Pressure Drop: Eli & Fur

This wasn’t how it was meant to be. We travelled to Winter Social in the middle of the Kent countryside to spend a day with one of the most hotly tipped duos of 2016. But instead of capturing a snapshot of an outfit caught in the G-force of an upward trajectory we’re sitting on a bed in the Maidstone Hilton with one half of Eli & Fur cocooned, sick, under the duvet.

Despite the unfortunate turn of events, they’re in high spirits. Fur in particular is relishing the story about the last time she was ill, on tour in Mexico. “Nobody told me about not drinking the ice,” she says, from beneath the covers, her withering self-deprecation audible through the Egyptian cotton. She’d agreed to attend a party, only to excuse herself part-way through for fresh air. “I was walking down by the sea – and by the way, I’m afraid of the sea so I don’t actually go in...” – at this Eli rolls her eyes, clearly used to Fur’s foibles.

“I was half a calf deep and what did I see? A fucking hundred dollar bill.” How did this rising star of club music spend it? “I went to H&M and blew it all.”

There’s something irrepressible about Eli & Fur. Two friends having a blast, but also a little bit out of step with everybody else. Both are polite, funny, and possess the kind of lavish enunciation that’s rare in club culture. Eli, full name Elizabeth Noble, is the more confident one. Tanned and sporting leather trousers, a crucifix earring and leather jacket, she looks every inch the rock star, albeit one that probably juices a lot. Fur – that’s Jennifur Skillman – is more shy, with long blonde hair that covers her face.

Compounding the slightly guarded effect at their earlier gig at the festival is an oversized hoodie which she periodically hugs tighter, bracing against the chill of the draughty conference centre. The venue is stark contrast to what they’re currently used to, having just returned from a tour of America’s more underground clubs. The tour was a natural progression for a project that’s won co-signs from club music’s upper tier, from Maya Jane Coles and Pete Tong to Erick Morillo. They, like the duo’s growing fanbase, have been beguiled by Eli & Fur’s effortless DJ gigs and languorous productions which occupy the sweet spot between brooding club music and emotive pop vocals – at home on Funktion-Ones, sure, but on the radio, too. However, they’re feeling the strain. “Right now, where we’re at with our careers is the most intense place,” Eli says, eyes wide and earnest. “We really are now where we want to be, we’re playing on line-ups with DJs we look up to. That’s a pressure.”

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During their set at The Social their resolve is put to the test. They attack the unforgiving early slot with the vim you’d expect from headliners, and early arrivals in summer apparel quickly congregate down the front, sunglasses straining against overcast February skies. Here, Eli & Fur get on with the task in hand: constructing a complex Ableton set that shifts from yearning classic house to big-room crowd-pleasers, meeting somewhere in the middle with their own Anjunadeep cut ‘Over Again’. Through it all, they trigger inventive samples, including an almost unrecognisable Depeche Mode acapella. But just as they’re settling into their three-hour set there’s a technical issue and... silence. When the sound comes back the crowd roars, but for two people, it cuts deep. Eli & Fur hunker down, redoubling their efforts; when they’re back on safe ground, Eli gives Fur a big hug.

The funny thing about pressure is you either rise to it or you crumple. Together they rise, even thrive on it. It helps that they’re best friends, and you can read their relationship in tiny gestures. Eli is protective, the giver of the reassuring looks and leading questions. “You’re really opening up!” she says, proudly, as Fur sheds her awkwardness after the set. Backstage they’re in excellent spirits as they recount their story over vodka shots poured by Maya Jane Coles. Here Eli attempts to keep things serious, but Fur is keen to joke around, not least by urging Eli to tell her headgear story. “Yeah, I hung pens on that shit,” she says, referring to how she used to wear her orthodontic brace in class at the prestigious St Mary’s Girls’ School. It was just before she made the move to Hurtwood House, a performing arts sixth form college, that she met Fur for the first time. Already a student at Hurtwood, Eli attempted to befriend her – with mixed results. “Fur had sunglasses on,” she recalls, cringing. “I was terrified of her. I cried.” But Fur insists her unapproachable demeanour was the result of her own insecurities. “When I like someone, I hate them at first,” she counters. “It kind of happened with you.”

Despite this, they became best friends. It certainly helped that neither of them fitted in; Eli, who had been playing acoustic guitar since she was eight, was studying music tech and was only just working up the confidence to perform her own songs. Fur was studying art, but secretly wished she was doing music, a passion instilled in her by her Kraftwerk-loving mum. They began to coax out each other’s strengths, but still, it wasn’t until after they left college that Eli & Fur began to take shape.

