Interview
What have you been up to?
Trying to release a new album. Several collaboration tracks. We are playing Shambala with our friend Defunk in Canada. We are slowly but lovingly and meticulously working on new music… working a lot independently on projects that make us a living, hanging out with family, significant others, some regional shows, so and so fourth.
How and where did you record your mix?
Bellingham WA – casa de Willdabeast!
Tell us a bit about the mix!
I want to be very clear about something. We are not really DJs. I understand we… DJ but that’s not really what our focus or attention is on. We’re not saying we don’t try or care, we’re saying… for all that we’re doing in our own lives, plus making all of this original music… those are two full time jobs, no add in shows, self practice and horn studies, other bands and all of a sudden you’re up to the gills in work. My point is this, I love and respect DJs… so much so that I don’t want to be considered one. You see turntablists like Qbert, Shadow, Craze, etc… the list goes on. These dudes are seriously dope! And I just don’t want fans to expect that from us on any platform. Of course we respect DJs, we love DJs, but Daniel and I are band nerds at heart haha. We just happen to make beats. Our main focus is certainly the production, the horn playing, and then the mixing. I think it’s an important step, if you mess up you lose people attention, I get that… so we try hard. But in all of our openness, it’s not uncommon to hear a few transitions that might be off. That’s my disclaimer. We both grew up playing live music on stage with full bands. We love performing, and DJing certain versions of our songs that we composed, produced and recorded entirely by ourselves (or with others) while playing horns and sometimes other instruments live seem to be the most effective way of performance for now. So please know, I’d never hate on a DJ, in fact I praise and respect them… but we have more success defining ourselves as producers and horn players… I’ll leave the real skills to the turntabilists. Anyway, that being said… we’re not really known for our DJing! haha… In our four year existence we’ve actually only put out one other mix. It was a blend of some of our music and others as well with us playing and improving live over the top as we do at shows. So this is our first all-original mix. A lot of our music comes from a dark place. Sorrow, misunderstanding, pain… and from the pain we try and grow something beautiful and cathartic.
What are you up to next?
Shambala Music Festival, a few other local and regional shows and pumping out this next album with hopefully some strong momentum behind us!