The Hamburg house mafia Crown a perfect summer Jackin’ their Records
Interview by Dan Prince
Frederic, Christian welcome to DMCWORLD, where in the world are you today?
“Right now Dan we are in Hamburg – our hometown. We‘ll be heading to Berlin tomorrow and will play a gig in Frankfurt on Saturday.”
Well what a start to the Autumn for you with not one but two massive records swinging our way. Let’s kick off with the tune that has been causing all the damage in the world famous Buzz Chart, ‘Jack My Records’ coming out on the super cool Exploited label. Please talk us through the sound and history of the track…
“The track was produced about 6 month ago and it took us some weeks to complete the track as we have made a lot of changes on the track and every time, we thought we had finished it! In the beginning the track was produced without any vocals etc. We have been massive fans of the Exploited imprint for a long time and we thought that the track could fit the label‘s philosophy so we sent it to label owner Shir Khan. He seemd to like the track immediately and after having club-tested it several times, he signed it. We were extremely happy and to be honest…we didn‘t expect all of this.“
Next up is the Toolroom smash ‘Crowned’ which the label is very excited about. Love the samples, love the jackin’ analogue vibe, please talk us through it…
“We have been really into a jackin’ and ‘analogue sounding ‘house sound lately and were listening to a lot of oldschool house and hip-hop tunes. ‘Crowned’ was just a result of our current musical preference. On this track we have sampled some vintage stuff from the late 70s and we have put more time and effort into the beats. Our aim was to give the track an authentic and analogue touch!“
* Check out DJ Paulette’s review here from this week’s magazine...http://www.dmcworld.net/index.php?option=com_easyblog&view=entry&id=15293
‘Jack My Records’ received early support from the likes of Skream, Claude von Stroke, Tensnake and Dubfire. Who are some of the producers you always look for to see if they give your news music the thumbs up, who matters?!?!
“Indeed, there are still a lot of producers we look for to see if they like our music. Especially when DJs who usually never played our music give good feedbacks. Lately we had some great individual feedbacks from Hotsince82, Sasha and Dubfire which was amazing to see.“
Rumour mill time! Word on the street is that later this year you will be reactivating your label Plumbum with a completely new concept. What can you tell us?
“Yes, it seems as if we are going to relaunch our label in 2015. We paused the label‘s activity since we didn‘t exactly know what the label should stand for – espeically music wise. There will be definitely a new artwork and we want to release more frequently. Furthermore, we won‘t vary the style of the music too much. We just want to push a certain kind of music so the label will get it’s own identity.“
And second on the hush hush tip…we hear you are/will be working on some very interesting collaborations in the near future. And they are…?
“Right now we are working with some really great vocalists we do not want to mention yet! What we can say about it is that it will sound quite different from our past productions.“
What are the big 10 tunes you’ll be looking forward to playing this weekend…
“Even though we have been DJing occasionally for some years, we decided from the beginning that Piemont had to become a live-act. In our opinion a live set is the most interesting way of performing electronic music, especially for a duo. That‘s why we only have our own -mostly upcoming – tunes in our box for the weekend…”
Piemont – Crowned – Toolroom
Piemont – Jack my records – Exploited
Hanne & Lore – Tourette de Mar (Piemont Remix) – Style Rockets
Piemont – Figure Four – Mr. Carter
Piemont – Jaywalk – Kraftek
Piemont – Spindrift – Materialism
Piemont – Moonless Air – With Compliments
Piemont – Like Breathing – Materialism
Piemont – Wakeful – With Compliments
Piemont – Unvoiced – Area Remote
Okay take us back to 2007 and the year you both decided to hook up and start making music together after working on solo projects. Why was the time right to join forces?
“Even back in 2007 we had already started to produce our solo tunes together as we realized that the tunes were becoming much better. After having produced tunes under our aliases Phunklarique and Dejonka for a couple of years, we felt it was about time to start a musical ‘reorientation’. The best way was simply to establish a new project which should enable us to combine our individual styles and present another side of our musical diversity. As we are completely busy with Piemont right now it looks like we won’t continue our solo projects.“
You hail from one of the most important dance music cities in the world with important producers such as Solomun, Extrawelt, David August, Digitalism and Adan Twins flying the Hamburg House Massive flag. Who though are some of the up and comers we should be looking out for over the next 12 months…?
“Definitely ‘Kruse & Nuernberg‘ who have great releases on Exploited and Off Recordings at the moment.“
What is the best and worst thing about living in Hamburg?
“We love the harbour, the river and the Manifold Quarters. The quality of living is amazing. In terms of electronic music it was an really inspiring place for us. First of all due to the Manifold club scene and the huge amount of studio facilities. The worst thing about Hamburg is actually the weather as it seems to rain 90% of the time – but maybe this is just a cliché.“
The Forbes DJ Rich List with many DJs earning over $20m over the past 12 months. Thoughts?
“Well, That‘s a lot of money Dan! These DJs seem to earn over $20m because they are DJs and pop stars at the same time. A decade ago there were just well known DJs on one hand and pop stars on the other hand.“
What was your gig of the summer and why?
“There were a lot of memorable gigs this summer. The ‘Open Air at Müggelsee‘ near Berlin this summer was an amazing live experience for us. The crowd was outstanding! That is the kind of open air raves we prefer. The size of the event was just perfect.“
Tune of the summer?
“Hard to say. Let‘s say it is the DJ Koze remix of Moderat‘s ‘Bad Kingdom‘.“
It’s your birthday – who are the 3 DJs you invite to play at your party?
“DJ Koze, Seth Troxler and Gabriel Ananda.“
In general you guys need 2 weeks to complete a production. What though is the fastest you have ever created a track…and the longest!
“Looks like it was our early tune ‘Reflections in Plexiglass‘ which was produced in 3 days. We didn‘t like that track in the beginning since we thought we haven‘t put enough effort into the track but in the end it became one of our most popular tunes. On the other hand, It took us about 6 weeks to complete our recent ‘Moonless Air EP‘.“
I see you gave the DJ Mag 100 Poll a mention on Facebook a while back, we interviewed Arthur Baker last week, he remarked…“there are too many DJs and genres for a realistic competition, it needs to split”. What are your thoughts on that? Do you give a shit?
“Actually we do not really care about the DJMag Poll. We agree with Arthur saying that there are just too many DJs worldwide to get a realistic competition, moreover, the poll always mirrors the current musical mainstream. Some years ago there were mainly trance/progressive DJs voted, nowadays there is this huge focus on EDM-DJs. That‘s why we won‘t ever enter the Top100 as we are part of another genre and scene. As we believe that almost none of our listeners pays attention to the poll it wouldn‘t affect our reputation anyway.“
2014 has been a major year for you…skip forward 12 months…what do you want to have achieved this time next year?
“We would like to achieve the same results again as last year. We have a cool flow in the studio right now and and it looks like we have found our favorite labels on which we‘re going to release for a long time. At least we have a good feeling about our future evolvement in terms of music.“
And finally…what is coming out next from you guys studio wise?
“We have some really exciting releases coming up the next month. First of all we have signed a track to Pleasurekraft‘s imprint ‘Kraftek‘. Moreover, we‘ll release an EP on Materialism, which is a sub label of Material.“
