Sydney-based twins and Ableton aficionados Cosmo and Patrick make up electronic duo, Cosmo's Midnight. Hailing from Sydney, the two have spent the past few years remixing and creating their unique, computer-generated music, as well as touring their set Australia-wide. We had a chat to half of the twosome, Patrick, ahead of their Beyond The Valley appearance next month.

How did you come up with that name? Why does Patrick get left out?

Haha! My brother Cosmo wrote a remix for Lykke Li/ or did a bootleg of Lykke Li and finished it at Midnight. We didn’t have a name to put on Soundcloud so we were like, well you did it at Midnight so we will just call it Cosmo’s Midnight Mix because it was heaps literal… and then basically everything we did after that we were just like, well let’s just call it Cosmo’s Midnight because we don’t have a name and it sounds kind of cool I guess. I don’t think Pat’s Midnight would sound very good, so I’m glad it’s not.

As a duo, how do you work together?

Well the way we do stuff is that one of us will have an idea then we sort of just pass it between us until it’s done or we’ll sit down and just finish a track.

Where do you guys mostly produce your music?

We have a studio in the city and we will go there if we want to finish stuff, but most of the time we just write stuff at home. It’s just the nature of music, you don’t really need to be anywhere, you can just sort of be at home. We sort of just created this studio to get in the zone or whatever, to knuckle down and just finish it.

[soundcloud width="750" height="250"]https://soundcloud.com/cosmosmidnight/goodnight-feat-polographia[/soundcloud]

I saw Stoli Vodka posted a video on YouTube of a challenge for you guys to create a mix in one hour. Do you find working under pressure sometimes works for the better?

Oh for sure! Most of the time I’d like to work at my own pace. But sometimes having a deadline for a remix or something forces you to get creative or at least get an idea out. I think that works a lot of the time. Sometimes when we have a deadline for a remix or something and they go, “hey we have a week and a half turn around for you, can you do it?”, we give it a shot. For the first week you just have your ideas and then all of a sudden you come up with something, because it just comes to you eventually, you are forced to think about it because you have that deadline.

I had a day off work yesterday to sit by Fitzroy Pool and listen to your EP Surge on repeat. Your tracks took my mind away from the 30 degree heat and into the depths of the ocean. Is the coastal landscape and chillwave style a big influence in your music?

I’d say indirectly a lot, but I don’t think about it too much when it comes to writing music. Cos and I have always been at the beach a bunch, we went to school at Bondi so we went to the beach after school everyday more or less and surfed. We don’t do that so much anymore because we don’t live on the Eastern Suburbs, which is where the beaches are at. We went to school there so it made sense to go but now we sort of go there when we can instead of everyday. It’s still awesome, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What is the main program or technologies you use in your mixing?

Pretty much everyone who does music uses Ableton, that’s what we use. It is like any other DAW, I don’t know what it stands for, it’s like the net technical name for it, but yeah! We just write everything on that.

What is one Festival in the world you both want to play?

Hahah that’s a hard question. There is this real cool Scandinavian one called Roskilde, that looked pretty cool. There’s a bunch of cool ones in the UK. I want to suss the American ones out. I don’t know too much about what goes on in other countries to be honest, regarding festivals. There’s that one, Tomorrowland, I think I just want to go to experience just cause it looks so crazy.

How did your collaboration with Wild Eyed Boy for your new single, Snare come about?

We went to school together and both did music. He sung on our stuff before but never really as Wild Eyed Boy. He lived in London for a bit and then he came back and we wrote this track together and that was it. We were school friends and we knew he had talent to do it and he was more than willing to do it so that was cool.

[soundcloud width="750" height="250"]https://soundcloud.com/cosmosmidnight/cosmos-midnight-snare-feat-wild-eyed-boy[/soundcloud]

Is there an intention for you to get behind new artists such as Wild Eyed Boy who don’t have a big following to help build one for them through your own platform?

Me and Cos are massively supportive of smaller artists, we often post about them on our Twitter. We don’t usually do too much of that on our Facebook because you need to keep tabs on that. We post stuff on Soundcloud, to get people the attention they need. It’s really hard to start off, so it’s really good to try and give people a leg up. If you don’t give them plays but maybe give them an industry hook up or something to point them in the right direction, like a label, potential manager or blog interview or something like that. It’s good to help people out.

If you could jump on stage with any other artist playing Beyond The Valley who would it be?

We want to make a track with AlunaGeorge so that’s a given. Maybe Danny Brown to rap along to his track. I really love Sinjin Hawk one of the smaller bands on the bill. If he is playing the same day I will atleast be on the side of the stage to support.

Are you guys Glamping it up in a Tee-Pee or roughing it out in a tent?

I wish were staying in either of those but we are actually staying off-site which is a massive bummer I reckon. I think we are just staying in a hotel with Basenji. I am going to hopefully stay as long as I can at Beyond The Valley because we have to head back to Sydney the next day to play another show.

 5 QUICK QUESTIONS:

What do you think is more groundbreaking in the world of news- The fact that Frances Abbott got a Fashion scholarship for being Tony’s daughter or Kim Kadashian’s amazing ability to balance a champagne flute on her ass?

If Kim Kardashian’s photo is legit I am going to say that is more groundbreaking. Because it doesn’t look real, I call bullshit on that. But if it is I am pretty impressed. The whole picture looks like it’s photoshopped.

Have you guys ever pretended to be each other before on a date?

Not on a date, I can’t imagine how weird that would be. We have done it at school before. ‘Cause we are sort of better at doing different stuff so I took one of his tests and he did one of mine so that was cool. But yeah, I would be interested to see how the a date would go.

Do you guys have telepathic powers between one another?

I wish we did, that would be pretty cool. I guess from being around each other so much we can get a feeling of what the other person is thinking. I think that’s more of a familiarity thing than super powers which sucks but you know maybe one day it will just click and we’ll be like, oh we were missing out all along.

I’m your 1272nd instagram follower because I find your 23 posts hilarious. What will you post next?

I wish I was better at insta, I don’t really do it enough. Instagram is an artform, you’ve got to do it right. I guess it will come to me, it’s just like any other artistic inspiration.

Who was the last person you stalked on Facebook?

I don’t want to say I stalk lots of people but I do often look through, you know, to see what’s going on. Maybe with people I haven’t added yet just to suss what’s going on before I add.

I look forward to seeing you guys play at Beyond The Valley.

Cheers, yeah, should be great. We are going to drop a whole bunch of new stuff, we’ve got a really cool remix we did that we are going to hopefully have out by then.

You can catch Cosmo's Midnight at Beyond The Valley Festival. Tickets available here.