It’s been a huge year for you guys, what have you been doing?
2015 has been a great year! I guess it all kicked off with Field Day, which was a lot of fun. We were very hung over and sleep deprived but people didn’t seem to mind, we still got a great response out of the crowd and everyone was very encouraging. The year moved quite quickly into a regional tour – we did 12 dates in 12 days, which was bananas but also a lot of fun. We covered a lot of places in Australia that I’d never been to, it’s great that I’ve now got a little bit more understanding of Australia – it was cool seeing how many people were willing to travel so far in those regions to see us play. But this year has definitely been more about touring overseas – we were lucky enough to play on a beach in Vietnam with the Venga Boys, we got to Coachella, Lollapalooza, TomorrowWorld and finally Electric Forest – which is definitely one festival I would go back to as a punter.

With all of that extensive touring, what is the major difference you’ve noticed between Australian crowds and international crowds?
The crowds in Australia are definitely much greater in numbers still for us, but in America it’s starting to grow. TomorrowWorld was hands down the biggest US crowd we’ve played to. Obviously not everyone was from the US but it was sick – it was that point where we thought, “Okay, this is happening, this is awesome.” The crowds over there are different, they go crazy – they love to jump hard, they are so excited. I think maybe Aussies do want to jump and go crazy but at the same time they get to see so much earlier on. In Australia we’ve been having beers since we were a lot younger so when I go to a show I don’t go jumping on people’s shoulders and then screaming – in saying that the crowds are bigger and better in Australia. I think the general looseness and how ‘up for it’ the Americans are is very hilarious and it’s very exciting as well.

As Peking Duk has become more popular here and overseas the crowds will only get bigger, but what’s the biggest thrill about getting on stage at the massive festivals?
At Splendour, our biggest thrill of all time was being behind the decks crouched down, seeing our lighting guy turn the venue pitch black and hearing the crowd scream. It’s just crazy, that feeling of hearing everyone scream – or when the act before us finishes, and the crowd starts up a chant. Nothing will ever beat that because we aren’t doing anything, we are just sitting there waiting to play and we are hearing it all. It’s amazing.

How do you keep yourself upright at the end of tours? It must be a tough slog at times!
Yeah, I guess the trick is – we don’t really know the trick, I’m not going to lie. Sometimes I think it’s better to drink through a flight, or if you’ve got Nurofen and beer you aren’t going to feel the pain of being tired. But the pain of being tired might lead to a point where you have to stop and say “Okay, my body needs to sleep” so maybe it is better to take note of those feelings. It’s like when you are sick you can have Codral and not feel the pain of being sick, or you can cop the pain and know when you are actually getting better, because when you don’t feel the pain you feel invincible and you go out and do things you shouldn’t do when you are sick. When you are tired but you have Nurofen, beer and coffee you don’t feel that bad and are happy to go and do anything you like and, in turn, do a lot more damage to your body.

You’ve got Falls Festival, Stereosonic and a bunch of other dates coming up, would you say you are in fine form for these performances?
We are pretty weird. A lot of the time we will have five shows in five days and by the time it’s show three we are on fire – we know exactly what we are doing even if we are sleep deprived, it’s all good because we’ve done a similar set the night before and again before that. But when we go two weeks without playing a show it sometimes takes us a solid 40 minutes to get into it and then we’ve only got 20 minutes left of the show! I think we need to do a warm up show – like comedians workshopping their material to smaller crowds – we need one of them. I’m going to call it now: the Clovelly Bowls Club, we’ll go set up some Pioneers and decks at the bowl-o for the nannas and pops.

Have you got anything prepared for the upcoming summer shows that Australian crowds might not have seen or heard before?
I don’t know, I guess we’ll chuck down some songs we’ve never played. Like some unreleased ones from the upcoming album, which may come out in 100 years, maybe ten years, maybe next year. Who knows! I think there are a lot of songs we can drop which we’ve never played live and I guess it’s a good idea for us to do that. As for the show itself, we outdid ourselves at Splendour this year – we had our total crew of performers on stage, which was around 21 people. It’s too many people! It’s a lot. We aren’t going to do that at Stereo or Falls because it threw us off a little. I think we are going to make that transition of just Peking Duk music, just include little bits here and there – random little things that don’t interrupt the flow. 

What do you guys do to push the boundaries your music and topping what you’ve done so far?
Every song for us is, in a way, a different adventure. What we’ve been doing in the last 12 months is very actively not doing Peking Duk songs and just doing stuff that is against the grain of what we know best, what makes Peking Duk what it is. So a lot of the songs don’t even have a kick drum and a lot of the songs don’t even have a synth! ‘Say My Name’ only had the synths added in a couple of weeks before the final release. We’re just doing whatever we want and it’s really fun. It’s probably time to stop it being so fun and actually start refining and doing all the boring bits.

In terms of styles, is there anything you guys want to dabble in more with the next release?
Our particular style is very unset at the moment and we’ve got songs that sound a little bit disco and songs that are complete weird electro nothingness. There’s no style set for our future and that’s something we’ve realised will be really important, making sure every song doesn’t sound like ‘Take Me Over’ and ‘High’ and making sure that we can open the doors slowly and surely now so that we don’t shoebox ourselves.

Are there any up-and-comers in the scene that you are really digging at the moment?
Oh, god yeah, so many. Jack Garratt – that’s guys going to be HUGE. Crnkn from LA is going to be massive, he’s a great producer. I’ve also got massive, massive love for all the Aussies like Ayla, Yeo, JOY, Jarryd James – it’s crazy. Hayden James as well, KUČKA is going to be massive. Hayden Calnin, he’s also pretty legendary and the SAFIA boys, who can see anything going wrong for them?

What do you hope 2016 holds for Peking Duk?
I think 2016 should be a big old fun year of unleashing new tunes. We’ve been doing this experiment for 12 months so I can’t wait to start showing it.

Peking Duk will be performing at Falls Festival Byron Bay and Stereosonic. You can hear the duo’s latest single, ‘Say My Name’ here.