The Domain is a project created my Michael McKean, creating fantastic songs that fuse together synth pop and deep house. I recently had the chance to check out his track, Favorite Mistake, and wanted to find out a little more about this cool project. Check out the stream at the end of this interview if you haven’t already!
By Jane Howkins
You recently released a song titled Favorite Mistake, which we reviewed. What can you tell us about the song?
Haha yeah, it’s a fun song, I’ve been sitting on it for a little while and I suddenly just felt the need to release it – it’s very summery and has a great positive vibe so I suddenly realized I needed to rush to release it while it was still summertime!
Of course it’s winter time for me down here in the Southern Hemisphere, but most of the people listening will be in the Northern Hemisphere. Lousy is an ace singer – she’s so much fun! I’m really lucky to work with her on this.
How has the reception been so far, and where can Favorite Mistake be purchased?
It’s definitely available on every platform that exists! You can stream it and buy it and download it, everything everywhere.
The track also featured LOUSY. How did the collaboration come about and do you plan to collaborate again?
I wish I had a fun story about how we met and started working together but I don’t really. I haven’t had any singers come to my studio since before Covid, now everything I’ve been doing is remote sessions. This new project – I didn’t start producing it until well into Covid and everyone was in lockdown! So I just made the most of it and tried to find/connect with the right artists online. It takes some of the fun and interactivity out of sessions, but hopefully I can relocate somewhere there’s more of a music scene to cure that problem.
Do you plan to release any more singles in the near future?
Abolutely. We have the Club Version of Favorite Mistake coming out at the end of the year, sorry it’s taking so long. It’s a full blown dance remix I did. There’s definitely going to be a whole string of releases coming next year. I have so much material to release. I’m just working on organising everything trying to get things moving as soon as possible.
Do you plan to release an EP or an album anytime soon?
At the moment there’s lots and lots of singles being organised, I’m guessing an album is probably on the cards, but not until at least the second half of 2023.
Has the pandemic hindered your work much?
The restrictions have completely screwed every other thing that I’ve tried to do in my life outside of music, and it’s kind of forced me or given me the opportunity to spend some time getting some of this project done. So yeah, it’s completely hindered all the other non-music work that I do, otherwise I would be way too busy to get anything done. All the great music I’ve created is kind of a side effect of the destruction of my pre-Covid life. Hopefully it works out for the best.
Your music has a synth-pop/EDM vibe. What/who influences you most as an artist? What have you been listening to recently?
It’s funny because I should stay up to date listening to all the latest stuff, being that I dedicate my life to music, you would assume that I’m an avid music listener. The thing is all my free time I spend in the studio working on my own stuff, and it means the only time I’m not in the studio is when I need a break to rest my ears lol.
When I started this project I had no idea what I was going to do other than that I was gonna learn to make some cool modern popular sounding music, whereas previously I had been making super vintage retro old school sounding stuff. I had no influences, all I knew is that it would be completely different from what I had done before.
Most of the time when I load up Spotify it’s just to hear other artists I know, singers that I work with or friends that are producers. I really like when EDM producers just make good pop songs, like Martin Garrix with Dua Lipa or Marshmello with Halsey, it’s just a great vocal, a good song and strong production. I’d like to do that kind of stuff myself, it’s a little difficult though because I’m caught between the EDM world and the pop world and I don’t want to be existing inside either of those I want to live somewhere in between the two worlds.
Where are you based? What is the music scene like in your part of the world?
To tell you the truth, I don’t know where to call home anymore. I’ve kind of loosely been traveling around Australia most of my life and I’m actually just about to jump in my van and travel to some new unknown destination and start over again. I’m currently in Adelaide and I’ve just had my head down in the studio trying to finish off all the new releases I’m working on. The city has never had a really strong reputation for a music scene, certainly not like Melbourne or Sydney. I had much more fun going to live shows when I was living in those cities.
Do you have any tour dates lined up for the UK?
I have no international dates lined up at the moment. This project is just getting started and we are really just focusing on getting a lot more music out.
Any last words for the fans?
If you look at my profile on Spotify now, there’s not much going on however I promise, if you stay tuned, if you remember me, there is SO MUCH music I’m about to release and it’s all super super nice. Please follow me on Spotify and you can tell your friends you followed me since before I blew up!