DMCWORLD gets the Lowdown from the Dutch duo who have music running through their veins
“Music means everything to us
…and our goal in life is to share our passion and love for it”
Ruben, Victor welcome to DMCWORLD. Where in the world are you right now?
“We’re currently in the studio working on a lot of new music, and preparing for our upcoming North America tour!”
You have the Buzz Chart crew jumping through hoops at the moment thanks to your mighty ‘Lowdown’ track…talk us through the release…did you know you were sitting on something special on completion?
“ It was a really fun track to produce since it has a different sound & vibe than our previous releases and we’re really happy with the support it’s getting. It’s a great track to play live and we knew it would be a mainstay in our sets the moment we completed it. ”
You met at school and discovered you enjoyed the same music. You pissed off all of the teachers back then because you were listening to music all day and not concentrating in class. Who were the artists you were listening to back then?
“Our favorite artists back in the school days where probably Eric Prydz, Tiësto, Above &n Beyond. We both remember listening and discussing Tiësto’s album “Kaleidoscope” when it first came out in 2009 (we were 17), and that album had a lot of refreshing sounds at the time. We were also big Eminem fans and grew up listening to his albums.“
So many producers don’t imagine their life could ever be in the music industry at such a young age, then before they know it they have started to make music, get some DJ gigs and boom! Career sorted!! Was there anything else either of you wanted to do with your lives back then…didn’t your families try and persuade you to look elsewhere?
“We were both studying at our local University when we decided to work on our first track together, Ruben was a second year student and Victor first years. After the first 3 tracks we really got the hang of it and started spending all of our free time in the studio, every single day of the week. We pretty much stopped going to college to make time for music; luckily it took off and we’re very happy that we can now make and play music every day, and live our dream. Our families were very supportive from the beginning, and we’re lucky to have the supportive families we have.”
Something you said in an interview last year…when we started out we kept on realizing over and over again that it wouldn’t be an overnight success story. We set a few goals in the beginning which we thought we’re very reasonable at the time, but eventually you keep on setting new goals again and again that are different and improve on the last.” To the outside world you have pretty much been an overnight success story! What are the goals for 2014…?
“Our goal this year is to release more big original (vocal) tracks and collaborations. We have a big collaboration with Nicky Romero this year that we’re very excited about, and we have a lot of vocal originals in the works as well. We started off doing a lot of remixes and now we’re focusing more on our original tracks, since the few we released last year were received so well. There’s a LOT of really great new music lined up, and big tours and festival slots this year as well, so we’re set for a great year!”
What is the current top 10 you are spinning…
1) Lowdown (Original Mix) – Vicetone
2) Eat Sleap Rave Repeat (Calvin Harris Remix)
3) You Make Me (Throttle remix) – Avicii
4) Life is calling – Joeysuki & Kill the buzz
5) Colors – Tritinal, Paris Blohm & Sterling Fox
6) Stars – (Kevin Drew Remix)
7) Lycka (Original Mix) – Pryda
8) Reckless Ardor – EDX
9) Heartbeat (Cash Cash Remix)
10) Starlight (Otto Knows Remix)
Who excels in what area in the studio, who is better at what!?!
“We both have a different style of making melodies and starting ideas, which helps a lot with creating different ideas. Ruben has always preferred making melodies and chord progressions using the midi keyboard and that’s also one of the reasons why he’s better at playing the piano. Victor prefers drawing in the melodies manually in the piano roll. We both end up making different kinds of melodies and ideas. However, since we both have a very similar taste in melodies and what we think is good or bad, we pretty much always agree on whether or not a melody is strong enough to build a track around. Mixing wise we both have our own studios where we work on music seperately. Ruben has the bigger studio as he is the better mixer but what we like to do the most is working next to each other, discussing idea and building tracks from scratch together. Even when working separately, we’re constantly communicating, discussing track ideas and swapping tracks to work on. It’s always very collaborative, and that’s how we like it – in our opinion, making music is so much more fun doing it with somebody else rather than just on your own. ”
It’s incredible to think you have only been producing for two years, another recent quote…“we are still learning techniques to improve on our sound, and trying different things with our music.” How then do you think your music has evolved these past 24 months or so…?
“Our sound has improved a lot over the last year and if you compare the tracks we made last year versus the music we make now, there’s a big improvement in arrangement and production quality. We make music every single day when possible so we’re constantly improving and learning new things. Also, while working on new tracks we always try to use new mixing techniques, using new synths and plugins to improve our sound. A lot of our best tracks have started with learning ourselves a new synth, and then creating a really cool sound with that synth, followed by the whole track coming together. We push ourselves to learn new things and techniques all the time to keep our sound fresh.
Where are some of the DJ gigs in your diary that you are really looking forward to hitting in 2014…?
“We are really looking forward to play Ultra Music Festival Miami this year! It’s really amazing to be playing at a huge festival like this, especially since our first ever gig was not even a year ago (9 months as of now).”
Who are the producers from around the world you are giving high fives to right now?
”Nicky Romero, Martin Garrix, Zedd…”
And finally, what is coming out next from you studio wise…
”Our next release will be Lowdown of course, on Spinnin Records on the 10th of February. We also have the collab with Nicky Romero coming out this year which we are really excited about and a ton of other releases coming out this year. Some of the best music we’ve made so far!”
http://www.vicetone.com
http://www.twitter.com/vicetone
http://www.soundcloud.com/vicetone
http://www.youtube.com/vicetone
