Let’s get this out of the way at the top, because if you’ve come looking for a Muscles controversy, it’s not here. Muscles has been unusually quiet of late, but after a tumultuous end to 2008 that involved a very public spat with his record label Modular, he’s back and burying the hatchet.

“I’m just feeling the love in all directions,” Muscles tells FL. “Modular are amazing, I’m very blessed and privileged to be in a position where I’m writing music for a living let alone be signed to an amazing label. Everything’s awesome at the moment.”

But for the man who has taken on his label, labelmates and the music hub of MySpace, surely he can give us some comment on the industry and its current climate?

“To be honest, I really don’t know much about how the music industry works, at all,” he states very matter-of-factly. “And I’m not sitting in the office of the record label having to deal with people every day and releasing a record and going through all of that. So if I said anything I wouldn’t take it too…I mean my strength is as a songwriter and a performer and that’s what I’m concentrating my energies into.”

The young man from Shepparton who broke out thanks to Guns, Babes, Lemonade announced a six-month holiday “to travel and see the world (not just from the windows of trains and planes)...” after the Modular blow-up. So what has Muscles been doing in what has turned out to be nearly a year-long hiatus?

“Really just working on songs, listening to a lot of music, just trying to think about what direction I wanted to take with the second album,” he replies, not suggesting any form of actual downtime. “You know, every band goes through from having a first album and transitioning towards a second album. It’s getting pretty close to completion and hopefully we’ll be hearing some new material very soon. I’m really excited about the songs that I’m working on right now.”

While the blog is dead and the MySpace postings have been infrequent, Muscles has found his way into the Twittersphere during his ‘holidays’, with post one declaring his venture into the six-string.

“Yeah it’s kind of strange, I’ve been teaching myself how to play guitar. When I was in high school I tried to do guitar when I was about 15 and I was taking lessons and after the year of lessons the guitar teacher told me, ‘You’re not very good, you should just stick to piano’.

“And the new songs, kind of half the album’s got a lot of guitar in it. It’s more maybe how synth rock bands use synthesisers; I’ll maybe sample the guitar sound but it’s not so much the focus. And the songs are very club-oriented compared to the first album, but a bit of guitars to beef it up a bit. It’s kind of a step up from Guns, Babes, Lemonade, which was purely synthetic [with] big harmonies and stuff.”

Muscles is going to be giving said new material one of its first test runs at the Solar Festival at the Mornington Racecourse in the New Year. He’ll join Birds of Tokyo, The Grates and blast-from-the-past 28 Days for the festival’s second outing.

“It’ll be a mix of the old songs and a whole bunch of new songs and we’ll see how the crowd reacts. Definitely with the first album, the album was pretty much formed when I was constantly touring and just gauging by the audience and what they reacted to pretty much formed it.

“Playing a few gigs now, I kind of need that fan and audience reaction to fully complete Manhood,” he said, indicating the second album’s name has remained unchanged. “I’m experimenting at the moment with whether I should put a live band together…So I dunno what my live show is going to be like yet!”

When asked of his festival-versus-club-show preference, the producer fondly recalls a pair of live highlights. “Definitely Meredith [in 2008] was very awesome, they pretty much put all that lasers and light show all together all specifically for the performance and it was just an amazing experience. Definitely one of the highlights of my music career, so far.

“The Daft Punk Sydney show was just totally incredible, it was raining all day and then I think for my last song the sun came out – then just seeing the crowd all raise their hands, dripping wet, reaching for the sun.”

With a fresh outlook and new album on the way, fans will hopefully get to forge some new special moments. However, just what form these will take for Muscles is still an unknown.

“I feel Muscles could go in any direction really,” he muses. “I could be a DJ, I could start a rock band; I could do a mixture of both. I could do piano acoustic songs. I could write songs for other people. I’d love to produce for other people. I just feel really excited. There’s a lot of opportunities and it’s a new decade in 2010. I think it’s a really exciting period in music to be a part of.”

Muscles plays live at Solar Music Festival at Mornington Racecourse on Sunday 3 January.