I think I would find it far more inspiring. It's just about having the space to work. I feel very claustrophobic in my room, and can't really get inspired. Simon used to live above the Moroccan soup kitchen, so it was great having that space.
Simon: I think the biggest thing is separating the creative space from everything else. You need that to be in the right mindset. I used to have the worst bedroom studio, it was hilarious. I had a loft bed that wasn't very tall and you had to really duck to get under it. We always used to hit our heads on it.
Chloe: Yeah we made False Calls and Make Me Wonder in that little space. It was great fun though. It was summertime and we used to buy Shapes from the supermarket. It was a really relaxed time.
Simon: Yeah the tram or the school bell always used to get in the mic. The floor was super creaky too so I had to set Chloe up in a really specific spot in my room so she could still kind of move a little bit without ruining the whole recording.Liam: It feels like a huge part of your working relationship is about being easy going. How do you hold onto that when everything around you is being commercialised?
Chloe: Simon is really relaxed. I feel like any situation we are in, Simon just really calms me down. I feel – this sounds so cheesy…
Liam: At ease?
Chloe: Yeah, when Simon is there. If I was doing it with someone that I didn't really get along with it would be a lot different for me.Waiter: Would you like any more coffee?
Simon: We might grab a menu actually, I'm a bit peckish.Liam: Have you had the hangover recovery meal yet?
Chloe: I had chicken skewers at home, leftover from my birthday last night.
*debate over pumpkin vs. black pudding – black pudding wins*Liam: I can see the whole food dynamic shining through.
Chloe: Yeah, it's actually terrible. We go on ridiculous rants…
Liam: So you won't fight over music, but if someone orders the wrong thing it's all over?
Simon: Hahah….playing music is just a vessel for us to eat.
Chloe: I think we are both very curious. It was pretty great playing in the Vic Market dairy hall the other day.Liam: Yeah, I was jealous. I think DJing in a cheese shop is my dream. I think electronic music and cheese go hand in hand. Any favourites?
Chloe: Oh gosh.
Simon: Chloe's favourite cheese is tasty.
Chloe: It's not my favourite, it's just my go-to.Liam: Do you party much when you play?
Chloe: Simon doesn't, I do. He's got a girlfriend.
Simon: I think it's more that someone has to take the gear home, girlfriend or no girlfriend. I don't party too much. I had a sip of goon the other night and I was just like…nup.Listen to "Under Lie" from Cusp here, and see Klo live during their upcoming shows:
Strawberry Fields: November 21-23
Paradise Music: November 28-30
Beyond the Valley: December 30-January 1
Liam: How did you guys come together in the first place, apart from the fact that you are related? Were you on different musical paths to begin with?
Simon: (pause)…sorry, I haven't my coffee yet.
Chloe: We did a couple of little family band things.
Simon: Yeah, we put a band together for my mums 50th. That's the first time we would have played together.
Chloe: Simon was always on the drums, and I would sing. Our musical direction was completely different.
Simon: Yeah I was just doing the band thing – kinda rock band to rock band. Chloe was more of a solo singer.
Chloe: I just had the acoustic guitar and played keys and just kinda wrote originals that weren't really going anywhere.
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Chloe: Nahh.
Liam: How did you fall into it?
Simon: You know how mums have all these great concepts? Mine was just like, "Simon, I know you've been doing this for a while, but I've got all these great ideas." So I sort of went along with her idea that my cousin Chloe had grown up now, and she was a really good singer and I should help record her. Yeah, mum said record one of her songs and that's when it started.Liam: Had you been recording before you started audio engineering?
Simon: I was studying at the same time, so I thought, yeah, it'd be good practice to record something. So, Chloe came over and played a couple of originals and I was instantly like, ah, this is probably the first good idea mum has had.Liam: Any other highlights in Mum's idea catalogue?
Simon: Yeah, she named my first rock band ever, so that was pretty good. We were called The Choice Cuts.Liam: So how did the early individual work of each of you lead to what you produce now as KLO?
Simon: I think at the same time, separately, we were both falling out of our origins and going more into the electronic side of things. I know mine began when I started playing with I'lls.
Chloe: I played guitar and keys, and I had a really shitty old keyboard. I'd always just change the settings to mimic proper synths. I was getting really into it, listening to a lot of James Blake and stuff. At first, Simon and I didn't really think we had the same taste in music, but we realised pretty quickly that there were similarities. It all started after that day when he recorded my vocals. He actually sampled them and made False Calls.
Simon: Yeah, that was all from those original recordings.
Chloe: He just sampled my voice and cut it up. I didn't really understand it, it was very fast and there were no breaks or anything. Simon believed we could make a song out of it though, so I rolled with it and from then on we started working together more consistently. It literally began there. It was meant to be a one-project kind of thing and then it just all started happening.
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Chloe: Yeah we didn't even know we were going to be a duo. We saw it more as a quick collab, but it kind of just worked. Even our press shots and stuff – we had no idea what we were doing for anything, we took a selfie of each other on Simon's camera because we literally had no one else to take it. We just edited it on Afterlight. After that our now-managers contacted us and asked us what we had. At that point we had False Calls and Make Me Wonder, and yeah had a meeting with them. It just happened so quickly; we didn't think any of it would happen.Liam: How long ago did you put those tracks together?
