Montreal in the house! Big new tune out on the mighty Nurvous Records
Interview by Rob Chadwick
If you know your old skool sounds, then you’ll know the classic NYC label Nurvous. A bastion for all things house and garage in the late 90’s especially, the label has since entered a new faze, one where it’s signing up some of the hottest properties in the contemporary house realm. One such duo is EZLV, who’ve really began to find their feet of late thanks to a host of well-received works on some of the world’s most recognised such imprints. We got in touch with the Canadian natives recently for a quick chat, as they talked us through their current career direction…
How’s life with you guys right now? The UK is getting cold dude!
“We are pretty good at the moment. Maxime just turned 30 years old so he feels a bit old…but great! The weather is so cool at the moment. We have those beautiful colors here in Montreal. the Fall is probably one of the best season, not too cold not too hot. We tend to have extreme weather during winter or summer here so this is a good balance.”
How was the summer though? Many cool gigs, busy in the studio?
“Summer was very nice for us. We just moved together so we can produce more and have direct exchanges concerning the duo. Many cool gigs as usual in our city. The studio sessions are more quiet during the summer, we took some vacation in a way! But we are now back in the studio working on new projects since the end of August.”
What keeps you occupied aside from music?
“I graduated in history at the University of Montreal. So I would say that reading books or watching documentaries is my passion. For Maxime, sports takes a lot of his time, he’s working part time in a college as a sport scientist and he plays soccer pretty often.”
So what does house music stand for in your eyes?
“Of course we really like house music – and we listen to it a lot. But it’s not the only music style we listen to. We take it more as a music style to have fun while partying or simply listening to it.”
And was it music that brought you together?
“Actually yes! We became friends because we both loved trance music in the early 2000’s…Maxime was a DJ back then in Montreal’s rave scene and Louis wanted to learn – that’s the main reason why we became friends. The idea to create EZLV came long after that.”
How do you produce most of your tunes?
“Usually one of us starts an idea and the other one continues it, but it always depends…there’s no magical recipe!”
You’ve released on some great labels of late and it seems like you’re really beginning to hit your stride. Did you hit the ground running or has it been constant hard work to get to this stage?
“It’s a constant hard work! Trying to get the right contacts etc. The most difficult thing is probably to make sure the right person listens to your tracks, it might sounds easy but it’s not!”
How long have you been producing now?
“We never studied music or anything like that, so we learned everything by ourselves, and it took a lot of time! We learned sometime in 2005-2006, but it wasn’t serious. It was probably in 2010 that we started to focus more on music production, being behind our computer at least 10 hours per week. Usually we spend 15 hours per week producing now.”
Can you tell us a bit about your studio? What kind of software or hardware do you tend to use a lot?
“It is mainly on our desktop we bought a few years ago. We produce with Ableton Live, sometime Reason rewired with the addition of a couple of VSTi like Sylenth 1, Korg polysix or M1 etc. We also have a huge collection of sounds that we use regularly. We used to have hardware, like a Moog Slimphatty, but we weren’t using it much…”
You just released on Nurvous alongside Bordertown. Were you, eh, nervous about the challenge? Or did you get it signed after you sent it to them?
“Nice word play! Bordertown had a release on Nurvous already one or two years ago. We really like it, that’s the reason why we contacted them to stay in touch. Also, last year we did a remix for Nurvous (Romy ‘Elixir’). So when the track was ready we sent it over to the Nurvous HQ and they really liked it!”
Any plans to do an album or a live show?
“About the album, we don’t have any plans for it in the near future. Making an album is a big project, it’s not just a bunch of club tracks wrapped up to make a release, it must be conceptual, all tracks must have cohesion. About the live show, we never really thought of that, we were DJs before being producers, so I guess we’ll stick to that for the moment!”
What else can we look out for from you guys?
“We got a superb collaboration coming up with ThermalBear. More info will come soon but you guys should definitely take a look at this guy. He is super talented.”
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Facebook: http://www.ezlv.net/
EZLV & Bordertown’s ‘Things Should Go’ (ft. Freya) is out on Nurvous Records
