How long have you two known each other? Do you remember when you first met?

Griffin: Gus DJ’d at Sorry Grandma, Michael Delaney's club, in Melbourne around 2009. He was doing Bang Gang at the time, right when they were in the thick of it. I was a 19-year-old kid working the lights at the club. That's when we first met. Gus was lovely and took the time to say hello and have a chat, even while he was having the time of his life.

Gus: Then I think we met properly at Survivor, which was also a Michael Delaney club. We became friends after that. That was probably fifteen years ago?

Griffin: Yeah, I was a resident there around 2012, so that sounds right.

Gus: That club was like a mega rave zone. How many kids was it pulling in? Or just humans really, I guess!

Griffin: It was around 1,500 a night on the weekends, because there were three levels. It was massive. I think Peter Iwaniuk owned the building. He owns all these different spots in Melbourne that are now just relics of the late-90s, early-2000s era of Melbourne super clubbing. There’s like fifteen of them. And they're just sitting there waiting to become clubs one day again.

Gus: Ah yes, waiting for the return of the super club in 2030! [laughs]

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How did you guys team up as Sound Advisors? Where did the idea come from?

Gus: It was one of those cosmic alignment things. We were both living overseas – I was in London and Griff in LA – and were DJing and touring. I had gotten tired of the constant touring. It wasn’t like your high-flying, business class DJ type of touring, more sleeping on friends' couches and touring constantly. And I think at the same time, just by pure coincidence, we both started doing music work on the side around the fashion and advertising industries. We realised each other was doing it and we were like, hold on a second, are we doing the same thing, but in different places? That was probably just before Covid.

Griffin: No, I remember now, it was actually during Covid. Because everything had stopped and I'd wanted to get into making music for ads and branding and stuff like that. We were both playing a gig at King's Cross Hotel and realised we were doing the same thing. And then within six months or so, Gus was just like, "Hey, so I've been building this business. Do you want to jump on it?” And it just rolled from there.

‍Gus: Because we were working together commercially, we were both starting to produce similar kinds of music. We wound up with lots of leftover stuff and decided to work on it from a more club leaning angle.

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Why did you land on the name, Sound Advisors?

Gus: So, the name of the company we have is called Sound Advice. We would always joke on our business email signature that we are sound advisors - that's our job. And so, off the back of that we thought, let's just start doing some music as Sound Advisors. We've got a bunch of music rolling out over the next year.

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How will you be releasing music? As a bunch of EPs?

Gus: Yes. We've been talking about how many tracks we might actually have that we’d like to release and it’s almost like, well, how long is a piece of string? I think we'll probably try and do three digital releases this year and then culminate in a vinyl release at the end of the year.

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What does Sound Advisors sound like? When I think of Dreems and Francis Inferno Orchestra, they’re kind of their own separate vibe.

Gus: It's probably a bit more ravey than what we’d normally do. It’s definitely on the club side of things and aimed at the dance floor, but there's also parts of it that feel more experimental. I’m not sure how you’d genre-fy it. I feel so out of the genre game nowadays. I'm like, is it techno? Is it rave? Is it breaks? 

Griff: I think for both of us, having DJ’d as a profession and being immersed in that world for such a long time, to then become studio dogs, it kind of leaves you a bit out of the loop. I think the idea of making music together as Sound Advisors is coming from a naive outsider's perspective. It’s us making music in its rawest form. We’re making music we’d want to hear in a dirty basement without being influenced by what's trendy right now.

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Do global trends exist in dance music anymore? Or is culture far more fractured nowadays?

Gus: Well, coming at it from a UK perspective, when I was living in London, you could always go to a club that would play house or deep house, and then of course there's always the drum and bass, dubstep and grime stuff that always seems to permeate the culture over there. So I think trends do exist, but maybe it depends where in the world you are. And depending on where you are, the sound and culture just naturally rubs off on you.

Griffin: As I've gotten older I’ve realised nothing really changes. I’ll listen to a Dekmantel or Love International set and hear the DJ drop a tune and think, “Oh, I've got that record.” And you realise good music will always be good music. So even though I'm getting older and technically I'm out of touch, I'm still kind of in touch, you know? I might not be onto what is the hottest commodity right this minute, but if it works, it will always work. I feel comfortable with that.

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Griffin, did you notice anything interesting bubbling away in LA aside from the commercial EDM scene?

Griffin: No, not in dance music. The dance music scene over there is so bad. I'd say America generally is a very band focused place. It's interesting. You see a lot of bands coming through LA because it's part of the press tour to go there and get your name on the billboards. Future Classic is there, for example, and all the big labels like Virgin and Warner. And you see some cool little bands there, but generally it’s super commercialised. I've got a few punk band friends who are doing some pretty cool stuff, but otherwise everything feels heavily like a game there. I think there’s way more interesting music happening in Australia, where people are doing it for the love of the game.

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Is your upcoming 77 gig the first time you’ve played together?

Griffin: We played at the Burdekin once in 2016. I think that was the one and only time me we’ve properly played back-to-back.

Gus: Yeah, we've done heaps of impromptu sets and played loads of parties on the same bill, but this will be the first time we’ll be playing as Sound Advisors after making music together. We've always enjoyed the music that each other plays and produces. It's almost criminal that we haven't officially played together before – there’s so much overlap.

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Have you been sharing tracks with each other that you might play on the night? Are you big preppers?

Griffin: Nah, I like the full cowboy approach and I feel like Gus is the same. I know we'll figure it out, so it's fine.

Gus: We're absolute professionals! I think it’s more important to get into a vibe together by going out for some beers beforehand. That’s the real connection. Griff's coming up from Melbourne and it’s nice weather in Sydney at the moment, so we’ll go to the beach and hang out. Rub lotion on each other.