Miami Horror are ready to deliver to live shows this November, they’ll be playing in Perth and then heading across to Sydney.
The Perth show on Thursday 27th November will come right in the middle of the city’s annual PrideFEST celebrations adding another party event to the week where our local queer community are out almost every night.
The project featuring Daniel Whitechurch and Benjamin Plant first released music back in 2008, and two years later their debut album Illumination debuted in the Australian top 10. In 2015 they enjoyed more success with All Possible Futures.
While a smattering of EPs and singles followed, fans of the band had to wait until this year for the band’s acclaimed third album We Always Had Tomorrow.
OUTinPerth caught up with Ben Plant to chat about the upcoming live show, the band’s latest album, and just what he’s been doing for the last decade since we last spoke.
Plant says the band has been busy, after relocating to Los Angeles they’ve been touring and putting out occasional music and returning regularly down under for live shows.
But Plant has also put out music under a different moniker, just to see how people reacted to sounds that didn’t feel right under the Miami Horror name, and then a global pandemic slowed things down a bit.
“We moved to America around 2012 and we wrote that album that came out in 2015, and then we’ve mostly been here touring in Mexico and America, and we’d visit Australia every few years.” Plant said.
“Then I started another project, and that took a lot of time, and that’s done really well. I really kept that separate and secret. So that’s a big piece of why things took so long.”
Miami Horror started work on We Always Had Tomorrow in 2020, and Plant used the lockdown period to learn a new skill, he improved his piano playing.
“I wouldn’t say really well, I should have known many years earlier. I knew some theory, but within one week of learning some basics I was able to start writing songs on the piano, that helped the album a lot.
Previously playing the guitar and programming had been Plant’s starting point for making music.
“When I used to play guitar as a teenager, I felt like I was better and I made cooler riffs and things before I knew how to play it. And then once I knew how to play it, I got stuck in the box, and that’s why I refused to learn piano.” he said.
Even though friend told him that embracing the piano would open new doors to his creative process, Plant stuck with his guitar for a long time. Armed with his new piano skills the process for creating new music was different this time round.
“Just the perspective of why we’re doing this,” is one of the things Plant says was different this time round, “and what we love about music, and the importance of messages, and music and things like that.”
“We were making other music around 2017 and 2018 and I would say it was pretty superficial in comparison. So being able to explore that depth again was a huge, huge part of this album, and looking at these like lifelong themes that we all go through, from childhood to death and losing people and the cycle of life.”
As for his other secret project, now that its out in the world Plant shares it’s called Mild Minds, and it created a space for him to make music without the pressure of making a Miami Horror record.
“It’s way more electronic, like UK influenced, the biggest influences for that project were acts like Caribou, Bonobo, Four Tet, Bicep, things like that. I just did it for fun because I needed a break from this overthinking of Miami Horror.
After freeing himself up creatively, new music for Miami Horror came more easily.
Now fans will have the chance to catch up with the band live when they play a Perth show at the ICF Warehouse on 27th November and then head to Sydney for a show at Liberty Hall Court a few days later.
Plant says the show will be filled with the band’s big hits, and a few cuts from the new album.
