InsideInfo has recently teamed up with Mefjus to deliver something completely insane on Virus and certainly delivered on the behind-the-scenes front, even including the paranormal level, read on.
And one thing’s for sure: to produce something this good you just know they get on well, with a total level of artistic respect…
I always hear that Mefjus is such a cool guy?
Ha ha, nah, he’s a colossal bellend tbh.
How did you meet?
We first met at a gig in Vienna, we were both on the same lineup. Drank a few beers and got chatting. Turns out he was playing in London the following month so I said Come crash at mine for a few days and we can get on a tune, see what happens.
We did ‘Mythos’ together first which worked really well so we decided to keep it rolling!
When you work together is there a sort of alchemy? Is it weird to ‘see’ artistic progress happening in front of you, actual instinctive stuff manifesting from thin air?
Yeah: it’s great because one of us will do something and the other will be like “stoppppppp right there son! Leave it like that!”
Where as working solo we would have probably carried on fiddling and procrastinating. It’s quite a quick process of getting a vibe down when we work.
We pick a starting point and a few sounds and just throw them all together quickly, if it’s not working within the first couple of hours we just start over again until it hits the magic point.
We spend months apart not working together so by the time we do sit down we have built up a bunch of new samples, sounds and techniques to play with. Keeps it nice and fresh then.
Now ‘Leibniz’ sort of hits me like one of those too-sour sweets: it makes me screw up my face, it hurts, it’s sort of agony but I totally love it, can you talk through it?
Ah thanks man, yeah that track literally just fell together in a couple of hours. It’s not supposed to be clever or anything, just pure aggression and raw.
I had this screaming bass sound just waiting to be used for something, and we literally stuck that in there over a groove Martin laid down.
Bosh, bosh bosh, a couple of refinements later down the line and done. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, it was like… did we just write that? wtf?
I think those raw aggy type of tracks come out better when its all done rough and ready without too much trickery going on.
Take us through ‘Footpath’? Soooo ugly.
So ‘Footpath’ was a Three Way Jam with the Upbeats.
They are amazing guys and we always have such a good laugh together, I love the rawness and personality of their music, it really shines through in this track.
Again it all came together in one day. It felt like a step forward for us, hench the name. Leibniz was actually the working title of the track, because we just munched down a shitload of leibniz biscuits during the session of working on it.
It just absolutely stuck and we decided to just roll with it.
The name is purely inspired by biscuits?
‘Leibniz’ is also the name of a very important mathematician, but tbh the tune is just named after a biscuit… f*ck it.
Got to be loads more music on the go between you all?
Yeah we like to keep a batch on the go. We have a single dropping in October on Viper called ‘Pulsation’ with another track called ‘Talisman’.
We’re currently working on a single for Critical for next year, Then it would be great to do an ep together.
What’s a great, simple production tip? One from old days was to play the tune in the car. Painful but always worked.
Yep I always do the car tip. If you get stuck, stop, bounce what you’ve done, put it aside and start something else. Don’t get stale and bored, keep it moving.
Keep doing this until something sticks, you can always go back and develop the other ideas when you are in the mood.
What’s a random incident this year? Could be late panic race for jet at airport, act of god, flesh eating virus, mid-air scare, ghost of small victorian person… things like that.
Feels like the whole year’s been a random incident! Being on tour in Australia with the Matrix, The Prototypes and Smooth was full of them.
So a paranormal thing happened to me a while back: I took a shortcut home from the airport in my car at about 4am once down some really small country lane in the middle of nowhere.
As I was driving I saw a man in my headlights who was wearing what looked like white rags and no shoes, I thought to myself How weird, is he ok?
So I slowed down as I passed him, he didn’t look at me or anything. Once I’d passed him, I checked my mirrors… there was no one there!
Bricks were shat.
