Stadiumx

Hungary in the house! Massive new tune from the duo on Protocol

Interview : Dan Prince

Dave, Sully – welcome to DMCWORLD, where in the world are you right now?

Dave, Sully: “Hi! Thank you for the interview! Right now we’re in Budapest, Hungary!”

Well it has taken over six months but Howl At The Moon has finally seen the light of day and is out now on Protocol Recordings. Has it been murderous waiting for the release?

D: “Actually this waiting was more exciting than murderous! We’ve spent a lot of time on the track and we wanted to make sure we can push it forward as much as possible! When we heard it could be on Nicky’s Protocol label, we both felt it’s getting to the right place with the right team. Today it’s not just about the music you make because when you have a good song or production you need a good team to work with and you have to be a team-player as well! This is the only possible way to put a song into a higher level!”

S: “When we finished the song we didn’t have to much time to think about what to do with it because we wanted to keep working in the studio on new material! However in this last few months we’ve had the chance to get a lot of positive feedbacks and support from a lot of people! This is the most important thing because that means people like what we do! The last months were very useful!”

We all fell in love with the track at last year’s ADE when Nicky Romero dropped it, rumours circulated that it was a Nicky collab with Tommy Trash but those in the know knew it had Hungarian colours all over it. So tell us a little history of the track and how it came to fall into Nicky’s hands…

S: “When we knew it was gonna be possible to work with Taylr Renee we got super excited and started to work on the song immediately! Her voice and lyrics was so amazing we wanted to put the maximum into the song, we didn’t want to a do a track with an amazing vocal without adding the highest standards from the producer side!”

D: “The vocal, the lyrics were already there! We had the melodies very quick too, but it took weeks to find the right sound of the whole song! I’m not talking about synth presets, I’m talking about the dynamics, the right sounds…getting the maximum power of the song without losing the emotional side of the production! A few weeks later, let’s say, we had the almost finished song and Taylr Renee was very happy with it as well! We’ve been following Nicky’s productions and label for a long time and the management was able to send the song directly to him! Fortunately we got feedback on the same day!”

Tell us some more about Taylr, an amazing voice and quality songwriter…

D: When you come to the point you want to do a vocal track it’s really important to find the right vocalist and lyrics! Taylr Renee has a magical voice and the ability to write amazing lyrics! She is an amazing singer!” 

S: “When you do the track, you get inspired by the vocal itself! Of course, you have to keep the balance and make sure about the sounds and the power but the vocal will be the extra component to add emotions to the song, that’s what it is makes it unique!”

When did you discover Nicky was gonna drop the bomb at ADE?

D: “Actually we didn’t know he was gonna play the track at ADE. We were super happy when we’ve seen the reactions and positive feedbacks days later!” 

A great story how you two got together. Sully who had been producing under the house Muzzaik guise for over a decade performed at a producer workshop in 2009 and you got chatting afterwards which led to some studio time together. Dan, did Sully take a lot of convincing that it was time to start making some big arena/festival style bangers?

D: “We both love house music so much and I’m sure we always will! The idea behind the whole Stadiumx project wasn’t because we wanted to aim at a bigger spectrum of people or change our style to a more hyped one! We’ve been producing house tracks for a few years now but sometimes we’ve felt we have a lot of new ideas that we couldn’t put into house tracks, so we had to increase our limits and skills to do something else and something different and Stadiumx was born.”

What the studio process easy for you both to fit into, did you find your own areas of expertise quickly…any early teething problems?

S: “Well we’ve been working together for many years so it’s a lot easier to work with someone you know well. It makes the whole process more smoother! Sometimes we’ve different visions or ideas during the process but that’s normal and necessary! That’s why we’re working together! Usually the biggest problem is we use different monitors in the studio, so I have mine and Dave has his own sound in the studio! I’m more of a Cubase fan, he’s more of an Ableton fan…but we both know the benefits and handicaps of the different DAWs we’re working with so we can handle and achieve our ideas on different platforms.”

Would you say you have learnt anything from each other?

S: “Yes, of course! A lot! And still we’ve so much to learn!”

When I told The Buzz Chart office I was interviewing you  today they were very excited. “Tell them we think they are THE producers to watch in 2014” they shouted. Thoughts on that?

