Before it became a Canadian music sensation, HUMANS was just two people: Peter Ricq and Robbie Slade. When they first met at an art show in 2009, Ricq was an electronic musician, Slade, part of a folk band called Family Room. But after bonding over a shared love of high singing voices, the unlikely pair started jamming together. Six years, two EPs, and one national tour later, they’re still jamming—as two halves of the dynamic indie-electronic duo HUMANS. Using synthesizers and instruments to combine indie-pop and electronic elements, HUMANS is known for their unique sound and uncanny ability to get people dancing. Ricq and Slade promise that their newest album, Noontide, will be something new altogether. To be released February 24th by Hybridity Music and followed with a North America tour, Noontide is “a synthesis of time and space,” an “innovative mix of heavy electronics and modern pop sensibilities.” SAD Mag sat down with Ricq and Slade for the scoop.

SM: Where are you from and how did you meet each other?

RS: [Pete’s] from Montreal, and I’m from Nelson, BC. We met at an art show in 2009. He had a really disturbing bunch of paintings—I wont get into the details of what they were—but I was really intrigued, so we started talking. I got Pete to do [merchandise] for my band, Family Room, because I liked his paintings so much. We started jamming at the first meeting and I was kind of blown away.

PR: I invited Robbie to come over—well actually I invited the whole band to come over, and Robbie’s the only one who came. We did a track and then he biked home, so I called the track “Bike Home.” That was our first song.

SM: And so you’ve been HUMANS ever since?

PR: Yeah, Robbie was going to go firefighting, [until] I told him, “Hey, I got us a good show at Glory Days. I’ll do a music video, and we’ll print CD’s and everything. Let’s actually try and do it. ”

SM: Tell me a little about your new album, Noontide. What was it like recording your first LP?

PR: Some of these songs on the LP are about four years old, and some of them were done fresh at the studio. So it was just like taking a bunch of scraps from over the years and [putting them together]… What was fun about it was actually having good gear.

RS: And that we had more know-how; we came at it with fresh minds.

PR: Yeah, it was fun to go to a studio and experiment with the better gear—gear that we’ve always thought of using but didn’t have the means to [buy]. It was fun; it was actually like what “real” bands do.

SM: What makes you not a real band?

RS: Well I think we are now. Now that we had that experience—now we’re a real band.

SM: Are you excited about your upcoming tour? What are you most looking forward to?

PR: It’s going to be fun. We haven’t been on the road in a while.

RS: We’re working such long days right now between working and jamming everyday to make our set really rad. Our set’s really different from our album, which I’m actually really happy about.

PR: You know the last time we played [a set], we played it for like two and a half years. But this is going to be a brand new set that we’ve never played before and that’s exciting.

SM: What does your new set sound like?

PR: I think it’s housier, the live set is definitely housier.

SM: And the new album? Will you be playing any of those tracks during your tour?

PR: We are, but we’ve just basically remixed every single song. When we were in the studio, we had all the gear that we wanted, but we obviously can’t tour with all that. So when we made the live set, it was like taking another look at all of those songs that we took from the studio to figure out how we [could] play them like they sound on the record, but using crappy old gear. It was like writing another album, to be honest.

SM: How were you able to do that? Learn to play your set like it sounds in the studio, but on “crappy-ass” gear?

PR: Some of it has been rewritten. We’ve changed a lot of the endings or added endings. And we got a pretty nice sampler, so for some of the elements we can’t recreate, we just sampled [them], straight from the stems.

RS: I think [the audience is] really going to like that. Because it won’t be exactly like the album, it will be like all these strands [going] in different directions, while always keeping in mind that we want to keep people moving.

SM: Yeah, people definitely dance hard at your shows. It’s pretty amazing.

PR: To be honest it’s something we had to work on. But now we’re getting better at the sound, at keeping people dancing. That’s basically the qualifier—whether people are dancing or not.

SM: Are you nervous for your tour at all? Do you guys get stage fright?

PR: No, but we do get nervous when our music equipment isn’t working—when our cheap-ass gear isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.

SM: Does that happen often?

PR: Once we played in Calgary, and one of the samplers that had all of our songs wasn’t working. So we could only play this really old set. Another time, the mixer was broken and we had to plug everything into DI’s (Direct Boxes). They’re really unreliable!

SM: I hope you can fundraise some money for new equipment!

PR: Yeah, but we’re so used to it. It would take forever to [learn our set on new gear]. We’d need like another two months.

RS: We have three keyboards of the same keyboard in the shop and we had to buy a new one because it’s still not repaired! It’s been there for years.

PR: In the beginning I was telling Robbie, “Okay we need two of everything.” “Why?” “Because they always break.” And he said, “Why don’t we just buy something that doesn’t break.”

RS: We should have done that!

SM: Well at least if the whole band thing fails, you two could always start a music gear repair shop?

PR & RS: Noooooo!

SM: Okay, okay! Sorry, I take that back. Your tour will be awesome, I’m sure. Any last words before I let you go?

PR: Yeah, we love you guys!

HUMANS will be performing in Vancouver on March 28 at Celebrities Night Club.
Tour dates & tickets on their website.