Before we jump in, I wanted to extend huge congrats on this EP. I really enjoyed the combination of high-energy dance & organic percussion. How did this release come to fruition? Could you share a little on the conversations/inspirations leading up to this?

Jon: Hey Dan, thanks for having us for the interview. We met through our mutual friend Samurai Breaks a couple of years back. During one of the lockdowns, Sam had put me on to one of Mike’s first tracks, ‘Discharged’, and I was immediately a big fan and really interested in hearing more of what Mike was making.

I think we started talking not long after and realized we had a lot of shared musical tastes and interests as producers, particularly in exploring different rhythms and arrangements in that uptempo 150/160 bpm space and also exploring making ‘emotive’ / ‘cinematic’ music inspired by the more spacey and dreamy side of jungle and dnb that also smacks on a system. We started writing together in 2021 alongside our respective solo projects and found a home for our first EP, Bloodstone, with Defrostatica, who we’d both worked with individually before too.

We started making some more demos that eventually became this new EP, Waves, about a year ago, with the last track, the EP’s title track, being finished just before the end of the year.

While our first EP had a lot of melodic moments, I think there's been more of a conscious decision to explore them on this record, as well as continuing to try out new ideas together. ‘Escape Plan’ was the first track we finished in these sessions.

Loving the vibrancy in the artwork, did you have much input here?

Christian (Kroneck) did an amazing job on the visuals. He does a lot of the art for Defrostatica, including our previous EP with the label, and it’s been great to work with him again. The idea for the art and visuals was created between Rob (DJ Booga - Defrostatica label manager) and Christian. The vibrancy is a really nice fit for the record and the animated versions do a great job of emulating the idea of ‘waves’ too.

Could I ask about what techniques & tools you guys used for the production?

Other than a few scratching sounds that Jon created using his DJ equipment, in terms of sound design, we’re very much in the box when we write music together and a lot of our sounds come from experimenting with resampling, processing, and chopping up sounds to create layers.

Arrangement-wise, we really enjoy writing question and answer motifs too and trying to create tracks that have multiple sections and switch-ups, both for the joy of playing with sounds in the writing stage but also to create a journey-style feel for the listener.

Extending the last question, how did you collaborate across the release, did you each cover individual elements?

This time around, we wrote the vast majority of the tracks at Mike’s home studio in Bristol. We have good chemistry when writing together and we kind of take turns on who is in the ‘hot seat’, giving each person some space to try ideas and vibe off each other, and then fine-tune the tracks together before Mike handles the final mixdowns.

Could I ask how you guys are doing on the promo side? Anything fun planned to push this into the world?

Jon: We’ve not DJ’d or performed together publicly yet and while it’s something we’d both really like to happen and are excited about, I feel that we’re more focused on writing together and continuing to develop our sound at the moment.

While we’re both known for uptempo music both individually and together, I think we both see the project as one that is more defined by a consistent ‘ethos’ or ‘feeling’ rather than being locked down to specific tempos or subgenres and I think we’re both looking forward to exploring more different tempos too and seeing where that takes us, so by the time we start DJing or performing as an act together we can take an audience on a wide journey for an hour with our original productions.

It was really fun to see the previous EP, particularly the track ‘Arpe Diem’, be embraced by a lot of DJs outside of that juke/jungle/footwork fusion scene too, and the idea of building up an audience of listeners that embrace what we’re about and are happy to come with us on our explorations feels like a great journey and destination for our project.

Thanks so much again, and congrats on the release!