Dada Life is the Swedish duo of Olle Corneer and Stefan Engblom who proport to incite all sorts of radical (perhaps violent) reactions to their music. This month they released their debut LP, Do The Dada, on The Hours, but with a slew of remixes under their belts, their sound is a somewhat familiar one. Dada Life is bassy, synth distorting, electro rejecting, Euro trashy, and melodic. Basically, they do as producers what many electro DJs try to do, but with more cohesion. We sent the boys a set of six questions to have their way with.
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We aren’t shy about our love for Calvin Harris around here, and his new album, Ready for the Weekend has only made us more effusive. On the phone today, Calvin spoke to us about what to expect on this week’s DJ tour. To win tickets to his LA show, follow the link at the end of this post.
“I play dance music,” Harris says of his DJ sets. “A lot of people expect to hear an eclectic mix, like my music. I like to play pretty straightforward dance music… sometimes noisy, sometimes disco-y. I think this time I’m going to play a little more disco-y. I think last time I played a little too noisy and a little too scary. It’s quite good not to scare people, not to scare the girls away.”
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Junior Boys are Canada’s best DJ duo. With their latest album, Begone Dull Care, they’ve demonstrated again that their knack for melody on the dancefloor extends beyond their selection; it’s a part of their production too. This fall Junior Boys are going on a Halloween-themed tour throughout the month of October. Scary. We asked the Boys’ founding member, Jeremy Greenspan, a round of five simple questions. If you want to see them tomorrow night in LA at Control, email us and you’re entered to win tix.
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Thanks to a short but explosive tour of North America this month, Underworld prove that there’s nothing in their way of eternal electronic domination. We wanted to hear more about their live show, special notebooks, and how MGMT gets them inspired.
With nearly three decades of a musical career behind him – two of those decades with Underworld – there is nobody like Karl Hyde. With his bandmate Rick Smith, he has made an indelible mark on the electronic music, and continues to do so with his relentless touring and very live on-stage persona. While an Underworld live show is always an in-the-moment experience, Hyde has quite a few habits off-stage that go into the making of the group’s music.
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“This is really nice,” says an impressed Claire England as she glances over the backstage food spread. Her bandmates gather around the table to inspect the small buffet, cramped together by the limited space of the room. Today’s backstage menu consists mostly of healthy snacks: apples, bananas, a container of strawberries – oh, but apparently there’s a bag of Skittles around here somewhere. Guitarist Luke Smith suggests handing out the food at tonight’s show. “We should definitely pass out those strawberries,” says keyboardist David Price.
Ah, the life of a touring band. So could Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head (England, Smith, Price, plus singer Shaun Libman and drummer Liam Downey) have envisioned this would happen when they first formed back in 2005? Coast-to-coast tours, backstage interviews and a smorgasbord of fresh fruit at every show?
“I didn’t even think we’d get out of the basement,” says Smith. “I was in a band before this, and we never played a show. We just played in the basement all the time, so it’s just like ‘oh, that’s what being a band is like.’” […keep reading…]
On a particular early summer day, Damian Lazarus is trying to borrow a friend’s car to take the driving test for his California license. He’s been living in LA for less than a year but his insurance company has cut him off until he sorts out a US license. “Finding someone who has a properly insured car with no cracked mirrors isn’t easy in this town.”
Living east of Hollywood with his cat and girlfriend, Lazarus has a radically different life now than he did just a few years ago. His move to LA was partly in effort to “isolate himself” just a little from the scene and from the city. “I’m living on the top of a very big hill away from the hustle and bustle.” The move for the magazine editor-turned DJ/label head from the gray of the UK for the California sun coincides with the release of his stunning artist album, Smoke the Monster Out. Lazarus is clear, however, that this album was not part of a calculated plan.
“I just started to get these ideas for some tracks and for some songs without actually having an idea for an album,” he explains of its origins. “I put this book together for notes and queries with no endgame in sight. After a while I started to look through it and started to create some melodic ideas for what I had written down.” […keep reading…]