Flight Facilities' debut album is a first class ticket worth holding onto

In the 2010s, dance music packed an unmistakably bombastic punch.

There were wacky dance crazes from PSY or Baauer, festival ready flip offs by Icona Pop, and Skrillex was rearranging our organs with his jacked up take on dubstep.

No wonder then that when Sydney duo Flight Facilities dropped their lush debut album in 2014, we were all ready to jump on board for a little change of pace and scenery.

‘Welcome aboard ladies and gentlemen, today’s flight will be a little over one hour,’ a jovial gent announces on the album’s opening moments.

‘We ask that you move about the cabin as much as possible, be sure to loosen those belts and remember, all our flights are fitted with smoke detectors, so do try not to get caught!’

Across their debut album’s run time we traverse a blend of house, disco, indie pop, ambience, hip hop and classical music all softly lit by a 70s West Coast haze, a journey seamlessly stitched together so as not to up-end the contents of your tray table.

Jamie Lyell was DJing around Sydney’s clubs, whilst Hugo Gruzman was delivering pizzas, making mixtapes and occasionally jumping on the decks. It was some years before their paths crossed on their local scene, and they acted on their creative chemistry.

They adopted their moniker, logo, and aviation theme as a nod to their shared regional roots where Gruzman’s grandfather, Laurie, had founded a small airline offering flights from Merimbula to Sydney called Flight Facilities Australia.

It didn’t take long before their first original song saw the duo embark on their first tours locally and overseas, popping up on TV commercials, leaving fans salivating for more.

Written with Sydney songwriter Giselle Rosselli, ‘Crave You’ oozed addictive lines like ‘Why can’t you want me like the other boys do, they stare at me while I stare at you’, while its thumping toms mimicked the pangs of a desperate yearning.

Lyell and Gruzman noticed that the song had found its way onto a playlist curated by Kylie Minogue and tapped the pop princess to contribute to the album, though her identity was kept secret in the lead up to the release of their debut.

“It’s something that we’re really excited about, but we didn’t want to be a gimmick,” Lyell explained to Richard Kingsmill in 2014.

“The initial idea was to maybe put that vocalist on the whole of ‘Crave You’, like to do it again. But… keeping the originals on is part of keeping our original story mixed with the new.”

That mix of the old and the new is heard in Minogue’s sultry a capella ‘Crave You’ (Reprise) which leads into Rosselli’s original version, a surprise double serve which helps sate our appetites.

As it turns out, Rosselli and Minogue were part of an impressive list of further collaborations that Flight Facilities had in the works for Down To Earth.

From co-writes with The Presets’ Julian Hamilton, to teaming up with an array of dazzling vocal talent from the likes of Emma Louise and Owl Eyes, to Katie Noonan, rapper Bishop Nehru and US comedian/musician Reggie Watts, the latter flexing an effortlessly soulful turn on ‘Sunshine’.

“Most of the songs on this record, like one or two sessions in, we’d know what kind of voice we needed and then we write the rest of the song with them in mind,” Lyell said.

“So, it’s quite a cool thing that, most of the vocalists we wanted said yes.”

Whether it was a late summer party vibe, a lazy afternoon spent reminiscing or a post club afterglow you were chasing, Down To Earth delivered a heady cocktail of nocturnal nostalgia and anticipation.

It seems perfectly fitting that one song in particular came to life via a bout of post-holiday blues.

Returning from a friend’s wedding in Bali, Lyell and Gruzman were listening to The Darjeeling Limited soundtrack, which closes with Claude Debussy’s ‘Claire De Lune’.

“It wasn’t so much about, ‘Let’s just recreate this’, but it was more like, ‘Let’s try and capture the emotion that it gives'”, Lyell explained to triple j’s Inspired podcast.

“There are certain builds and then stops that it has that make you feel so good. And you just want to keep listening to it over and over again.”

Exploring the enduring appeal and evocative nature of classical music and how to fold those inspirations into the dance music they were creating proved to be highly rewarding for the pair.

“I think Moonlight Sonata was my favourite song for years and years when I was growing up, because I think one of my first kindergarten experiences was them [putting the song on] trying to make us go to sleep,” Gruzman recalled on Inspired.

“And I would just sit there and listen to it. There was sorrow, regret or something in it, and then it would be so beautiful. And then would dip straight back down into something a little melancholy.

“It was hard trying to get to across those boundaries. We would normally extract from other dance music or other pop songs, but I think this is the first time we were like, ‘Let’s try and pull something out of something a bit more classical. So maybe we should be trying to do that again.”

You barely notice the song’s near eight minutes drift by, as vocalist Christine Hoberg pleads ‘Don’t go, tell me that the lights won’t change, tell me that it’ll stay the same’, all while the haunting beat, pulsing synth and twinkling bells urge you ever onward.

But Flight Facilities’ Down To Earth isn’t about moving onwards just for the sake of going forward.

It feels firmly plugged into the anticipation of life’s travels, a feeling clearly experienced in the tears and last hugs before departure, the breathless excitement that awaits loved ones arriving and, for travellers, the simmering anticipation of the journey ahead.

It makes the Sydney duo’s debut album a first class ticket worth holding onto.