Meaningful lyrics, soaring chords and a constant churning build. Boom! ‘Tomorrow Comes’ smashes it
Interview : Dan Prince
Josh, Dave welcome to DMCWORLD. Where in the world are you right now?
“Thank you! We are glad to be here! We have loved DMC for many years! We even used to subscribe to the Remix service and Mixmag Update back in the 90s before we were Gabriel & Dresden. Update always kept us abreast of the newest trends in dance music long before they happened. Right now we are on two continents, Josh is in Amsterdam, NL and Dave is in Oakland, CA, USA.”
The new single ‘Tomorrow Comes’ features the vocal talent of Neil Ormandy, an old friend of DMCWORLD from his days in the UK. When did you first meet this amiable young man?
“We were fans of his band Rushmore and as it turns out, we had friends in common. We actually met him in an afterhours club in LA in like, 2006 or something. From that moment the idea of a collaboration was always in the cards. But then G&D split up. During the G&D break Josh worked with Neil on the Sander Kleinenberg album (“Contact”) and Dave had Neil play some guitar licks on his Serge Devant “Sweet Harmony” remix. When we got back together it was Neil we knew we wanted to work with, and “Tomorrow Comes” is how we are kicking it off.”
Soundcloud link: http://bit.ly/14j5bLc
Talk us through the tune…
“This song started from a piece of music we made for our 2011 Mixed for Feet mix compilation called “Ascending”. We really loved this 2:00 orchestral piece and knew that it could be the foundation of a great song. So we sent it to Neil and he came up with part of the lyrical idea. Once we got into the studio with him we fleshed out the lyrics together. But it wasn’t until we recorded the vocals a 2nd time that we found what the song became. It was a very typical production process for us.”
You first played it out at the Gryphon Night Club in Fort Lauderdale a few weeks back, it was the first time you had actually heard it on a big system, what was the reaction like…?
“Yes it was. That gig helped us go back to the studio and finish the song. We chose that venue mainly because it was the last stop of our June US tour and making that song was what we did on our days off. We started with a week in LA writing and recording vocals, a week in Brooklyn to edit the song idea and get the track working with the vocals, and then a week in Houston to get it to where we played it at Gryphon.”
What is the current top 10 you are spinning?
1. Gabriel & Dresden feat Neil Ormandy – Tomorrow Comes
2. Rone – Bye Bye Macadam (Gabriel & Dresden bootleg)
3. Pryda vs Human League – Don’t You Want Me Allein (Gabriel & Dresden Mashup)
4. Thomas Schumacher – Do Real
5. Mark Broom – Afterlife
6. Dominic Eulberg & Gabriel Ananda – The Space Between Us
7. Lana Del Rey vs Booka Shade- Young and Mandarine (Gabriel & Dresden mashup)
8. Gabriel & Dresden feat Molly Bancroft – Tracking Treasure Down Revisited (Gabriel & Dresden ON remix)
9. SHato & Paul Rockseek – Deer Friends
10. Bloc Party – Truth (Digitalism Remix)
Josh love your thoughts on EDM over in America…” People doing things for money is usually not where the best stuff is found in any field.” Please discuss…
“In the past most things that ended up being timeless or have a lasting impact on people are born during lean times by passionate people expressing themselves. When profit is the motive behind something, its time to be careful what you consume.”
Where have been some of the stand out gigs for you this summer – Governer’s Island looked sick!?
“We purposefully sat out most of the summer because Dave and his wife had a baby in July and he needed to be around for that. But that said, the show at Governor’s Island was really good. We always have a great time in New York!”
What is coming out next from you guys studio wise?
“We just wrapped up a song called “Rise Up”,an instrumental progressive house track with trance and techno flourishes that should be out by October on our label Organized Nature. We recorded the song the way we fantasize we could do every song, a modular synthesizer. We just love to create sounds from scratch on real equipment, they just end up sounding more pure and original. After “Rise Up” we have songs we recorded with a singer from Texas named Sean Ryan as well as more Neil Ormandy. Eventually all these songs could culminate into an album, we’re just not sure. Albums are fun to make but they take a lot of time to produce and are not the way people consume music anymore. The focus for us has moved to making songs we like rather than a body of work that works well together.”
Who brings what to the studio, who excels where?
“It’s been well documented that Josh came from the studio and Dave is the DJ. But over the years of collaboration, those lines have become completely blurred. While the final mix is still done on Josh’s computer (Josh has been using sequencers with computers since 1984) we both collaborate on every aspect of the song, from the ground up. We both have very specific skill sets that when you combine them make our sound.”
Do you ever argue about music?
“All the time. Much less on our own music and more so when we’re deciding what songs to include in our DJ sets.”
Dave, gotta ask…what’s it like being a new daddy?
“It sounds so cliche but you never are quite prepared for when your little one comes into the world. it’s this magic feeling of accomplishment and love that you never have felt before. Having been a bit of a rolling stone most of my life, it has been a huge adjustment but also a completely rewarding one. Now I kind of understand what Josh was going through when he had his 3 kids.”
You spend so much time together touring, partying, producing. What is each others most annoying habit?
“After working together for over a decade the annoyances come and go. The simple fact that we are still together and getting excited about making music outweighs anything that can temporarily make us mad.”
Who from history would you most like to have a beer with and why?
Dave: “Of course, Steve Jobs. The man has given musicians so many tools to create and promote their music and I just love the way he thought about things. Things were either great or not. And he wasn’t shy about sharing his feelings. He made design and ease of use a priority over anything else. Which has spread to so many other things, it’s insane how much he changed the world.”
Josh: “I don’t drink beer.”
What has been your anthem of the summer?
“Well naturally It’s a tie between “Tomorrow Comes” and our remix of Rone “Bye Bye Macadam” but Dave also has a super soft spot for Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” (Cedric Gervais Remix).”
Who are the producers from around the world you are giving high fives to right now?
“We really love Jon Hopkins and what he’s doing. Layering beautiful synths and intricate percussion to make dance music that you don’t need to dance to enjoy. We also feel that Eric Prydz is pretty consistent with his releases and they are awesome on the floor.”
Funniest festival story of 2013?
“There hasn’t been anything particularly funny in 2013 for us but in 2012 we were booked to play this festival in Jacksonville, FL. It was the same weekend as Electric Zoo Festival and creatively enough they called it the Electric Sun Festival, also a 2-day fest with a similar lineup. We had heard rumblings all week from our agents that something was amiss but on the morning of our performance everything was still a go. By the time our flight landed in Jacksonville we saw all the tweets on Twitter about the festival being cancelled and how the promoter’s only announcement was a marquee sign full of misspellings in the parking lot with a contact # that nobody ever answered when you called it. Apparently, the sound guys had taken their equipment the night before because they had not been paid, and Tiesto tweeted that morning that he was cancelling because he too had not been paid, not knowing that there would have been no sound for him to play on. We suppose this whole thing is more sad than funny, because a lot of fans got screwed out of their hard earned money, but we just had to laugh at how unprofessional the whole thing was.”
And finally, what are you most looking forward to about the forthcoming winter months?
“Less guilt for saying inside and working on music.”
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