Dutch duo T & Sugah have stepped up with the full-throttle pairing of ‘Canyon Dive’ and ‘Too Late’ on the Viper VIP front… evocative titles both so we had to pop open the hood and have a look inside at their various machinations. They have an actual violinist, for example?
Hi T & Sugah… where are you from, to be precise?
We’re from the Netherlands, more specifically: Haarlem. This is a city next to Amsterdam, in other words: there is always some action close by!
The scene there is thriving isn’t it? It’s huge.
That is correct, drum and bass is bigger than ever in Holland!
New parties are constantly popping up and the main events are rapidly growing.
For instance: this summer Liquicity will host a festival, this will be the first big D&B festival of the Netherlands!
What was the exact moment – for each of you – that you got into D&B? What was the spark?
Robin: I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but it was definitely Pendulum ‘Blood Sugar’. I heard this tune at some school party, and I had never experienced anything like it! It was just so full of energy, I fell in love instantly!
Philippe: For me it was the Prodigy at Pinkpop in 2010. It were these guys that actually got me into electronic music in the first place. After witnessing their live show I just had to find more similar music: this is what got me into D&B.
Tell us about ‘Canyon Dive’? What Canyon? makes me think of LA.
Well actually, this is quite a funny story. For a long time the song was called ‘Canyon Dive’, until it was misspelled on a big preview on Capital Xtra and everybody thought the name was ‘Canyon Drive’ and started calling it that. We ended up still calling it ‘Canyon Dive’ though.
The build-up represents the nervous feeling before the jump and the drop resembles the feeling of freedom when you soar above a beautiful canyon.
It’s not about a specific canyon, but indeed, we had Californian canyons in mind when we wrote the song.
You love synths I note… what artists inspire you on the synth front?
On the synth front we are mainly inspired by guys like Camo & Krooked and Metrik, with their clubby liquid sound. But we are also inspired by cinematic music from M83 for example.
What’s the story behind ‘Too Late’? Sounds like there’s some drama attached.
This song is about getting things right in your life, this could be anything for anyone: from relationships to career choices and so on. Sometimes you can feel like you’ve made the wrong choices at certain crossroads in your life and now it’s too late to go back and change those things.
You gotta live with what you have now and make the best of it!
Have to ask, any ‘late’ stories? late for trains, planes, festivals? That type of deal.
At school and college Robin was always the guy that came strolling in when class had started for five or ten minutes.
However – thank god – with gigs we plan everything well, so I can’t remember any time we were too late actually.
And connected, is there live appearances and so forth planned from T & Sugah?
We already had quite some big shows this year including the infamous: Rampage party. This was definitely our sickest gig until now!
In the coming months we will also perform at: Liquicity Festival, Decibel Outdoor, Paradiso, Holland’s pop temple and some other major festivals which we unfortunately can’t announce right now….
At some of these festivals we are performing several tunes live with our vocalist Ayve and Stella, our violinist!
Apart from our shows in Holland and Belgium , we are also doing some gigs abroad in countries as the Czech republic and Estland.
So in other words, we’ve got a busy summer ahead!
Any shouts from you guys?
Well off course a big shout out to Brendan/Futurebound for picking up our tunes! From day one it has been a dream of ours to have a release on Viper Recordings! It still feels surrealistic to realise that it is actually happening.
Next to that we want to thank Maris & Mark/Maduk for all the support that Liquicity provided the past year. Not only considering our releases, but also for creating such a warm and welcoming Liquicity family!
Last but not least we want to do a shout out to the Major League boys, Pamb & Harsh. They were the first to give us the opportunity to play at a big stage – man we were so nervous back than ha ha – and we will always be grateful for that!