Empire of the Sun (band)
Empire of the Sun is an Australian electronic music duo formed in 2007.[6] The duo is a collaboration between Luke Steele, of alternative rock band The Sleepy Jackson, and Nick Littlemore, of electronic dance band Pnau.[7][8]
Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun's 2008 debut album, Walking on a Dream, brought the duo international success and has been certified double platinum in Australia and gold in the United Kingdom.[9][10] The album provided a number of internationally charting singles including "Walking on a Dream", which peaked at number ten on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart and reached number sixty four on the UK Singles Chart, and "We Are the People", which peaked at number fourteen on the UK Singles Chart.[11] The band's second album, Ice on the Dune, was released in June 2013,[12] preceded by lead single "Alive" on 16 April.[13] The band are signed to EMI Music Australia/Virgin.[14] As a live band, they have performed internationally and are known for their flamboyant appearance and elaborate stage sets.[15][16]
The duo have won a number of Australian music awards, with Walking on a Dream receiving 11 nominations at the ARIA Music Awards of 2009, winning seven, including Album of the Year.[17][18]
History[edit]
2000–2007: Formation[edit]
Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore met in 2000 after being introduced by Steele's A&R executive, Simon Moor,[19] in a bar in Sydney.[20] Both were at the time signed to EMI and had already been working on different projects.[6] Over the years that followed, the two collaborated on a number of occasions. Littlemore helped write the song "Tell the Girls That I'm Not Hangin' Out",[21] which appeared on The Sleepy Jackson's 2003 debut album, Lovers,[19] and Steele had some artistic input in Littlemore's 2006 art-rock project Teenager.[22] After a falling out over the song on Lovers the co-operation ceased for a while, with Littlemore commenting "I'm a very intense person and I take things to heart".[23]
The two reconvened in 2006 to work on two songs for the Pnau album that was released in late 2007. They collaborated on the tracks "Freedom" and the opener "With You Forever" where Steele supplied the vocal. This prompted a change in direction for the band who began to craft a work more vocally-centered album featuring guest performances.[24] A track-by-track analysis of the album Pnau revealed that writing of "With You Forever" with Luke Steele inspired Littlemore's band to begin work on a collaborative project.[25] Littlemore said, "We fell in love with music again with [With You Forever]; I think this is [Pnau's] first great song." The release of Pnau brought an interest from Elton John, who signed Littlemore to his management company.[26]
The new project began to develop under the working title of "Steelemore" as a collaboration between Steele and Littlemore,[23] with Pnau partner Peter Mayes listed as a producer and occasional co-writer.[27] As Steele was living in Perth and Littlemore was in Sydney the two spent time writing songs separately while meeting occasionally in Sydney to decide on the musical direction and style.[20] When they had accumulated enough material Mayes and duo began to record the album throughout 2007 with the assistance of Jonathan Sloan.[6][28]
2007–2012: Walking on a Dream[edit]
While the record had been largely recorded and mixed throughout 2007, the self-titled Pnau album took precedence for Littlemore and Mayes in the first half of 2008. The duo put out the title-track "Walking on a Dream" in anticipation of the album's release. It appeared in digital format on 30 August 2008,[29] and received airtime on Australian radio and reached number ten on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart.[30] A second single, titled "We Are the People", was released on 30 September and peaked at number twenty-four in Australia.[30] The album Walking on a Dream appeared on 3 October 2008 and debuted at number eight on the ARIA Albums Charts, peaking at number six.[31] The duo embarked on an international promotional tour in support of the album that was released in Europe in February/March 2009 followed by a North American release in April of the same year. While the project had initially been conceived as studio-only, the growing success brought "an audience [to which] we felt a duty to be good to them".[32] Upon their return to Australia Steele began to prepare for a live debut of the band at Parklife Festival in September and October 2009.[33] They headlined three shows, described as a visual "overload [where] giant graphics swam and spun over the stage as costumed dancers writhed to the beat and Steele on a pedestal onstage, [wearing] a gigantic metallic headpiece and his usual 'Ming The Merciless' robe".[34] A third single, "Standing on the Shore" was released in June 2009[35] however promotion was scaled back when Steele suffered from exhaustion.[36] A remixed version "Without You" was released as the album's fourth single the following September.[37]
Name[edit]
Although the name of the final project has been attributed to the 1984 novel of the same name by J. G. Ballard,[73] Littlemore denied this and offers an explanation, saying, "the name comes more from the idea of ... the fact that we're traveling around the world going to all the places of empires of the civilization where the sun has been a theme of worship. It's not based on the Ballard novel nor the Spielberg film of the same name."[20]
Style[edit]
The band employs elaborate stage sets and headdress (such as wearing kabuto, war bonnets and war paint), which reflects the duo's background in visual art. Littlemore explained that "we did see Alejandro Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain and it influenced the way we could think about visualization".[74] The band has worked with a number of designers, including Jessica Huerta.[59] Steele described the inspiration for the visual aspect as "the vision of this band, it's built on imagination, so it comes from studying the samurais in art school to digital graphics, to topography, to filming under the ocean, to oil paintings, anything really."[75]
