SameSame.com.au ~ Inside Out Australia

Whips, Chains And The Presets

International News, By Christian Taylor, 27th August, 2008

Aussie electro superduo The Presets love the gays. They blew us away when they played Mardi Gras last year. Now the boys have been booked to play Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco later in September. It’s considered one of the world’s biggest, most well known, and most hardcore leather and fetish events. When it comes to gigs, they don’t come much gayer.

Folsom Street Fair has become a major international destination, with more than 400,000 people annually attending from all over the world. The event generates over A$290,000 annually for charity. It’s a celebration of leather culture and sexual fetishism, and attracts not only participants, but voyeurs as well.

At Folsom none of the normal rules apply. It’s not unusual to see couples leading each other around with dog collars and leashes, more porn stars than you can poke a vibrator at, naked games of Twister, people fucking and being flogged and whipped in the streets – there’s even a man who’s earned himself the nickname ‘The Human Urinal’, for reasons which are pretty obvious. Last year the fair angered religious groups when their poster featured a fetishised take on the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting The Last Supper.

It’s good to see The Presets playing such edgy gigs. “We used to feel like dancing and screwing are the two things that we are still allowed to enjoy in life, and… we [want] to make music that [encourages] people to do one of those things or both,” Julian Hamilton, one half of The Presets, said recently.

In the past when quizzed by Jonk Music about the pair being gay, or being plugged into the ‘gay vibe’, they responded by saying, “It’s not like [we’re] trying to get in each other’s pants or anything, but it depends on how many E’s you give me… I don’t think we’re overtly gay, we’re just who we are, and it’s probably just sexual… I’ve read reviews that [say] ‘Why is it that listening to the Presets makes [you] want to go find [yourself] a massive throbbing cock!’... It’s like, I think it’s just confidence and sleaze more than any particular sexuality. We’re just the sort of people who like whatever.”

Hard to argue with that.

Watch their new video Talk Like That here: