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Infusion Is Taking On The World

Author: Terry Goldfain
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
In the music industry, a concept like 'success' has no single definition. Some might identify success with album sales, or the amount of frequent flyer miles they've notched up, or even their groupie pulling power. However, few would argue with Melbourne based electronic outfit, Infusion's, latest claim to fame. After all, how many bands can boast that one of the preeminent record labels of yester year is reforming, primarily to release their new album-

"Deconstruction are going to be releasing 'Six Feet Above Yesterday' over in the UK," confirms Jamie Stevens who, along with Frank Xavier and Manuel Sharrad, make up Infusion. From those not familiar with Deconstruction's illustrious history, it was once home to the likes of M People, Sasha, Kylie Minogue and and Robert Miles. "Mike Pickering, who was in M People and basically runs the label Deconstruction, is now head of A & R at Sony BMG," explains Stevens. For years they wanted to restart the label, and when they heard our new album and found out that BMG in Australia had us on their roster, they said that we were perfect to relaunch the label. So they've started up again to release our CD which is a huge honour for sure."

While those of us in Australia, and even Mexico, Argentina, and Chile have been able to purchase 'Six Feet Above Yesterday' locally for over six months, the distribution situation in the U.S.A. has been even slower then that of the UK. "They're in negotiations with a label to distribute it in America at the moment, but it's looking really good," says an optimistic Stevens. "The whole label process is not very speedy, and you kind of get used to things taking a while as they work on their own time. So you've just got to get used to it. It's been an interesting experience. You create the album you always wanted to make, and then you see what happens after it gets into the hands of those releasing it. We've got the re-release coming up now. It's a double Cd release which will include all the remixes that have been done on the one CD and the full album on the other. The remixes will include ones by King Unique, Evil 9 and Dylan Rhymes. England had their own schedule to release Girls Can be Cruel and they wanted UK producers to remix it. We just chose two, those being Dylan Rhymes and King Unique. And then a label in Italy wanted to release it so they did their own mix and got Alex Dolby to do a mix. So before you know it you've got twenty remixes of a track. After a while it sort of gets out of control. We've included remixes of Careless Kind and Natural, as well as our production Do To You.as a lot of people might not have bought it as it was released on a single sided white labelish vinyl."

A remix that won't be featured is a brand new one that Stevens was working on previous to our interview. Despite the ease of our conversation and his infectious enthusiasm, he'd been in the studio till 5am, and sleep has not been his ally of late.Yet the fruits of his labour will have to remain a mystery for at least a little while longer. "The remix is for someone pretty big that I can't really talk about just yet because I need to send it to American first for approval. But I can say that it's probably the biggest thing we've done."

Perhaps this mysterious big name was someone Infusion met while attending the Miami Winter Music Conference last month. While not a huge fan of the Miami experience in general, Stevens sings the praises of the event held by Australian dance music website, Resident Advisor, at which Infusion played. "They packed it out and it was an awesome night," he states. "At the beginning of the conference, to get such a good turnout is no mean feat. We also played at the Ultra Festival that concluded the conference. We were meant to be on a smaller stage and they'd bumped us up onto the main stage, just before Ferry Corsten. You had people like Christopher Lawrence and Infected Mushroom before us, so it was a bit strange slotting in there.
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