Standing out in the endlessly growing moana of talented artists of today is already a commendable feat in and of itself, but actually capturing the scene’s full attention? As an emerging name? A downright herculean task.
With a sound that is as wide-ranging as it is fine-tuned and sets that are as accessible as they are underground, the lads behind New Zealand’s newest two-man-show inmotion have accomplished just that, in less than a year’s time. A serious run of massive Kiwi summer festivals like Rhythm & Vines, Northern Bass, and even Ultra, releases on Wilkinson‘s renowed Sleepless imprint, extensive support by titans like A.M.C and Sub Focus – studio magician Elliot Wardle and former Sly Chaos member Conor Till have already ticked off more boxes than some have in an entire decade, and they are just barely getting started.
Ahead of their aforementioned set at Ultra’s first-ever outing in New Zealand, we sat down to thoroughly untangle their musical story, discuss what defines their sound, and reminisce about the many, many highlights of their shared journey so far.
You’ve got Ultra New Zealand coming up in a couple days, right? How hyped are you?
Conor: Oh mate, I’m fizzing. I know Elliot’s excited!
Elliot: It’s pretty crazy! Having come from the UK originally, I remember hearing massive things about Ultra when I was a kid. Now I’ve been in New Zealand for seven years or something, and suddenly Ultra’s coming over here! It’s just such a massive brand, it’s quite exciting to be a part of it. You know, the first one! It’s a big deal.
Totally! How did you get involved?
Conor: Our manager Harry is tied in with the Audiology crew who were responsible for bringing Ultra to New Zealand. Through that, we got the connection to it all. Really stoked to be part of it.
Elliot: We’re very, very lucky to be on it considering where we are in our journey as inmotion. The project’s been going for less than a year and we’ve done so much in that time. The fact that we’re now also part of Ultra is just an honour, especially since it’s brand new to New Zealand as well!
Speaking of your first year, your very first release was on Wilkinson‘s Sleepless Music imprint, which is a bonkers place to start out on!
Elliot: I know! It’s mad. We do a lot of work with George from SUUNE. Our very first single, ‘Heartless’, was done with them and that ended up coming out via Sleepless, and we just built the relationship from there, sending them music and teaming up with them a little bit!
It’s always so cool when established artists are open for new names like that.
Elliot: Totally! And Wilkinson himself does the A&R for Sleepless as well, which I don’t know if this is normal, because it can’t be! He’ll listen to literally everything, it’s his final say whether it goes on. Getting some good feedback from the man himself was pretty cool, you know?
I want to jump back in time and dig into both of your musical journeys a little bit. I’ve got so many notes!
Starting with Elliot. Your journey was harder to trace compared to Conor’s, with the earliest thing I could connect to you going all the way back to 2011 – one of your tunes as Inque!
Elliot: Aw man, that’s bang on! I actually started making music in 2011, so you went right back to the beginning there, ha! Out of interest, did you write down the name of any track?
I’ve got ‘Faithless’ written down here, for example.
Elliot: That is wild, ‘Faithless’ must have been the very first drum & bass I’ve ever made. Conor hasn’t even heard that!
One of the reasons I was probably hard to trace for most of the 15 years I’ve now been producing, is that I honestly never did anything with it. I was making music, but I wouldn’t have considered myself part of the music industry at all. I was a guy that enjoyed making music in his bedroom that I showed a couple of mates and if they liked it, that made me happy. Only very rarely did I actually upload anything publicly, it was all private on my SoundCloud. Then, about five years ago, I met Conor. We worked together a little bit, but just sort of tabled it for a while. A couple years later, around two years ago, Conor and I met up again and we realised we had this unfinished track still sitting around, and thought we should probably get around to finishing it. Then we worked together quite closely for about a year, when Conor was still busy with Sly Chaos and I was just helping out, and then we were like “we should probably do something with this”! We were making some good tunes, we should probably pull together a little project here!
When I was looking up more about that old Inque project of yours, most of the search results were about a shape-shifting comic villain. Is that a coincidence? Since your sound has definitely, well, shifted in shape quite a bit over the years!
Elliot: Yeah, definitely! My production journey has come a long way, oh god. It must have taken a beating listening to that stuff from back then, ha! What you found online is bang on where that came from. Back in the day, way back when, I used to watch the Batman cartoons with my brother and there was this really cool villain called Inque that could shape-shift in all sorts of cool ways. So when I trying to think of a name I just went with that! I was like, what, 16?
Back when you were still firmly planted in Manchester! What made you move all the way to the other side of the globe?
Elliot: It was honestly so random. Before I moved to New Zealand, I had always wanted to come here, but had no intention of actually doing it. Then my mate was flying over there and was like “I can get you a job and a place to stay if you want to come – now is the time”. I just left uni and was in the working world, commuting an hour and a half each way.
Oh god.
Elliot: It took its toll! It was in winter as well. You know how it is in Europe, you get seasonal depression and all that. I was in this new job as well, and I was in sales, nothing to do with music, and all I could think was “this is shit, I need to get out of here”. So I literally left everything, and within two or three weeks I was on that flight to New Zealand. I was only supposed to be here for a year, but then Covid and everything happened, then last year I’ve bought a house and now I’ve got a dog too. So I’m not going anywhere!
