Premiere: Lastlings remix Bob Moses' The Blame, as both acts discuss their big 2020

For a year largely spent without clubs, 2020 was busy for dance music. It provided a landscape for experimentalism and collaboration; opportunities for long-time favourites to diversify their sounds and new names to emerge alike. Two artists that felt the brunt of this were Lastlings and Bob Moses, who for their own respective reasons, seemed to dominate the past twelve months.

Gold Coast favourites Lastlings shared their debut album First Contact towards the end of the year, preluding it with singles that edged between electronica and pop with a shine and refinement that only Lastlings could pull of. Bob Moses, meanwhile, released somewhat of an experimental concept release; the six-track Desire release centring itself around the peaks and pitfalls of desire, and how it's visible in different facets of everyone's life. You can read our interview with Lastlings here, and our interview with Bob Moses here - each talking about their respective records. 

Today, however, the worlds collide in the form of a remix, with Lastlings' first piece of work since First Contact being a remix of Bob Moses' The Blame, plucked from that aforementioned release. It's a driving, club-ready remix that taps into the dancefloor euphoria that the original holds, pinpointing its freeing rhythms and pulling them apart to make them the centre of the remix; something that works perfectly amongst Bob Moses' swelling vocals, which moves around its more disco ball-lit surroundings with a real sense of class.

It's a remix that highlights the two pairs' close connections; Bob Moses and Lastlings of course being familiar with each other's work coming from a similar side of electronica, while the pair have also toured alongside RÜFÜS DU SOL in the past, and have shared lineups elsewhere. This remix is the next piece of the puzzle, and it proves that their relationships crosses over into the recorded world too - and it's so exciting to listen.

Take a dive into the remix below as it premieres on Pilerats ahead of its full release tonight, then underneath, read our interview with Bob Moses and Lastlings as we reconnect off the back of their respective albums, and see what they have planned for the future:

So both Lastlings and Bob Moses had new projects come out last year, which was obviously a strange time to release dance music. How did you two find the experience?

Lastlings: It was definitely a challenging time to release new music last year. The hardest part was releasing an album and not being able to tour it and play it live to our fans. With that said though we are lucky enough to live in a country like Australia where we have so few Covid-19 cases because we were able to do some small capacity seated shows in our hometown to celebrate the release.

Bob Moses: Ironically, it actually worked out pretty well for us. We had finished the Desire EP right before lockdown started and had planned to release it in 2020 anyways. We knew it was going to be a stepping stone between our last album and the next one, we didn’t plan to tour in 2020 very much, so it didn’t feel as strange as it could have. We definitely feel like we dodged a bullet in that sense.

It’s obviously a bit of a weird time for dance music as a whole, as there aren’t many clubs around to really experience dance music where it’s built for. Have you all found your relationship with dance music change over the last year or so? How so?

Lastlings: We’re just missing shows, clubs and festivals more and more each month that goes by. It’s where we’ve had some of our best memories, bonded with our closest friends and been inspired to write more music so it’s a sad thing to have that taken away. With things opening up in Australia a little bit more we’re hoping that packed out dancefloors and large capacity festivals are right around the corner. We obviously still love dance music and are thankful that our favourite DJs and live artists are doing live streams that we can watch and hear new tracks. The live streams are great but that feeling of going to a show and experiencing it in the flesh is something that we can’t wait to feel.

Bob Moses: No it hasn’t changed. If anything I think it’s proven itself as a very viable home listening experience. Dance music has become such an important part of music in general. It has crossed over into pop and alternative, you hear echos of it everywhere. Even in the darkest of times or when we can’t be together, people still want to dance!

So we’re premiering this remix of The Blame that Lastlings have whipped up. Bob Moses, can you guys tell us a bit about the original song and its creation?

Bob Moses: It started off as an instrumental dance loop we were playing in our club sets. We’d work in hotel rooms or rent studios in various cities when we were touring in 2019, and started working on tracks that became the Desire EP. The Blame is quite a simple song, but it has lots of really intricate parts coming in all the time to keep it interesting. Lyrically the song is about taking accountability for your actions, looking in the mirror and being forced to reconcile with oneself.

We’ve toured with [Lastlings] and really liked their live show. They were on a shortlist of people we had wanted to get remixes from for this record and so we just asked them. They were kind enough to say yes and few months later they handed us the remix.

Lastlings, can you two tell us a bit about the remix and its creation?

The original is amazing and I’m a massive fan of the guys so I wanted to do a really good job. So I was really going around in circles trying to figure out the best way to remix the song. I went through multiple versions because I’m so indecisive, but I’m happy where it’s landed now.

It’s funny that you asked about our relationship with dance music after clubs closing because when I was making this I had a club environment in mind. I really like how the track builds into the chorus. It really reminds me of those intimate moments on the dancefloor when everyone is slowly dancing and moving, waiting together for the song to drop into the chorus.

Both Lastlings and Bob Moses have a lot of connections with one another; sharing line-ups, occupying similar dance music spaces, and so on. Can you each tell us what draws you each other’s music?

Lastlings: Like I said above we’re massive fans of Bob Moses and have been for years. Their sound along with the RÜFÜS DU SOL guys have been a massive inspiration for the way we make music. It’s just really hard to find other acts that are in the electronic music realm with really great vocals and lyrics like those guys. Their music always feels like it’s telling a story and I love that it sparks that kind of imagination in my mind when I listen.

Bob Moses: We first met Lastlings while touring with RÜFÜS DU SOL. We ended up doing an after-party DJ set in Denver after Red Rocks and Josh was playing before us. He was crushing it! We were hanging with Amy and Josh in the booth and I was trying to trainspot a lot of the tracks he was playing and would go up to him every time I though I had the right one. He’s a great DJ and we all quickly bonded over music.

Lastlings, I know your album was finished for a while, and Bob Moses, I know you’ve no doubt kept writing amongst everything going on since ‘Desire’ came out. What do we have to come from you all this year?

Lastlings: We’re working on new music! We also have a bunch of shows planned in Australia coming up that we’re excited about. We can finally play our album to a dancing crowd that isn’t seated. Would love if the Bob Moses guys came over here and did some shows!

Bob Moses: Yes, we’ve just kept on keeping on! If we’re not touring then we’re writing and visa versa. We’ve had a super productive year working on new music, we put out a live album and film called Falling Into Focus and we’re just gonna keep making new music until the world opens back up again… at which point we will be very eager to get back out on the road!

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