Ozzie House DJs Set Mo Chat LA and partying with P Diddy

Set Mo are slick well groomed Australian DJ / producer duo, well that’s what we are led to believe. I got up close and personal with the boys in sunny LA.

Comprising Sydneysiders Nick Drabble (short back’n’sides) and Stu Turner (goatee and ponytail), Set Mo came together in 2012 when the two DJs, who’d often found themselves on the same bill, decided their sounds were so complementary that perhaps they should test how tag-teaming tracks back to back would sound. Pretty good, as it turned out. Studio forays soon followed, resulting in tasty classic house-tinged, guest vocal-driven cuts including Comfort You (feat. Fractures), Chasing Forever (feat. Alphamama), Keep On (feat. Erin Marshall) and the breakout White Dress (feat. Deutsch Duke). Yeah, you heard that one, right?

The distilled sound of a blissed-out Australian summer — albeit, written in London after an eight-day bender in Ibiza — White Dress was the 11th most-played track on Triple J in 2014, and has clocked up more than 18 million streams on Spotify since its launch.

Since White Dress broke, Set Mo certainly haven’t been resting on their laurels. Mid-2017 saw the release of vocal house beauty, I Belong Here (featuring lilting Townsville-bred singer/songwriter Woodes on the mic), which received high-rotation support from Triple J, props from UK Radio 1 tastemaker, Pete Tong and Spotify nods of approval via New Music Friday in Australia, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway and Iceland.

Nick and Stu are huge Groove Armada fans (“I can remember exactly where I was, as a kid, the first time I heard Superstylin’,” Nick enthuses — “it changed my life”). In a way, the new material’s approach and production process echo that of GA’s wildly diverse 2001 album Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub), which was recorded during nine hermetic months at a studio in a barn in the Cotswolds boondocks. They also put in time at unfamiliar studios in far-flung places like London, Amsterdam and Berlin.

Set Mo are planning to release a new tune each month throughout 2018, kicking off with ‘Nightmares’, a gritty breakbeat number featuring British multi-instrumentalist Scott Quinn on vox. Though their rep thus far has been built on hooky lyrical tracks — and Nightmare’s sure no noodly minimalist instrumental — we can expect more left-of-centre surprises from Set Mo in future. “We want people to know we’re not just doing 4/4 beat, vocal stuff,” says Stu. “We love artists like Chemical Brothers and Groove Armada, or Moby and Jamie XX — you listen to their albums, they’ll have big, deep electronic dance tracks, and then delicate, soft, beautiful songs.

We don’t want to be pigeonholded as just house DJs. We’re so inspired by different styles of music, and want to express that,” says Nick. Concludes Stu, “No matter what type of music we’re making, when it comes down to it, we’re songwriters, we’re writing songs.”

Best believe, it ain’t all about four-to-the-floor. Set Mo have got much more in store. Each month, a new track, as a matter of fact.