Wonderful! Conor, you’ve got your own, similarly long but way better documented history, as part of Sly Chaos. How did you get into it all?
Conor: I grew up in a musical household, dad played the guitar. I was exposed to a variety of different sounds real young. My mum listened to a lot of electronic house music, my brother hip-hop, and dad blues. From an early age I just always had a massive passion for it! Then when I was in high-school there was a DJing course, which I ended up doing for a bit. I tried doing audio engineering straight out of school, but that was all a little bit too far down the deep end, compared to what I actually wanted to do.
So by lack of interest I didn’t follow that through much, and pivoted to the social life of a 20-year-old just partying – and got back into DJing! My mate Andy’s older brother eventually bought some decks, which ended up at my house. My mum loved that, ha! So we were just rinsing them every day, really just trying to emulate Andy C, who was pretty much the one we followed back then. He was just number one! To this day, the style of mixing that I do is based off that fast-pace, high-energy, with lot of switch-ups, lot of doubles, triples, just energy. I just love it!
For like the first 8 years or so, we really just pushed DJing and the whole social side of it, but it got to a point where I knew I wouldn’t progress if I didn’t make music, so I fell into that. I had downloaded Fruity Loops when I was 13 and listening to Ministry Of Sound CDs, but never followed it through, which I wish I did! I ended up picking up Logic much later. Since I was good friends with Tom Lee from Lee Mvtthews he basically became a bit of a mentor to me and converted me to Ableton later on, and now I’m on Bitwig with Elliot!
Quite the journey! What I found interesting in your early days as part of Sly Chaos is that you basically tried out everything before putting out your own tunes: DJing of course, promotion, podcasting, the “Sly Tune Of The Week”, so much!
Conor: Yeah anything to build the brand, ha! Through that podcasting, interviewing our mates, I ended up getting a job at George FM! From memory, it may have been like 10 to 11pm on a Thursday night, like twice a month. That popped off and then we ended up being moved up to a little bit of a better time on a Wednesday. Now we got a Friday night show, with our good friend Adam from Twentytwo! It’s been such a fun journey, throwing stuff at the wall and figuring out what sticks!
Has hosting that George FM show informed your DJing in any way?
Conor: We were definitely exposed to more of the enormous amounts of local up-and-comers that are popping up all around New Zealand, through people coming in the studio and the friends they bring in. It’s really refreshing to see the variety of styles, and how differently people showcase themselves! Their expression of music, how they want to tell that story and journey. I feel very privileged to have that show, for one. Definitely not taking it for granted! We meet so many cool people on an international level, but also at the local level. It’s a platform we can use to share the love around! It’s so hard to get a shot sometimes, so we’re open to giving everyone a chance. Thankfully Adam is really good at managing that show, because it’s hard to always find the time to put the energy into it, and he’s so passionate about it.
Must be incredibly hard to juggle all of this! The show, production, new project…
Elliot: Tell me about it!
Conor: And a full-time job!
Oh god!
Conor: We are in the studio at 6:00 AM. I work at Red Bull and there’s a studio in our office. So getting there before work for a few hours, get out and do the day and then come back and do more at night usually, and then the weekends, and everywhere we can!
And keeping Sly Chaos going on top of that as well?
Conor: That project kind of just fizzled out, to be honest. It got to a point where I was just carrying the whole weight of it, and it felt very one-sided. Then, when Elliot and I were starting to hang out, we were making so much music and we had finished so many tunes we realised we really should do something together. As Sly Chaos and SIU, we had already released ‘Let It Burn’ on Viper together, but then we had the core parts of ‘Between Those Lines’ written in basically four hours, for example. We have very different strengths of course. Elliot’s a much more experienced producer than I am, but hasn’t been as exposed to the whole networking and DJing world, the whole building your personal brand and that. So we kind of have a good yin and yang going, a real synergy! It really is just hanging out with your mate, banging out tunes, getting into a good flow. Now we just need to get them out there!
Indeed! You posted about a good dozen of them back in February, do you have plans for all of them yet?
Elliot: We just had to get some of them out there really! We’ve only released a couple bits of music so far, but we got so much in the tank, and there’s so much range in it, so now we’re trying to figure out which of these we want to put out to best present the “inmotion sound”. We’re still in this establishing phase, and we’re worried about getting pigeonholed into the wrong lane. It was a way for us to be like, “hey, look, we’ve got all this different stuff”. It’s all going to come out eventually, but we don’t want people to think we’re just the techy guys, who only do this sort of music. We’ve got all sorts! We have a sound, but we’re still trying to develop it.
Conor: We’re sitting on like 30, 40 tracks probably. Bootlegs, remixes, original music of course. Of course art is never finished, but we just really want to be articulated with how we move and present ourselves. We want to follow in the footsteps of the people we look up to, like Chase & Status, Noisia, Camo & Krooked, Mefjus – follow the legends. They’ve all been so broad and across genre lines, and we want to make that work too!
Fair point, I had kind of put you in the loud, dark, techy ‘camp’ already!
