Part man, part machine, part cockatiel, Cage & Aviary take flights of fancy whenever they can.
Cage & Aviary, one part Jamie Paton and one part Nigel of Bermondsey, are busy people. They run a record label, they DJ, they produce, they jam. Their most recent release, the stellar Television Train/Suburban 12″ out now on DFA records (the euro version), has catapulted their success to a global scale. The two came stateside to play some of their first ever American DJ gigs in Los Angeles. So as their legend grows, and as their music continues to amaze, be sure to check them out. The two were nice enough to sit down and fill out a nice e-mail correspondence for Mind Inversion as well. Enjoy! (Nigel isn’t much for the talk)
Mind Inversion: So I’m barely 19 and have a limited knowledge, yet great appreciation and love of disco and house records from days gone by. I feel like all of your tracks draw upon very historic music, and music that most mainstream listeners don’t have an ear for. Elaborate on this idea, What from the past has influenced your music?
Jamie: I guess the short answer is lots of things, but that’s not much in the way of elaboration! We both bring lots of different influences to the mix, but our tastes also blend in some areas too – we both love the whole post-punk NY art-pop stuff like Talking Heads, and the Mancunian 80s new wave punk-funkers like A Certain Ratio and early New Order. We also have much love for the whole island records thing. A lot of this stuff when listened to now doesn’t sound mainstream but at the time, when the charts were made up of less formulaic production-line music, these oddball records made it into the upper reaches of the charts, I think it was an amazing time for popular music. Aside from all of that, I guess I bring more of a disco and house thing to the mix.
Nigel: I agree
MI: What is your model for creating music? I know you guys are involved in various other projects, so is the way you guys create started separately and then fused together at a different time, or is it more of the just sit down together with a plan and create tracks?
Jamie: We just sit down and jam really, see what comes out and take it from there. Recently we’ve been getting our live DJ set thing together, and the practice sessions for that have really produced some great new material, or at least starting points for them.
Nigel: I concur
If you haven’t heard the song yet or if you’re a newcomer to the awesomeness that is 
MIND INVERSION 