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Rifling around on the internet throws up some odd things related to Eli & Fur. Prominent is a cringeworthy Evening Standard interview from 2010 framing them as a pair of dilettantes with a Soho House membership. When Mixmag brings it up, Fur gets heated: “That journalist!” she exclaims. “She was like, ‘Who do you know that’s famous?’” But more interesting is the fact that they started out as a pop proposition, their 2012 debut ‘Sea Of Stars’ a featured track on blog Popjustice. The reason for this particularly mid-noughties origin story is traceable to Eli’s first post-college job as an intern at pop production house Xenomania. Wangling a job for Fur too, the two made tea in the morning and wrote music in the afternoon under the guidance of their boss, the impresario Brian Higgins. “It wasn’t like they were trying to make us pop stars, it wasn’t as cool as that,” Eli insists. Even if they were, it didn’t work. Fur, who began raving aged 15 at an Infected Mushroom gig (“Rank. No offence!”) was soon encouraging Eli to explore London’s clubs.

Swapping production houses for warehouses, studio hours for after hours, the two set about translating the tech-house sound then prevalent in the Capital’s sweatboxes and merging it with their songwriting and vocals, while building a DJ profile on the side. It was a period of late nights and personal discovery. “We were learning more and more about ourselves as we went on. It was almost like a fight, because Brian would be like, ‘This is a great pop track!’ but we’d be like, ‘No, this is more housey, it’s cool’.”

By October that year they’d split with Xenomania and, given free rein, their sound toughened up, grew darker. They haven’t looked back.

Today though, there’s a snag: Fur has left in search of food, and hasn’t returned. We trace her back to the hotel where she’s holed herself away, ill. After inviting Mixmag in, the conversation becomes more candid as talk turns to their worst ever gig: “It was the Mad Decent boat party, no offence to Diplo.” This was the ill-fated trip which ended in the death of partygoer Kaylyn Rose Sommer Davis in November last year. Eli suddenly looks serious – which is disarming because she rarely does. Far from being the “lol” (Fur’s word) they were expecting, they found themselves caught up in a tragedy. “DJs refused to play so there was no music for a long time,” says Eli, recalling the eerie feeling as they cut the ship’s engines, leaving it to bob, hopelessly, in open water.

“When we got off I called my mum, burst into tears and said... ” Fur pauses for effect. “I. Hate. Cruise ships.”

It’s this ability to stick together and be stronger for it that marks them out for the long haul. Rather than counting against them, their unlikely route into the club’s main rooms is setting them apart, as proven by triumphant DJ gigs everywhere from Ushuaïa in Ibiza to our very own Lab LA and The Warehouse Project.

Refreshingly, there’s no talk of Berghain all-nighters, or years spent toiling with a pair of 1210s with just their collection of rave flyers for company. Eli & Fur are able to approach club music from a different perspective, to crack a window on the stale dance music narratives that fetishise ‘authenticity’ above all. It’s one of the reasons they prefer America to the UK.

“We’ve not had a hard time, but you definitely notice a difference in the way people act,” says Fur. “I think people in the UK… oh god, I’m really going to say the wrong thing… they study it more in the sense that there’s more of a history, a competition about knowing things.” As conversation moves from Pietro Psaier, the mysterious Warhol contemporary who some argue never existed, to George Fitzgerald, Kölsch and the surreal photography of Tim Walker, you get a sense that Eli & Fur are drawn to artists who marry emotion with something darker and stranger; who, crucially, mess with expectations. Most importantly, they’re keen to hang onto their pop instinct. “I don’t want to go too underground,” reflects Eli. “I would hate to have to de-commercialise our music. That seems a little contrived.” For this reason, they’re not shy about saying that the US currently holds the most appeal; they certainly enjoyed their time in Erick Morillo’s studio overlooking LA. It was there they worked on a collab, due on Subliminal next month featuring Fur on vocals. “The studio was like being at the top of the world,” recalls Fur. “The whole of LA looking at you like: deliver.”

There are a lot of eyes on Eli & Fur right now. A lot to deliver, too. But right now they’re in reflective mood, the upsets of the day already forgotten as they regroup, as they always have and likely always will. “We’ll probably still be doing this when we’re seventy,” jokes Fur, emerging from the covers at last. “Maybe we’ll have moved to LA and had Botox and we’ll be like, ‘Yeah, we’re 25’.”

We’re not sure about the Botox, but the rest of it sounds just about right.