Hailing from London but based in Serbia, Soko & Sev are two of the most exciting new acts on the techno scene right now. Breezing through career milestones at breakneck speed, their next EP ‘Escape From Earth’ swings our way on Spartaque’s leading Codex Recordings imprint. Having only launched their collaborative career in 2019, the duo have already graced techno’s most esteemed labels including Kraftek, AnalyticTrail, IAMT and Set About to name just a few. Onstage, they’ve supported top acts Boris Brejcha, ANNA, Matador, Oliver Huntemann, Alex Stein, Juliet Fox, BEC & Anja Schneider…it’s the perfect time for DMCWORLD to grab a world exclusive to find out more…
Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to chat to us today. For those of our readers who are not yet familiar with you, could you introduce yourselves?
Thanks for having us DMC! We are Soko & Sev (aka Marko & Antonio), a hard melodic techno duo from London currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.
When and how did you first meet?
Strange story but we met around August 2018 as Marko’s good friend at the time was an Uber driver (Bardia) and had picked up Antonio for a lift. As they got talking Antonio mentioned the events he was playing and that he was a DJ around London and immediately Bardia starting speaking about Marko’s productions. There and then we met over a FaceTime call and two days later met up for a mix. Three months later we joined forces to open and close for Boris Brejcha and the rest is history!
Can you tell us how you both first go into music and when this started to become more of a career for you?
We began our careers in football and in athletics, which always pushed us towards finding music that inspired us and motivated us for competitions and matches. Naturally within electronic music we both gravitated towards techno and found that it was the perfect mix of heavy and emotional music and exactly what we wanted to produce and DJ. We made a full time move into music during the worst period of corona around September 2020.
How would you describe your sound?
With most of our productions being around 132bpm and our love of emotional synths and power we would describe our sound as “Hard Melodic Techno”. We’ve always tried as much as possible to focus very much on ourselves so that we could really develop ‘our sound’ as being as original and authentic as possible.
You’ve released on some very impressive labels already, such as Kraftek, Set About, IAMT and Say What, among others – where do you see your music placing in the future?
It’s always amazing releasing on world class labels, however for us it has always been about the tracks we produce and really our focus is more on making the best music that we can. We hope that with support we’ve had from major label owners early on, we will continue to receive support with releases planned for later this year.
Tell us a little about your new EP ‘Escape From Earth’ which just came out on Spartaque’s Codex Recordings – what was the production process like?
‘Escape From Earth’ was one of these productions that came to fruition very easily. Once we had the main frame of the track done, the main synth which acts as the driving melody throughout, fell into place. On the second track ‘In My World’ we carried on with a similar atmosphere but tried to make something harder, slightly groovier and focused more on creating a track to play mid-set.
Has this past year in lockdown been a productive one for you?
This past year for us has been incredible in terms of productivity. May 2021 will mark 12 months since our first release and ‘Escape From Earth’ will be the 25th track we have released in our debut year on the techno scene as a duo. We are so proud of our achievements in such a short amount of time.
During this time, you made the move from London to Serbia to a brand new studio – are you finding that living more rurally is aiding your creativity?
100%! It’s great being in a busy city and artists find a lot of inspiration from this, especially for energetic techno, but for us now being slightly outside of the city we found the perfect balance between peace and not pissing off the neighbours at 3am!
Now that shows are beginning to resume, do you have any shows lined up that we should know about?
We have a few that we are really looking forward too but one that we can’t wait for is closing for Boris Brejcha for the 3rd time in our hometown in London in November at Brixton Electric (one of our favourite venues).
Any final words for our readers?
We want to thank everyone that has supported our music and what we do. We think it’s difficult for up and coming artists to really find their space and get heard amongst thousands of other acts but hope that some of our music may reach out and mean something to someone in a deeper way.
