Thrilling dance-pop newcomers We Are Iso have released their lush new single “Love n’ Trust“. The release is accompanied by a stunning video directed by Alan Woodman of Nixie Films.
Duo We Are Iso is comprised of vocalist Straalen Mccallum and DJ Jessy Mulholland. Their new single “Love n’ Trust” is a certified floor filler. The pulsating rhythm and sweet synths are guaranteed to get bodies moving on the d-floor.
Discussing the track, DJ Jessy Mulholland says,
“The song started off with just a simple vocal hook – “love… trust” – and evolved into a story about a long-term relationship that was very much one-sided love.
The clip is directed by Alan Woodman of Nixie Films. It features We Are Iso performing late into the night, with an impressive light show setting up a unique hypnotic mood.
An Unlikely Duo
Straalen Mccallum is an acoustic-style singer-songwriter whilst Jessy Mulholland has years of experience in the tech/house scene as a DJ. They have been able to arrive at a unique style by blending their musical perspectives. We Are Iso are already selling out shows in their hometown of the Gold Coast, and it won’t be long before they’re doing the same across the country.
We sat down with Straalen Mccallum and Jessy Mulholland to chat about their new single, “Love n’ Trust” and their journey so far.
I was just re-listening to the track. What a banger! Do you guys write your own music?
SM: Yeah, we sure do. I come from a very singer-songwriter background. More like Jeff Buckley, James Bay, Ed Sheeran and that sort of vibe. My focus has always been very much lyrics, I love storytelling on my side of things. Jessie is –
JM: Tech-house, DJ kind of background. Very different. We kind of just came together from that. Straalen can write lyrics so quickly. He writes lyrics non-stop.
SM: During the process of “Love n Trust”, Jessie was coming up with the sound and the actual beat. And the vibe of the song. He showed me it in the morning and I was immediately drawn to this idea of like, “Love, Trust”. That sort of vibe. I didn’t actually know that was going to be included in the song, to be honest. I was just saying to Jessie, “This is all I can hear”. In my opinion, every melody already has a story behind it or its lyrics and that’s what I focus on. And that’s all I could hear and my whole concept behind that was I’ve got to write it around that. That’s when it came into the whole one-sided relationship, it’s about that one person being stuck in this continuous loop.
Do you generally write the music first and the lyrics afterwards?
JM: I normally like to get into the office, maybe half an hour before Straalen. Then I just kind of just start writing a beat and if I like it, he comes in and he starts to get lyrics with it. Normally I write the beat first and then he’ll come in and figure out some lyrics.
SM: Every song has a different process to it, I don’t think there’s just one right way of writing. Every song is different. Generally speaking though, that’s how we are writing right now. But then there’s times where sometimes we’re just driving along and we come up with this idea and we’re like “Oh, we wanna come up with this concept”. I’d brought in this hourglass the other day, and it’s just chilling in the studio. We ended up writing a song about that, it’s one of those things.
That’s awesome. Are you guys recording in the studio, or have you got a home set-up?
JM: We’ve got a studio, the place is called 176. I’m actually the director of it, it’s a family-owned business. Upstairs we have my mum, my dad and my brother working on the businesses. Downstairs is kind of, our area. We have an Ableton course set up, for kids to learn Ableton. We have the studio which is just next door to us now. That’s where we are all day trying to make new music. Then next door is actually a big photo studio as well. It’s kind of like a creative hub. This is where we come to work every day.
SM: It’s pretty cool that we can call this our job to be honest – laughs.
JM: We’re here all the time, helping my mum and dad out. Doing stuff for them, we write music, so we love it.
So you guys are Gold Coast locals?
JM: Yeah.
SM: I grew up in Kirra Beach. I spent the majority of my life chilling out, next to the beach, writing music.
How did you guys meet?
JM: It was actually through a friend of a friend. My dad’s friend, they hadn’t seen each other since school or something. Straalen came in to look at the studio and I wasn’t actually here that day that he came in. My dad said to me, “you’ve got to meet this guy who came in”. It was only last year, like nine, maybe ten months ago. I was making my tech-house music. I listened to his stuff and I thought, “hmm, it might not work” – laughs. Then he came in and we made a lot of tracks. I didn’t want to release solo, neither did Straalen. We just thought we’d make it a duo and see where it goes.
