DMCWORLD welcomes brothers Jean Paul & Alex Makhlouf and best friend Sam Frisch – the New Jersey trio who have been setting the world of EDM alight in the States. Last week Cash Cash smashed into the UK Top 5 with ‘Take Me Home’ adding to a bulging list of singles and remixes for the likes of Hardwell, Capital Cities, Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars, Nicky Romero and Katie Perry. Dan Prince checks in…
Interview : Dan Prince
JP welcome to DMCWORLD, you have just kicked off your North America Lightning Tour, where in the world are you today…?
“Hey Dan, thanks for supporting us. We are back in our studio in New Jersey after an awesome weekend in Lafayette, Bloomington and Columbia.”
Must feel good to be back on the road again?
“Without a doubt. This year we’ve had a great bounce between both world’s of studio sessions and live shows, I think it’s going to be a pretty full year.”
How are you getting around on tour, are you flying or doing the rock & roll bus thing?
“Because so many of the shows are club dates it’s just easy to fly, we don’t have too much equipment and all we’re asking the venues for are 4 CDJs.”
Okay well as you know you are all over the radio over here in the UK, we heard you checking in with the Radio 1 posse at the weekend as ‘Take Me Home’ smashed into the No. 5 position. So the question is, was the UK and Europe always the plan for the Cash Cash invasion?
“It’s like this; here we are buried in our basement studio working away putting out our music and when we hear we have taken off in places like the UK, well it is a huge surprise. When another country gets what we are doing we feel so lucky…we have played in Japan which was so cool, we hit the charts in Australia so we jumped on a plane to go down under and play with the kangaroos and koalas…it’s been wild.”
I saw you in London at an intimate gig with Cobra Starship around 2009…
“Oh man that was great. We have evolved a lot since that time, a lot of remixes, a lot of new material, a lot of touring…”
It feels like your fan base is spreading all over the world…
“People have worked so hard to get us where we are today. Every time we hear one of our records on the radio it feels so good. But what does it for us more than anything is getting the respect from the DJ and producer community. For people to be saying ‘they are good songwriters’ and ‘they are good producers’, well that means a lot to us.”
The Vicetone remix on your ‘Overtime’ track is on fire in the Buzz Chart this week. Who are some of the other producers from around the world you would love to take on remix duties for your music, who intrigues you out there?
“Well let’s just say what Vicetone did was outstanding. We have been speaking to a few people about future hook ups; Hardwell, Afrojack and Dillon Francis have all said they are up for it so watch this space DMCWORLD!”
Okay let’s rewind for a moment. The band as such began back in 2002 as The Consequence with best friends at school JP and Sam, Alex joining five years later when the band became Cash Cash. It must have been quite a simple transmission for you to move into the world of EDM as even though your early days saw the band feature drums and guitars, there was still an electro feel to you?
“For us we grew up producers, then the band kicked off and after a while we were like ‘hang on a minute, we are better producers than we are a group’ so we headed back in that direction. We had some amazing collaborations quite quickly and it all started to pick up and then we decided we should go back to being a band again! People like ZEDD and Calvin Harris have really paved the way for people like us, we grew up doing the nerdy, tweaky studio stuff and it has all come 360. And as you say, we had our base in the electro side of things so we had a good base for EDM…”
When I told the world famous Buzz Chart office I was interviewing you today, they shouted across the room, “we love Cash Cash! They are bringing the fun back into a sometimes too cool for school scene”. What are your thoughts on that little comment…?”
“We are always having fun, we enjoy what we are do and try not to take ourselves too seriously. I mean look at what we do, we are here to entertain people, the serious work is done in the studio but when we get out into the live environment, well you have to let go. We don’t understand all the pretentious DJs out there at all.”
You have done so many big name remixes, is it hard to get a balance between your own song writing and remixing everyone else?
“Yes sometimes we do get carried away doing other peoples stuff and then we just look at each other and say, lets take a break. Doing remixes keeps our original stuff fresh and it enables to bring some of the cool new stuff that we’ve done in a remix into our new songs.”
One of the cool stories I remember from a while back is when you persuaded two very young teenage girls to throw their cigarettes away at one of your gigs, it was an incident that showed the band you have a degree of responsibility out there. Now that you are major stars of the EDM world, how if at all, do you feel about the fact that the majority of the kids dancing in front of you are off their faces?
“Well there is a big difference between showing teenagers the right way and people over 21. The way we see it is if you are 21 years old then what you do is up to you, what we are saying is that if you are in your teens, then you are really too young to make that decision.”
And finally, what happens when the tour closes? A season of massive festivals like EDC and Tommoroworld, is it then time to hit the studio again?
“That’s it, right back into the studio working on a bunch of collabs, speaking of which we have just released ‘Lightning’ that features John Rzeznik…which we are so excited about as we are huge Goo Goo Dolls fans. Check out the Dada Life remix!”
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