The Spanish brothers in rhythm doing it their way
Interview by Ian Fleming
Working with your brother can’t be easy (just look at the amount of brotherly feuds in the music game!), but one pairing who seem to have nailed the formula is Sergio and Ruben Pellon AKA The Monkey Brothers. Hailing from Santander, the Spanish production outfit has been doing their thing for some time now, although they’ve really stepped it up over the past while courtesy of their work at their always excellent label, Parallel. Home to their own music (as well as an expertly chosen slew of newcomers and established acts), Parallel has quickly merged into one of its country’s best such underground musical outposts. We quizzed the guys recently to get a bit of background on them, and here’s what happened…
What was growing up in Spain like? A great place for electronic music I guess?
If we talk about electronic music, its true that we start to live the scene when we were very very young, with 16 years old we were already raving and going to lot of electronic music events.
Can you tell a bit about your alias, Monkey Brothers? Where does it come from?
Our Dutch friend owner of few restaurants in Lithuania, always called us Monkey Brothers, so when we decide to start this project we thought that it was the name that fit us.
So what did you study in college then? How did you influence one another?
Sergio studied image and music production, Ruben studied journalism. We influence one another in almost every live step.
What’s the biggest industry lesson you’ve learned since you’ve become involved?
Diplomacy.
And what’s the biggest production lesson you’ve learned?
Distinguish the moment of inspiration.
So what piece of advice would you give to up-and-coming DJs and producers?
The scene its quite hard, its not easy to live of this, so first thing we would advice them its to be sure this is what they want to do.
You’ve just had Kiki do a remix for you guys – can you tell us a bit about how that worked and talk us through your thoughts of the mix?
When we finished the track we thought Kiki could be a good remixer for it. We like his sound and we’ve played together more than once so we asked him to do it and it worked.
What’s it like to work in the studio with one another?
It’s a nice dynamic. We are brothers and we’ve grown up with the same sound and have the same music taste so in the studio things flow.
Can you tell us about how you made these tracks? On what machines? Did they take long etc?
The sequencer that we use is always Logic. Most of these tracks are made with the Novation Supernova, son digital plugins and Korg electribe. We can’t say it was long process or short, it’s difficult to measure the time with regard to music production – at least for us.
Where will you be playing this summer? What are you most looking forward to about it?
We will be playing in many different places such as Spain, Germany, Lithuania, Greece, Russia, Ukraine….
And what more can we look forward to from you guys this summer? And other EPs planned?
Production never stops. Look out for a few remixes and EPs as we have a few great collaborations on the way.
Monkey Brothers’ Facades EP is out now on their label, Parallel
