Peking Duk Interview

Australia’s favourite DJ duo, Peking Duk, are back with new single ‘Feels Like’, an uplifting track that should be on every party playlist. When the Canberra-born boys aren’t sunning themselves on the coast, they’re performing to enthusiastic crowds, high on life and ready to celebrate all things music. We spoke to Adam about the ‘Feels Like’ tour, his new buddy Gareth the dance-instructor and what he thinks of Miley Cyrus’ twerking…

Hi Adam, how are you?
I’m really good thank you!

What have you been up to recently?
I’ve just been chilling out in the sunshine, doing cartwheels and drinking coconuts.

That sounds heavenly!
Yeah it’s pretty good!

So, Peking Duk’s new single ‘Feels Like’ was released on 30th August, can you tell us a bit about the star of the music video?
We developed this character named Gareth, and he’s a very lonely soul. He lives for instructing dance moves for middle-aged women so he does dance school in the local community hall. His life looks very depressing looking in from the outside and he looks like a sad sort of dude, but he’s very passionate about dancing. It came out really well and he’s basically the mascot for the song. We’re gonna do a hashtag competition where listeners can send in their dance moves and Gareth’s gonna do a compilation of them.

That’s so cool!
Yeah we’re really looking forward to it. Should be fun.

Will you be taking Gareth on the tour with you?
Hopefully, we’ll see what happens. I’d love him to, ’cause I haven’t even met him!

The Feels Like Tour kicked off on 4th September, how is it going?
We’re doing some really cool stuff – party scenes, it’s exciting. We’re also going to Bali, where I’ve never been so I’m very excited about that. Anywhere that’s tropical is always good. The whole tour will be sweaty, lots of people having fun and just shaking their bums.

Sounds like a really good time! Talking about shaking bums, your video for ‘I Love To Rap’ in 2012 is quite memorable! What was the inspiration behind that?
[Laughs] That was when we lived in Canberra, we had a homie who sent us a video like “check out what I did with your song” and it was just loads of people shaking their bums. He just put our song behind a compilation of girls twerking, but it was cool, it worked and it became the video.

Have you checked out Miley Cyrus’ twerking skills?
Miley! Yeah I have indeed! I think she’s probably the smartest girl in the game right now. She’s got everyone talking about her and watching her every move, so whatever she’s got coming out next, I dunno, if it’s a single or an album, everyone will know. Although the tongue out of the mouth kind of looks like she’s on drugs.

Would she make the cut for the video?
I think she would. I mean, she not the best at twerking, she doesn’t really have a big bum, but yeah we’d let her do it.

There’s a high demand for you guys in Asia and the US, are planning on taking the tour there?
Yeah, at the moment we’re sorting out stuff for USA, we’ll go to Miami Music Week, but we’re doing a tour around the cities as well. We’re trying to negotiate some stuff for Asia. About a year ago we played in Busan in South Korea and still to this day it’s one of the wildest shows of our career. Koreans know how to party.

You’re playing sideshows at Big Day Out, do you prefer big festivals, smaller sideshow gigs or your own tour?
Ooh good question! I think at the end of the day, it’s all about the vibe. We’ll play a sideshow and it will be intimate, you can get the crowd involved, dancing and give them free vodka. In big festivals, you have tens of thousands of people jumping up and down to your music, and you can’t really replace that. But in a tour, people are just there to see you, whereas in a festival people can be walking by not taking any notice. If the vibe’s good, then everyone’s having fun. We love them all the same if it’s fun.

What tracks have you been listening to recently?
I’ve actually been listening to a lot of ratchet Hip-Hop – Juicy J, A$AP Rocky – I’ve been loving that to get the party started. We’ve just linked up with Crnkn, he got us on this remix with Diplo’s label Mad Decent. It’s reminiscent of 90s R&B stuff, but it’s kind of Housy so it’s good, and that should be out sometime in the next month.

We look forward to hearing it! Well, thanks for your time Adam, you can get back to drinking coconuts and lounging on the beach!
[Laughs]

By Charlotte Mellor