Confirmed today as part of the Parklife line-up, Midnight Juggernauts have well and truly arrived back on Earth after a couple of years off touring Europe and exploring the wilderness.

FL chats to the band’s Andy Szekeres about the ins and outs of their terrific new LP The Crystal Axis.

Hey Andy, how’re you doing today?

Hey Dave, I’m okay, although I’m about to fall asleep I think. We just got back to Australia yesterday after playing some shows overseas. We’re severely jet-lagged.

That’s rough mate! But all three of you must be pretty excited that the album is less than a week away from release, right?

Yeah absolutely, it’s been a long time waiting for this point, but it feels pretty good for everything to be almost ready and complete.

I was checking out your tour dates for the album tour, and you’re not doing a national run of shows here until August. Does that mean you’ll be spending a lot of the time in between then overseas trying to get things synchronised for the international release?

Yes, that’s right, we’re going to be over in Europe and America again. There’s some big festival dates in there like at Exit Festival which should be good.

After Dystopia did well here you guys spent, like, a year or so touring internationally and building your profile overseas. I guess it would be silly not to capitalise on all that hard work from the last album and get over there again to play these new songs.

That was what we were thinking, really. We spent about eight months touring the world after Dystopia and that was huge for us. And because it’s going into summer in the North it just made sense to try and get over there quickly.

Having spent so long abroad for that tour, what were some of the highlights for you guys?

There were so many good things that happened to us, man, it’s hard to name just a few. I think the best part of it was the opportunities that we were able to take part it. You know, it’s not easy going being a small, independent band from Australia. But we got to play at Glastonbury and at Coachella which was amazing for us. And that we got to actually live in Paris for a while was incredible.

I would guess that after that time spent together, Vincent and Daniel would become like family for you. Was there that bond?

Definitely. It was really hard being apart from all our friends and family back here, but it was great to have those guys always there. Of course, like any family, you don’t always get along with each other but I think we’re so much stronger having done that together.

Let’s talk about the new record, The Crystal Axis. I’ve been listening to it for a week or so now, and I’m really impressed, it’s a very ambitious album.

Thanks man, it’s good to hear the early reactions. I’m really not sure how people will respond to it, because it’s very different to Dystopia. I mean, I love Dystopia, I think it’s a great record, but I’m really proud of what we’ve done here. I think we just wanted to push ourselves a little further and try to do some new things.

I read some quotes from Vincent about the recording process and he mentioned that he thought it would’ve been very easy for you guys to make a sequel of sorts to Dystopia. I mean, that sound – the kind of electro-y indie-dance or whatever we’re calling it these days – was new back then, but it’s not new now, it’s really exploded and I guess that’s what he was referring to, that you could’ve ‘cashed in on that’.

Yeah that was in the back of our minds, but we definitely wanted to move beyond that. People maybe would’ve expected that from our second record, but when we were writing the songs for this album it immediately felt different. I don’t know how it will go down, but we’ll see how people react to it.

What was the album’s gestation process like? How long after Dystopia did you start work on the record?

We actually kind of wrote most of the songs on this record while we were touring overseas. They just started to come out of us pretty naturally, and we were developing as musicians quite fast because we were playing all these shows for almost a year straight. That’s how things started to grow, I think. We just wanted to make something that was a reflection of our influences and the sounds we wanted to experiment with. There’s a lot more grooves and percussion to this one. It’s not obviously dancey, so I think it might confuse some of the indie DJs out there.

As you guys have remained pretty strongly independent throughout your career, releasing through your own label Sibera Records, I wanted to know what your take was on blogs and downloads. I know you guys have received a lot of blog love over the years and that seems like it’s been positive, but is there also that part where people are dipping into your pockets?

You know, it’s such a difficult thing to navigate these days. Obviously our goal is for people to hear our music, and thanks to blog posts we’ve been able to travel and play in places that we could never have even imagined of when we started the band. But if I were to see this new album up on a torrent or something then yeah, I think I’d be a little upset. We’ve worked so hard on it and that someone can just download without even really caring about it, well, that kinda stings a little bit. At the same time, you can’t blame someone for downloading something when it’s right there in front of you. Why would you pay for something that you can easily get for free?

I know what you mean and it’s been quite an interesting ongoing issue for the music industry. What I think works, and is something you’ve done, is offering listeners something extra. Like you’ve got bonus tracks and limited edition vinyl releases for this record; it’s more than just a plastic CD case, it feels special.

Yeah I think that’s important for us. We’re always trying to think of something more that we can offer to people to sort of convince them that they’re getting something that they can’t have with a download. It’s more than just the tracks themselves, it’s the artwork, the package, the bonus material. That’s how we hope to connect with fans.

Midnight Juggernauts – The Crystal Axis album tour dates:

Thu 12 Aug – The Gov, Adelaide
Sat 14 Aug – The Capitol, Perth
Thu 19 Aug – The Forum, Melbourne
Fri 20 Aug – The Forum, Sydney
Sat 21 Aug – Hi Fi, Brisbane