About Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun is an Australian electronic music duo formed in 2007. The duo is a collaboration between Luke Steele, formerly of alternative rock band The Sleepy Jackson, and Nick Littlemore, of electronic dance band PNAU.
Empire of the Sun's 2008 debut album, Walking on a Dream, brought the duo international success and has been certified double platinum in Australia and gold in the United Kingdom. The album provided a number of internationally charting singles including the title track, which peaked at number ten on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart, and "We Are the People", which peaked at number fourteen on the UK Singles Chart. The band's second album, Ice on the Dune, was released in June 2013, while their third album Two Vines was released in October 2016. A fourth album, Ask That God, was released in July 2024.
The duo have won a number of Australian music awards, with Walking on a Dream receiving 11 nominations at the ARIA Music Awards of 2009 and winning seven – including Album of the Year. As a live band, they have performed internationally and are known for their flamboyant costumes and elaborate stage sets.
Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore met in 2000 after being introduced by Steele's A&R executive, Simon Moor, in a bar in Sydney. Both were at the time signed to EMI and had already been working on different projects. Over the years that followed, the two collaborated on a number of occasions. Littlemore helped write the song "Tell the Girls That I'm Not Hangin' Out", which appeared on The Sleepy Jackson's 2003 debut album, Lovers, and Steele had some artistic input in Littlemore's 2006 art-rock project Teenager. After a falling out over the song on Lovers the co-operation ceased for a while, with Littlemore commenting "I'm a very intense person and I take things to heart".
The two reconvened in 2006 to work on two songs for the Pnau album that was released in late 2007. They collaborated on the tracks "Freedom" and the opener "With You Forever" where Steele supplied the vocal. This prompted a change in direction for the band who began to craft a work more vocally-centered album featuring guest performances. A track-by-track analysis of the album Pnau revealed that writing of "With You Forever" with Luke Steele inspired Littlemore's band to begin work on a collaborative project. Littlemore said, "We fell in love with music again with ; I think this is first great song." The release of Pnau brought an interest from Elton John, who signed Littlemore to his management company.
The new project began to develop under the working title of "Steelemore" as a collaboration between Steele and Littlemore, with Pnau partner Peter Mayes listed as a producer and occasional co-writer. As Steele was living in Perth and Littlemore was in Sydney the two spent time writing songs separately while meeting occasionally in Sydney to decide on the musical direction and style. When they had accumulated enough material Mayes and duo began to record the album throughout 2007 with the assistance of Jonathan Sloan.
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