SM: It just flows really well, surprisingly.
I love the clip too, it was directed by Alan Woodman. How did that come together?
JM: Whoa.
SM: That was a wild day.
JM: There’s a bit of a story with that. We had something totally different planned. We were meant to film on a mountain top from the sunset. Then we got there, but it was all closed. So we couldn’t get through. We just couldn’t get there and the sunset was going down and we literally missed the whole thing. We didn’t know what to do. So we drove around for a couple of hours. Alan pulled out these lights and said “look, I’ve got these, we can just film something at night. We literally just pulled up in a paddock somewhere and set the lights up and just went for it.
SM: It was really cool, it was like a spur of the moment type of thing. We kind of just sat down and brainstormed again. We were like, “we really wanna get this video done”. Alan was fantastic. He’s just such a creative person. He really gets us as artists as well. He was talking about his vision and we kind of really got together and “alright, let’s just go for it and see how it comes out”. We found this awesome spot with this moon, smack bam.
JM: It was literally planned, filmed in that one day and then edited the next day.
SM: And I’m a big believer, we both are, in everything happens for a reason. I really feel like nothing else would’ve worked better for that song. Truly I’m super grateful that everything happened and it was such a stressful day. It ended up being like, an incredible film clip and we’re so proud of it. It’s perfect for “Love and Trust” and that whole concept of the idea is just fantastic. Alan was fantastic, the whole team behind the clip was just fantastic.
And who are your biggest influences sound-wise and what’s on your rotation?
SM: I love listening to people like Jeff Buckley and that sort of stuff. I find that vocally I want to have elements of him, just with the falsetto and stuff like that. I like to incorporate that. You’ll probably hear it in “Love n’ Trust” on the middle section. Really just like, trying to use everything I can. I think he does it fantastically. But together –
JM: My artists would be, like, I love tech house so I listen to Michael Bibi and a lot of other people. Together it’d be more like Rufus, Hayden James, The Lastlings. That’s where we’re kind of going I feel.
SM: We like to keep it kind of, what we’re about but also people like Matt Corby, that sort of stuff, we love.
JM: I listen to a lot of new beats, Straalen tries to listen to a lot of vocal kind of stuff. We’ve been trying to bring it together.
What is your favourite part of what you do?
JM: We had our first live gig last week, our first sold-out show, called Miss Mee in Nobby’s Beach. It was like 150 people and it was our first time playing live ever. I’ve played shows before and so has Straalen, but we hadn’t played together before and it was sick. It felt really good.
SM: It was sick. Being in a duo, I’m used to, so is Jessie, going up there by yourself. And you have that whole crowd and that whole energy just like, directly on you. For some reason, when you’re up there with another person and you’re sharing that energy, you’re bouncing that off each other. Our songs are quite responsive with the crowds as well, so the fact that they’re singing our original songs. We haven’t even released some of these songs. It was such an amazing and incredible feeling. We’re just hanging out, we’re just doing what we love to do. So that’s pretty special.
What’s the music scene like in Queensland?
SM: There never really was a good amount of opportunity on the Gold Coast and now it’s building, what we do here with our business as well. We’re trying to create that music scene on the Gold Coast. Like myself, I was signed to Sony music at age 12. I moved to Sydney after that because you couldn’t really do anything on the Gold Coast.
JM: There was hardly anything, it is getting better though.
SM: And there is so much talent here, we’re discovering that. We’re trying to write with as many people as possible and say “hey, like, stay here”. It’s a chance for them to get everything done here given the opportunity. There definitely is a music scene here, now it’s just a case of let’s try to keep it here.
Do you have any shows planned in the near future?
SM: There’s actually so many things in the works that we are yet to announce, it’s kind of just getting all finalised but we are doing heaps of shows pretty much everywhere around Australia.
JM: We’re so keen, we’re very excited. It’ll be posted up when we know about it all, for sure.
Check out We Are ISO’s “Love n’ Trust” below:
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