Chloe: Around December, 2013.
Simon: Yeah, we finished them in December, had them mastered while I was overseas and they were fully finished by late February.Liam: Is KLO a project you are both going to pursue indefinitely?
Simon: Absolutely.
Chloe: Yeah, I'm pumped. I mean there is so much ahead of us, and the longer we play together, the more stuff that we have coming up. It's growing, but it's still so new. It's kind of funny that everything we have put out is literally everything we've made. We don't have anything to choose in our sets, we just play the songs that we have. We try not to stick to any structure, so I just don't know what's coming.
Liam: I suppose that's important to keep it engaging.
Chloe: Yeah, totally. We've got our EP coming out in a couple of weeks, but the next song we are working on after that is really R&B. So it's good that we can cross a lot of genres.
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Chloe: It's definitely influenced us. I'm a big fan of Oscar.
Simon: I was lucky enough to go to some mix sessions of his last EP, and get some insight into his production. He's a really talented producer; his new stuff is really different as well. It definitely inspires us not to corner ourselves. I guess it's just a reminder to keep things as fresh as possible all the time.
Liam: Does the same go for money and music?
Chloe: Yeah I deferred uni last semester for KLO. When they called me again this semester, I had made the decision to stick to my guns. If nothing happens in four years then I've got nothing, but I may as well take the risk if that's what I want to do.Liam: Where do you pull your inspiration from if you're cutting down on time outside the studio?
Simon: I think it just becomes a vicious cycle of just being stuck in the studio. To get inspired these days, you don't really have to go further than YouTube or SoundCloud.
Chloe: I think we get a lot of inspiration from cutting up the lyrics as well. I'll do harmonies; Simon will sample it and then put a beat on it and let it flow from there. A nice sounding synth always helps too.
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Simon: It does now.
Chloe: At first it was a bit…
Simon: Yeah I would hold a cassette player to Chloe's face and make her sing into it, but now she does that herself.
Liam: How does the family element play into that flow?
Simon: It's good.
Chloe: It's really chill.Liam: Where is your workspace?
Chloe: Simon's bungalow, at his house. I just go over there when we need to get stuff done. We have a lot of food breaks.
Simon: That's probably where we get most of our inspiration from. A lot of the time it's like…"okay, we'll put in another half hour and then we can have lunch." That's the half hour that we work the hardest, knowing that there is food at the end of it.Liam: How different is the creative process working from home?
Chloe: I definitely want to move out, I think I would find it far more inspiring. It's just about having the space to work. I feel very claustrophobic in my room, and can't really get inspired. Simon used to live above the Moroccan soup kitchen, so it was great having that space.
Simon: I think the biggest thing is separating the creative space from everything else. You need that to be in the right mindset. I used to have the worst bedroom studio, it was hilarious. I had a loft bed that wasn't very tall and you had to really duck to get under it. We always used to hit our heads on it.
Chloe: Yeah we made False Calls and Make Me Wonder in that little space. It was great fun though. It was summertime and we used to buy Shapes from the supermarket. It was a really relaxed time.
Simon: Yeah the tram or the school bell always used to get in the mic. The floor was super creaky too so I had to set Chloe up in a really specific spot in my room so she could still kind of move a little bit without ruining the whole recording.
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Chloe: Simon is really relaxed. I feel like any situation we are in, Simon just really calms me down. I feel – this sounds so cheesy…
Liam: At ease?
Chloe: Yeah, when Simon is there. If I was doing it with someone that I didn't really get along with it would be a lot different for me.Waiter: Would you like any more coffee?
Simon: We might grab a menu actually, I'm a bit peckish.Liam: Have you had the hangover recovery meal yet?
Chloe: I had chicken skewers at home, leftover from my birthday last night.
*debate over pumpkin vs. black pudding – black pudding wins*Liam: I can see the whole food dynamic shining through.
Chloe: Yeah, it's actually terrible. We go on ridiculous rants…
Liam: So you won't fight over music, but if someone orders the wrong thing it's all over?
Simon: Hahah….playing music is just a vessel for us to eat.
Chloe: I think we are both very curious. It was pretty great playing in the Vic Market dairy hall the other day.Liam: Yeah, I was jealous. I think DJing in a cheese shop is my dream. I think electronic music and cheese go hand in hand. Any favourites?
Chloe: Oh gosh.
Simon: Chloe's favourite cheese is tasty.
Chloe: It's not my favourite, it's just my go-to.Liam: Do you party much when you play?
Chloe: Simon doesn't, I do. He's got a girlfriend.
Simon: I think it's more that someone has to take the gear home, girlfriend or no girlfriend. I don't party too much. I had a sip of goon the other night and I was just like…nup.Listen to "Under Lie" from Cusp here, and see Klo live during their upcoming shows:
Strawberry Fields: November 21-23
Paradise Music: November 28-30
Beyond the Valley: December 30-January 1