Emerging last year with the schizophrenic ‘Au Reve’, Cassius quickly affirmed they were no one album wonders. ‘Au Reve’ combines hearty elements of guitar-house and edgy basslines that is best understood when heard live. So you’re going this Sunday, right?

"We are funky and do a lot of music" remarks Phillipe, boling it down to the bare facts with his smoky Parisian tones. Phillipe and Boombass have been in the game for many years, with Zdar growing up in the French Alps before finding a kinship with Boombass after he realised Hubert produced MC Solaar’s seminal album ‘Qui Seme Le Vent Recolte Le Tempo’. Zdar comes from an even more impressive pedigree, having teamed up with uber-genius Etienne De Crecy to form Motorbass (check ‘Pansoul’).

If, on first listen, you didn’t quite get their sequel long-player, don’t baguette, because like all quality productions, wines and coastal real estate it matures significantly. While they wrote 35 tracks to choose from for Au Reve (translated ‘In A Dream’), Zdar and Boombass let their stereos stray away from the kind of music they write, with Neil Young and Crosby, Stills and Nash getting a thrashing alongside reggae and rap. Ghostface Killa guests on album cut ‘Thrilla’, the Wu-Tang spittin’ rhymes and taking no prisoners. Zdar points to Germany as the current hot spot for underground beats, noting Ian Pooley’s large…errr…position in the German house scene.

However, Zdar reassures Chicago house and Detroit techno were the overriding reason they initially got excited about music. Indeed, the smooth Chicago stylings of ‘I’m a Woman’ are given some BootyDivaBounce by Jocelyn Brown, while techno elements aren’t as prevalent on ‘Au Reve’. So let’s see how they write music.
"We start with a loop and work it in the studio. We work up a lot of synthesizer and at the end take out the sample. You have a brand new song that you would never have done because we are very bad musicians .. and you don’t have to approve the sample like everyone else does""
"We weren’t thinking too much about it," Phillipe insists, "We wanted to do something stronger, chunkier and different. So I think it would be interesting to do something new. That will be the same with the next one and the one after that. I don’t want there to be a standard. Perhaps on the next it will techno or all funky instruments. Everytime we want a musical revolution."

"On this album we played the harmonica. It was the strangest because it’s an instrument that normally I really hate." Don’t think it was all session musos either, the boxing brothas went the full thirteen rounds. "We play both very badly drums, guitars, keyboards… but very badly at all of them." What about the metal riffage that assaults The Sound of Violence? "We had a very good guitar player come in and do the WAH WAH and things like this."

Tearing the Sounds Asunder Down Under

"We have a very good boogaloo response to The Sound of Violence of course… and we have a very good response to Under Influence" which incorporates the gospelphunk of Leroy Burgess. "We will play lots of new music, lots from the album and a few old ones." Zdar recalls that everywhere he goes, fans ask for specific tracks of their debut ‘1999’. He usually doesn’t have every cut with him, but on this trip to our shores he promises to cram them all in his box. "I think I’m gonna play bits of the first album," he understates. The daring duo will be splicing and spicing up each mix using a sampler. But I need to make sure he will be playing my personal fave, thus I falsetto down the line ‘Maa feeelings for yooou/ Have allllways been free’ Phillipe snorts laughter and pledges he will drop it.

Meeting People Is Easy

"I want to see and meet lots of people," Zdar starts, clarifying "I want to meet Australian girls. I want to do and see surfing. If possible we want to experience the summertime because it is freezing here." So they’re just using us for our climate, huh? We’ll remember that Z-man. "We really want to come into the country and meet some people." Aww. Cue ‘People who need people.’

They Were Doing what?

"The craziest thing I have ever seen people do on the dancefloor was in Italy.. no, actually it was in Ibiza at the Space Anniversary and people were having sex in front of me while I was playing – on the main floor in the middle of everybody. That was very wild. Not everybody was noticing, but we saw it first because we were up above."