DMC exclusive with the red hot producers behind the hottest tune in the world right now
Interview : Dan Prince
Boys welcome to DMCWORLD, each year seems to be getting better for you, what a summer you have in store for yourselves. Where in the world are you right now?
Sultan: “Hey Dan, right now we’re sitting on our balcony at home in LA enjoying the great view, eating our favorite Korean BBQ! We just came back from Las Vegas where we were playing a show as part of our residency at XS. We’re excited to be home though because we’re right about to finish up two original tracks that we’re really pumped about. They both sound more indie and band oriented than what’s happening in the dance world now and we’re happy to do something a little different.”
You spend so much time together but you also know when to give each other space, especially in the studio. Who brings what to the production process, who excels where…?
Ned: “We basically work together like a band. Sultan plays guitar and I play keys so we just jam out our ideas to get the bones of the song right and then focus on the production and sounds and mixing and all that fun stuff. Sultan is great at mixing and focusing on the microcosm of a song. He’s also really great at writing hooks. I’m kind of a chord nazi and tend to spend days changing the chords and adding parts until the song feels totally right. I like to look at the bigger picture of whether the song hits you in the right place as a piece of music, rather than just sounding cool. Then we fight about the arrangement until we’re both really happy. We are very complimentary in the studio and the only real rule we have is that if one of us isn’t crazy about something, like a sound or an arrangement idea, then we don’t keep it. We both have to love it for it to stay in the song.”
Your ‘No Good’ track is currently sitting at the No. 1 spot on the world famous DMC Buzz Chart, talk us through the history of this incredible track you created with Fedde le Grand…
Sultan: “We started the track about a year and a half ago in Fedde’s studio in Holland when were over there to do some shows in Europe. He invited to his studio to work on some music and we came up with this great groove. We took it back to our studio in Montreal, where we were living at the time, and started messing around with it. Ned and I were talking about how much we loved the old Prodigy record “No Good” and thought it would be amazing to use that sample. We found the original sample, pitched it up and it worked perfectly. Fedde heard it and freaked out. We finished it up a year later when he came out to LA, but the groove sounded a bit old at that point so Fedde put new drums on it and made it sound even bigger. We did a couple of tweaks and then it was done and we all loved it!”
What we find so refreshing about you guys is the way you look at your careers…”The music we’re producing now in the last year or two is so different from what we made five or six years ago. We have a whole bunch of new fans and if the old fans don’t like it, well what can you do?” So many people don’t look at things like that, most people always try and keep everyone happy. Why do you look at things so differently?
Ned: “It’s kind of impossible to make everyone happy, isn’t it? We’ve been doing this for over ten years so you see a lot of artists get really big and then disappear and then come back and you realize that at the end of the day you have to do what you believe in because you can’t really control what other people are going to like and what they aren’t going to like. Talking to other artists throughout the years and just reflecting back on our own experience making music, we always knew that we had to do something new or else we would get stagnant and bored. The challenge for us isn’t so much to do something different, but find a way to do it that still feels like “us”. I think finding a new sound every few years that still feel genuine to who were are is something that keeps us going every day.”
You have also smashed your way into The Ibiza Buzz Chart 2013 thanks to your ‘Draw Close’ track on Hardwell’s Revealed label. Will we be seeing you on the white isle this summer?
“Quite possibly yes.”
I understand the world’s dancefloors wouldn’t be jumping to the Sultan and Shepard beat right now if it wasn’t for a certain Sharam from Deep Dish, what’s the story there?
Sultan: “Back in 2002 when I first starting out as a DJ and producer, I had the chance to play with Deep Dish and ended up handing Sharam a CD with four of my productions. A few months later when I was in Miami for the Conference, I bumped into Sharam and he was like,“Yo I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for months! I love your tunes, I want to sign them to Yoshitoshi and have them on the next Deep Dish Global Underground compilation. From there Sharam signed me on to Bullitt Bookings and I started touring the world with him and Deep Dish exposing me and our music to the masses. That’s where it all began. A few years later when I started producing with Ned, we released some of our first tracks together on Yoshitoshi and did quite a few remixes for them. Doing those records was where we cemented our studio chemistry together. The rest is history…”
What is the current top 10 you are spinning?
1. Mor Avrahami & Elkana Paz- 2ME (Eran Hersh Edit)
2. Fedde Le Grand vs. Sultan + Ned Shepard- No Good
3. Kid Massive & Tiny Ducks- Smash It (Sultan + Ned Shepard Edit)
4. Sultan + Ned Shepard vs. Taurus & Vaggeli- Draw Close
5. Chuckie, Dzeko & Torres- Down to This
6. Bruno Mars- Locked Out of Heaven (Sultan + Ned Shepard Remix)
7. Tegan & Sara vs. Alvaro- Closer (Sultan + Ned Shepard Remix) /Rock Music (Ferry Corsten mashup)
8. Paris & Simo v. Merk & Kremont- Tundra
9. Dean Cohen- American Flash (Sultan + Ned Shepard Edit)
10. W&W vs. Madeon- The Code City (Sultan + Ned Shepard Mashup)
You once said that traveling gives you the most inspiration for your music. What was the last amazing place you journeyed to…?
