Four slabs of simple – and simply-stated – D&B on Demand from the ones known as RoyG & Protone. Some, such as the fractured funk of ‘Pleased’, shifts and moves in a way which some may have forgotten D&B can, while some just curl right up and seduce you: ‘Girl Talk’: a glint in its eye and a spike for your drink. Then there’s the deliciously druggy title track… something in all of these that will awaken latent appetites in some, be it a hunger for old Mo’Wax vibes or some vintage Creative Source to name a few.
Hello! The Speak The Truth ep has all the wonder, strangeness and unexpected angles that D&B can impart, a genre like nothing else. Can you tell us when this fab ep started to take shape?
R: First of all, thanks for having us and those kind words. The idea of an EP on Demand Records has been floating around for some time now and we have been sending Carlos quite a lot of tunes over the last couple of years / months! So after a long process of selection, I think we have achieved quite a special EP with lots of diverse sub-genres of D&B.
‘Girl Talk’ is a massive favourite, I love the mood of this! What was in mind when it was written?
R: Well, when we found the sample, it wrote itself.
It didn’t take long to finish the main idea, one of the reasons for this is that it is quite simple but sometimes it doesn’t need to be constantly changing to keep the interest.
Is it written with the club environment in mind? That’s the impression I get.
R: Hmmm hard to say, the jazzy flavours give it some sort of live feeling and the sample is from a live recording.
Smoking cigars and drinking some gin infused cocktail is definitely the vibe in my opinion!
And ‘Pleased’: pure liquid funk! I can totally hear the shouts from the crowd when that bass drops.
R: ‘Pleased’ is quite an old project which we enjoyed quite a lot but it just wasn’t where we wanted it to be. So the only solution was to get back on it again to give it the final touches for the release.
The vibe for this one is definitely influenced by Calibre, who is simply a genius in everything he does music-wise.
P: Yeah it was written in a few hours but we were never quite satisfied with the overall quality of the track. So we tried to come up with another bass part, played some keys and worked a lot on the mixdown. It took a while but a lot of people seem to feel it so I guess it was worth the hassle.
The style of the tune ‘Speak The Truth’ caught me… love the grind on this.
R: We had a three – four day session at my place in Vienna (including sleep) and I woke up in the morning hearing some sick groove coming out of my speakers in the living room / studio.
So I got up and discovered that Mathias (Protone) had the basic idea of ‘Speak The Truth’ already lined up while I probably was still dreaming about something amazing. Basically it was finished on the same day but as always followed by some mixdown matters and little bits and pieces here and there.
P: Ha ha, that was fun. We made five tracks in four days. When I started the track I had some dubby kind of vibe in my mind! I was struggling with the bass ’cause I had the groove laid down already and I tried a few things… none of them were special. But when I made that swinging bass I thought that could work out really well!
After Thomas stepped into the session later that day we basically finished the track. On the next day I sent it to Carlos and he was straight into it.
So what different styles of music do you check, how does your taste fluctuate day to day, if it does? What inspires?
R: We listen to quite a lot of HipHop and Jazz as well as modern kind of Nu Soul or more Wonky stuff like MOTSA or B.Visible… to name some Austrian representatives which definitely give us some inspiration and motivation to try new things.
P: Yeah I think the most important thing is to get away from all the standard stuff that is around. Creating new ideas and tracks with elements that haven’t been there already is some major aim at the moment.
Regarding older styles of D&B is there any artists that you’d love to see come back, or styles of D&B?
R: I got into D&B around 2007 and at that time for me everything Hospital has released was just purely amazing. I’d like to see a return to their original vibe.
P: I started during the same period of time as Thomas did. Shogun and all the new artists they signed at that time definitely had a big impact on our whole crew. For me the most influential artists would be and have been Calibre, Break and Dj Die.
Random question: if you had to do a vinyl only set, would that be achievable? What things would it consist of?
R: Oh wow, it actually would be a great idea and I be a lot of fun to do so! Considering though that most of our music and the music people send to us is only available digitally, we have lost a little bit of our connection to vinyl.
It would consist of music by Soul:R, Dispatch, Good Looking, Shogun, Signature, Innerground, Creative Source, Defunked, Hospital and so on. The only way to find out though would be by doing it, I guess!
P: I would love to do it but I would have had to clean all my records which would take a ridiculous amount of time ha ha ha.
