Composer 80’s New Wave band member, music engineer, Psy Trance DJ and producer, keyboardist…Gus Til has spent much of his life traversing the musical landscape like some kind of latterday Stanley Livingstone. His wife Cozzy is no less well travelled, an accomplished singer songwriter, composer and dj in her own right. These are two people for whom music is clearly a sustaining force.
You may have seen Gus and Cozzi down at Kudeta where they spin regularly. You’ll know them by their signature sound – which can be summed up quite simply as ‘eclecticism’ – anything from Kraftwerk to MFSB to Nat King Cole to Cocteau Twins might be thrown into the mix.
Since arriving in Bali from London a year ago, both have been really busy. Gus has spent the last 9 months and more putting together his first solo release Electronic Oceans, a fluid, multi-layered ambient work that recalls the roots of the genre, before it was watered down and repackaged in endless Chill Out compilations by greedy marketers.

‘See for me, ambient means people like John Hassel and Brian Eno, real musicians who were doing something genuinely different, pushing the boundaries,’ says Gus. ‘Now a lot of the stuff called ambient couldn’t be less creative.’

The skeleton of Electronic Oceans was put together on Gus’ Mac computer and a battered old Yamaha keyboard. Live elements were brought in later when Gus visited his native Australia, collaborating with the likes of bass player Joe Creighton, guitarist Pete Farnham and a Lebanese Oud (the Middle Eastern lute) player introduced to him by his brother. He also collaborated with Balawan, Bali’s very own guitar genius.

‘The great thing with digital music programs is you don’t have to record everything straight to tape like in a conventional studio. The technology allows you to take recordings apart and cut and paste different elements. The whole process of making the album was more like doing a painting really.’

After the album was cut, Cozzi took it to her native Japan and presented it to the label she used to work with, 30th Records who immediately picked it up. It’s due for release here in Bali this November.

Surprisingly for someone so immersed in music (the man owns more than 7000 albums) this is his first solo album. He’s collaborated with countless music luminaries, from Manu Dibango to Michael Hutchence (with whom he used to play keyboard on a pre-INXS project called Max Q), legendary NY producer/DJ Todd Terry to Jamiroqui and as a key mover in the Psy-trance scene, released over sixty tracks as Slinky Wizard and Zen Lemonade with Cozi. He first got into the whole dance thing back in Melbourne when he got disillusioned with the New Wave scene in his native Melbourne

‘The emphasis was moving more and more towards production and away from the music people were actually producing. But dance music was the first real musical movement since punk – in the early days it had this real excitement and the DJs set wasn’t confined to one category you’d hear a Prince track followed by some Detroit techno followed by early disco – it was all just music to dance to.’

But as dance culture hit the mainstream and was put into neat categories, he found himself drawn to the Trance scene. Which is how he met Cozi. They were introduced by a mutual friend – one of Japan’s biggest DJs, Tsuysohi Suzuki. Both moved to London, where Trance was at its height with parties like Escape from Samsara and Return to the Source creating a Festival vibe in the heart of the city. But by 2002, both had had enough. Having recently spent a couple of months in Bali working on a project with breakbeat label Kingsize, the couple, with their first child, upped and moved to Bali.

‘The first few months up in Ubud were pretty crazy – I was really caught up with Electronic Oceans and it took us a while to discover the Seminyak scene. Then we made the connections with places like Kudeta and Double Six and things really started moving’

Gus is working on about seven major projects right now, including the soundtrack to a promotional video about Bali being commission by the Tourism Board – he’s also doing stuff for TV, and working on his own solo projects. Cozi meanwhile is in the process of setting up a new label, which you’ll no doubt hear more about soon, as well as producing her own original material.