D: “Thank you very much! It’s always good to hear compliments like that! However there’s only one thing we can do, prove it!”

What is the current top 10 you are spinning…

S: These are our favourite productions of this month:

Axwell, Sick Individuals – I Am

Arno Cost, Greg Cerrone – Nightventure

Manufactured Superstars, Danni Rouge – Like Satellites (Stadiumx Remix)

Hard Rock Sofa, Skidka – Moloko

Tom Starr – Rocket

Style Of Eye, Soso – Kids (Maarcos Remix)

Tritonal, Paris Bloom, Sterling Fox – Colors

Grum – In Love

Deniz Koyu – Ruby

Stadiumx, Taylr Renee – Howl At The Moon

The world knows of the Hungarian scene through the Sziget Festival, what about the club scene…what can you tell us about that?

D: “We’ve some very good festivals like Balaton Sound, Volt and Sziget, but unfortunately there isn’t too much of a good club scene in Hungary right now! Not even in Budapest, you can find only a few good places to go to and listen to proper club music! Hopefully the clubbing scene will get better and better every year but we still have to evolve a lot!”

Who are some of your fellow countrymen we should be looking out for production wise this year?

S: “Jay Lumen, Paul Strive, Belocca, Myon & Shane 54, they all do amazing tracks!”

And also, who are some of the producers you are giving high fives to from around the world right now?

D: “Definitely Axwell, Jeremy Olander, Eric Prydz, Nicky Romero, Chocolate Puma, Tube & Berger and Mark Knight.”

Tell us something about your musical influences growing up…

S: “Before I started to do house music I was a huge fan of Jazz, Funk and Soul music. My brother played on guitar so I’ve got some influences from Rock music as well, but as soon as I heard house music I really wanted to be a part of it! Thomas Bangalter, Cassius, Todd Terry, Roger Sanchez, Louie Vega, Erick Morillo, Danny Tenaglia, Pete Heller & Terry Farley just a few names from my list but they and their music were a big inspiration for me!”

D: “Actually I got into the music scene later than Sully. I spent my childhood in a music school and played on piano for more than 12 years so I came from a classical music background. My first electronic music experience just came around the high-school years when I was listening to artists such as Axwell or the Global Underground DJs, they were a huge inspiration for me!”

It sounds to me that if music hadn’t entered your lives it would have been a very dreary existence for you! Reading an old interview with you guys you admitted that if you weren’t musicians you would be fixing computers or working in HR. Phew! Lucky escape huh?

S: “Yes, I should say it’s definitely a lucky escape! However there are several cases when our studies and experience is useful so I would never say it’s completely useless, it’s the same with Dave as well. Working with music is a completely different thing than anything else, but at the same time it’s a big challenge and requires persistence – but when you love something it will be always easier to do it because of the passion.”

When did the idea of a career in music plop into your minds?

D: “I’ve never thought about making career in music! I wanted to do music because of myself, I wanted to achieve my ideas and sound and share it with other people! It was more about a mission or a goal than a plan to build a career!”

S: “I was more into producing than DJing! I’ve never thought I would be able to play as a DJ at the front of the audience one day. I wanted to make music that other DJs play and people like!”

Away from dance music who are some of the artists you are into at the moment?

S: “We all have our favourites! We try to listen all kinds of music that inspire us! But just to name one we both really like Hans Zimmer!”

What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given?

D: “I think there’s no such a thing to completely finish a song! There’s only one thing that force you to say you’ve finished it, the deadline!”

What is coming out from you studio wise?

S: “We did some new songs and remixes but there are some collaborations coming out as well! Unfortunately we can’t tell you more, but we’re very happy with the remix we did for Sultan & Ned Shepard too.”

And finally, gotta ask. When you think of Hungarian first names, titles such as Balázs, Tamás and Gábor spring to mind…not Dave and Sully! Can you shed any light on this…?

D: “Actually my Hungarian name is David, so that’s why everybody calls me Dave.”

S: “My real name is Zsolt. I never wanted to use a nickname before but many years ago all the people who spoke English had a hard time to pronounce it in a right way. My DJ name was Sullivan at that time so everybody started to call me Sully.”

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