Just Us

Boom, the boys are back in town! A huge new tune from the duo after last year’s incredible Cloudbusting smash. DMCWORLD checks in…

 

Hi Steve & Carl and welcome to DMCWORLD. After dropping two house tunes ‘Cloudbusting’ and ‘Flirtatious’ in 2017 your first release this year is a d&b tune ‘Superhero’ with Danny Byrd and Macy Gray, how did that come about ?

We met Macy Gray through a friend and she said lets make a dance record but when you got Macy in the studio, you don’t make a 124 BPM with her, it just doesn’t go well with her range so D&B did. We are not D&B producers but we know how to produce music for what we are working with and this just fit. I’ll never forget leaving Macy in a dark vocal room for 45 minutes playing the riff over & over and her saying “Mr Lee, Im ready baby” and an 30 minutes later we had “SuperHero” I remember her saying she felt like the record made her want to come out of a phone booth with an “S” on her chest. What a legend! Our manager sent it to Danny Byrd who loved it and Danny did his thing to get it to where it is now – thanks Danny!

https://soundcloud.com/officialjustus/just-us-danny-byrd-ft-macy-gray-superhero/s-1ygkv

It’s a stella line-up, also with Goldie supplying a remix. What was it like working with the d&b legend ?

(Steven) My girl Sarah from DJ Mag is very tight with Goldie and she called him and said “Macy Gray D&B” and he said “Macy ? I’ve always thought she was perfect for my game”. Goldie is poet, he speaks in parables, riddles but he’s a card carrying genius. I wish I had some of the phone chats I had from us on record with that man, they are beyond any human I’ve ever encountered before in all the amazing ways. Goldie is so talented, my words do nothing.

We heard that Kate Bush wasn’t exactly supportive of your take on ‘Cloudbusting’ ?

As much as she said no to us, everyone else said YES to us so that’s that! The record had its wings clipped but we learned a valuable lesson, “KEEP SAMPLING KATE BUSH”

Flirtatious and Superhero are both released on your Shadowbox imprint. What are you plans with the label?

In this day and age you have to have a record label. No plans, yet but that’s what Erick Morillo said when he made Subliminal, so check back with us in a year!

What other Just Us releases do you have lined up this year ?

We are house producers by nature but we keep getting huge pop/dance projects thrown at us and so we are running with it. We doing a little bit of this and a lot of that. We can tell you that James Brown is NOT dead, that’s all we can say! Our next release is a house tune ‘Closure’ coming in May on Love & Other.

Your both based in the US so what’s your take on the how dance/electronic if fairing over there ?

Whereas the big crossover artist were making EDM records a few years ago, they are now making commercial trap tunes and that was an evolution that was always going to happen. So that’s impacting on what get’s played on the radio. But we now have a generation that think of DJs as artists so essentially dance will always have a strong foothold in the culture here. We’re optimistic about the future.

Has the EDM bubble burst in the US ?

No way. But The Chainsmokers and Kygo have changed the game sonically and if you aren’t in with that sound, you are out commercially.

It feels like there’s a return to good quality house music, any plans to update some of your Lee Cabrera and Carl Kennedy releases ?

We have actually just re-done a couple of our old records, “The Love You Bring Me” and “Shake It” which are coming out on Stealth and Cr2 next month.

And Steven, you’re a co-founder of the online production tutorial site FaderPro. How are things going with that ?

FaderPro is like having a baseball team to manage. I never thought it would be what it is and so quickly but no complaints. It’s been refreshing to show up and coming producers how the best in the world make music and teaming up with labels like Armada, Toolroom, Hospital, CR2 and others to show that we can provide a new revenue stream as well as spreading the skill and knowledge about music production. It’s a pretty big venture these days but I’m excited about where it’s going. And we’ve just done a Danny Byrd tutorial so look out for that one dropping soon.

Will Just Us be over in the UK & Europe this summer ?

We head out in June to Europe and we’ll be doing shows in the UK and Ibiza this summer. Look out for us!

‘Superhero’ is out now. Download and stream here http://geni.us/Superhero