Elliot: We definitely exist in the techy space! That’s absolutely a big part of our sound. There is some dark stuff, but there’s also some real, melodic bits. Perhaps ’emotional’ is a good way to describe it? We’re trying to push these different emotions, whether its dark and tense, or a bit more uplifting, there’s a real range there that we want people to see from us.
In a way it’s a bit of a combination of both of your styles!
Elliot: Yeah exactly! I would bring the techy sound, and Conor would bring …
Conor: The cheese!
Elliot: Exactly! I don’t want to say commercial element, it’s not really like that.
Conor: It’s probably more from my experience playing music out, which adds a big value. Knowing the part of a story songs can play and where they have their place in a set and all that emotion, all the fun stuff you kind figure out as you go!
It’s still quite early days of course, but what would you say has been the highlight in your journey as inmotion so far?
Elliot: There’s like three things that stand out! One of the coolest things we’ve done was while working closely with SUUNE. So George from SUUNE was in my studio alongside Conor, shortly after they had done a track together with A.M.C (‘Gas’), and as we were sitting in the studio, he had sent George the final stems for it back. So George went “hey, there’s an opportunity here – we could do a VIP!” Literally within a day we had a really solid idea and we just fleshed it out the day after. So two days later, we sent this thing back to A.M.C and he absolutely loved it. He sent back such a lovely voice note! Like, Conor and I had been doing this little project for just about six months at the time, and here we are, doing a remix for A.M.C and he actually loves it too! It was just the most surreal experience, it was crazy. That’s gotta be up there.
Conor: Within a week, we had gone from nothing to him closing his set at Warehouse Project in the main room with that tune! Like, oh my god, we remixed our idol and he’s just played it to thousands of people on the other side of the world. What a surreal feeling.
Elliot: To do that within the first six months of inmotion was mind-blowing, that was just crazy to us. Shortly after that, we got the opportunity to do a tune with The Upbeats, which we were able to play over the New Year’s run, which was unbelievable.
Conor: The Upbeats are huge, huge inspirations and part of the reason why we do it!
Elliot: Another one would be the summer shows over New Year’s. We had a really good run of those!
Conor: At Northern Bass, we were to the side of the stage with SUUNE while The Upbeats were playing, and they opened up with an unreleased tune with SUUNE, which was epic, but then the second tune in, our unreleased tune – we had no idea they were gonna do that! We felt like we were five-year-olds, just a bunch of giddy children dancing around like lunatics.
Elliot: I think if we had been in the game for a little bit longer, it probably wouldn’t have hit as hard, but the fact that we’ve done and experienced all of this within such a short amount of time is just so wild to me! And then obviously, even though it hasn’t happened yet, but it has to be Ultra.
Conor: Sub Focus in our DMs would be another one!
Elliot: Oh yeah!
Conor: Go on, why don’t you tell the story, it’s a good little yarn.
Elliot: Okay, so, I’ve got a friend who was opening a festival in Tauranga. I went along and her manager is partners with Fred 1991, who, by the way, is an absolute legend, the loveliest guy! So at some point Fred and I were chatting and within like the first 20 seconds, he turns to me and starts talking about production. I was like, oh my god, we’re going to get on so well! So we got to talking and eventually he was asking what the stages looked like at Rhythm & Vines this year, so I showed him some pictures and a video from when we were on stage there and it just so happened to have one of our edits of a Nero track playing in it. He was like “Is that ‘Electron’? I wouldn’t mind getting a copy of that”! So of course, straight away, on the spot, I sent it. He went on to Australia with Sub Focus, because they were playing there.
Conor: They were touring with Nero!
Elliot: Yeah exactly! Then I got a message around a week later, Sub Focus basically just DMed us out of nowhere on Instagram. Like, “I heard the ‘Electron’ edit you’ve done, love it, could I have a copy? Also, I’m hanging out with Dan from Nero, do you want me to send him a copy?” – we were just like “What the fuck is happening?!” Just the craziest thing! We ended up sending him a load of music and he played one of our bootlegs the other day, which is really cool.
Conor: He did a carousel post, and all the videos were all done by professional videographers and such, but then there was a slide right in the middle where it was just him filming with his own phone from behind the decks and it was a double with our tune! There have been so many moments in such a short amount of time, we are just blessed.
Elliot: They are all special in their own right, I don’t know if I could choose just one moment, because they’re just all pretty mental to be honest.
Some artists who have been around for much longer wouldn’t have that many highlights! What are your goals for 2026 and beyond then? Anything you want to tick off?
Conor: I mean, the ultimate one would be being able to do it full time, right? Travelling the world, doing music full time without having to have another job. But honestly, we just love doing it. If we’re getting to travel, meet people, and express our musical taste, whether it’s written by us or others, as long as we’re doing that, that’s all, that’s the goal.
Elliot: Yeah, if we can get to a position where we can safely and securely keep doing this, that’s success in my eyes.
Conor: Anything else is a bonus!
Any final thoughts?
Conor: Just watch this space, really. We have a lot of exciting stuff coming up, and so much music. We can’t wait to share it all!