“We played a boat party in Brazil a couple months ago that was insane. It’s a huge cruise ship full of party people with a giant festival sized production. The ship sails from Buzios, off the coast of Rio, to Sao Paulo and people just party for three days. It was epic! It was also really cool to just be out in the middle of the ocean playing music.”
What is coming out next release wise from you guys…?
“No Good” our collab with Fedde is coming out in July. We’ve got an indie/folk sounding record called “All These Roads” coming out sometime in the summer. We’ve also just finished a collab with Tegan & Sara which we’re really excited about that hopefully will be out in the next few months. We’re also working on a follow up to “Walls” with Quilla.”
And what can we expect from your Harem Records…?
“We’ve been signing some cool new music. We’ve got stuff from Kim Fai, Dean Cohen Imanos & Faustix, and some new artists like Mad Mankeys. We like to do edits of some of the tracks just to give it our little twist.”
Tell us the story about your bus driver in Houston on the Road To Ultra tour…
“He was awesome. Really great dude who worked really hard and made sure that we always got where we needed to be. The last night in Houston we convinced him to come party with us. He got pretty drunk and was blasting people in the crowd with CO2 guns, it was hilarious. But then he disappeared. We looked for him everywhere and then someone found him passed out, on the floor of the bus. Safe to say he had the best time that night.”
Ned you are renowned for always searching out new bands, who are some of the latest unsigned or new artists you have discovered?
Ned: “Right now I’m completely in love with a band called Daughter from England. They just make beautiful music. Also, a singer named Banks from LA is so great- really soulful. There’s a guy named Cyril Hanh who makes amazing deep house remixes of old R&B tracks by Mariah Carey and Destiny’s Child and stuff like that. He’s dope.”
How easy do you find the process transforming the music you make on real instruments into an electronic format?
Sultan: “It’s tough sometimes. I think that’s one of the things that challenges us the most. We love keeping live instruments, or at least the feel of them, in our music. It’s something that makes our music sound unique. But at the same time, the electronic elements are what make the music sound ready for a club, so you need those elements in there. It’s just about finding the right balance. Sometimes, it’s just one live element like a guitar or piano that makes the difference.”
Your religious backgrounds must make for interesting evesdropping. Ned you are Jewish, Sultan you hail from an Arab Christian Palestine beginning. Has your different backgrounds ever caused any problems, families etc.?
Ned: “I think we’re probably one of the only successful Jewish-Palestinian partnerships haha! Seriously though, I think there is quite a lot of positive interaction between those communities that just happens on a small level and isn’t talked about or reported on. All you see on the news is just fighting or really terrible examples of bad things that people do to each other. To us, that seems far away from reality because we’re like brothers- we spend so much time with each other- we know each others’ families really well, our moms are friends, etc. We love to talk about the different issues but ultimately the fact that we have so much experience of hanging out and working together trumps any differences that we may have and having lived in North America for so many years, we share very similar values.”
Sultan, tell us about the 2004 documentary you starred in…
Sultan: “In 2002 while in Montreal, A bunch of my friends called me up one day saying there were ads in the newspaper asking for anyone with the name “Osama” to call CBS, Canada’s biggest broadcast television station. My birth name is actually Ossama. So I decided why not, let’s see what this was all about. Turns out CBS was planning on making a documentary called “Being Osama” to explore the effects of having the name Osama on other Osama’s other than Bin Laden since 9/11. They had chosen 5 Osama’s and were looking for one more, a Christian Osama in particular to counter the other 5 Muslim Osamas. I agreed to be a part of the documentary as long as the documentary was not based on religious and political views but rather an exploration of the lives of others named Osama. They agreed and for over a year a camera crew followed me everywhere documenting my life with my rock band at the time and the beginnings of my DJ/production career. It was definitely an interesting experience and it was amazing to see how much acclaim the documentary actually got from Canada to the US to Cannes to the Middle East and Asia. You can actually find clips of “Being Osama” on youtube.”
And finally, you love spinning in the States…New York and LA, but especially Las Vegas – what is it about sin city that you adore?
“People just come to Vegas ready to go crazy. A lot of people compare it to Ibiza and I think that they are definitely very different, but in that respect, they are similar. The party vibe really makes the experience pretty great and some of our favorite nights (and days) of the past year have been at XS and Encore Beach Club.”
| http://www.sultanshepard.com | |
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