As Mob Tactics‘ new release draws near it’s time to focus on the label in question: Viper Recordings. And the news that they’ve signed effectively to them: we caught up and discussed recent work, serial killers and of course the big news.
Mob Tactics hi how’s it going?
Ez guys, good thanks!
I know of your work over time, and of course the work for the Summer Slammers album… a good place to start: can you take us through ‘Zodiac’? What inspired the title?
‘Zodiac’ is a track we started working on at the beginning of the year and went through various different stages of completion until we finally reached a version we were both really happy with.
The title relates to The Zodiac Killer: a serial killer who terrorised California in the 60s & 70s and was never caught. There was a film about it called ‘Zodiac’ that we’d seen and we had this vocal from another movie that says: “Let them know that I am coming next for them” – and we thought it kind of correlated.
So there you go, not a particularly pleasant story, but that’s how it came about, haha!
What tunes in the past have you been really proud of, that really sum you up?
That’s a tough one as we’re both hyper-critical of our stuff. But, I guess a few that stand out for us would have to be: ‘The Answer’ ft. Lauren Johnson on MTA and ‘Lifer’ for C4C Recordings. They’re both really different from each other but we felt so happy with them once they were done and the support we had for them was amazing.
That said, we feel like our next batch of material is our best yet – hopefully people will agree!
Where’s some spots on the globe that you’ve hit that were amazing? Any good road stories?
What happens on road stays on road, ha ha! Just kidding – our girlfriends are probably reading this…
We’ve been lucky enough to play some really wicked venues and countries, and there a few that stick out for us: Le Bikini in Toulouse, Fabric, Westfest and Jungle Juice in Paris were all so, so good.
Now you’ve signed to Viper and the new single is due at end of August (sleeve below), how did it come about?
Viper are a label that we’ve wanted to work with for a while as their musical output perfectly sums up where we’re at with our sound. They do techy stuff right through to the anthemic dancefloor smashers and the quality control is really tight.
We sent Futurebound a batch of tracks a few months ago, he hit us back and said he wanted them all! We were obviously well stoked. He asked to hear any other stuff we had on the go so we sent him what we were working on and it kind of went from there.
We got a Skype call from the whole Viper gang and they asked us to sign exclusively. We feel like it’s the perfect home for us and our sound and there’s a really strong family vibe within the whole camp. We honestly couldn’t be happier!
Is there an album in the works? What sort of vibe can we expect? I always think of big room vibes with you.
We’re definitely gonna write an album at some point, might possibly start next year. At the moment though it’s all about getting some singles in the books with Viper and letting people hear the new material we’ve been writing. We’ve been a bit quieter than last year on the release front, but we’ve actually been putting in lots of hours in the studio so we have lots of new material ready to go.
What about vocalists? Am thinking of the ‘Falling 4 You’ remix.
We love working with vocals, it’s really fun and enjoyable and generally adds a whole extra level of vibe. The title track of our first single for Viper features a really great vocalist called Joell Fender and working with his vocals was awesome, really happy with how it turned out.
We have some collabs on the go at the minute and we’ll be letting people know about them in the not-too-distant future!
Have you got a studio in your home base, as it were? What’s it like? Must be great to have your sound nailed and a place from which to hammer out the work. It’s got to be somewhere that feels right.
We both have home set-ups, but we do the majority of the writing in our main studio in Cheltenham. We’ve been there for four years and we’re really happy there.
It’s in a rehearsal complex on an industrial estate and it backs on to a railway line – ideal for us as we make far too much noise!
We’ve made it nice and comfortable as we tend to do stupidly long sessions in there – way too long actually, ha ha! But yeah, it works for us so we’re staying put for the time being.
What producers influenced you coming up?
We’re both influenced by loads of people, but I think the main influences on our style would be artists like: Ed Rush & Optical, Bad Company, Sub Focus, Chase & Status, Total Science, Konflict, Audio – the list goes on to be fair.
OK what dates are we expecting from you?
In September we have Fabric coming up again – which is always a pleasure, Renegade Hardware, Spektrum XL in Holland, Tremor in Bristol and a show in Paris.
We both absolutely love DJing and we were both DJs before we ever set foot near production, so we always really enjoy gigging at the weekends – who wouldn’t!?
Mob Tactics sc
Neon God/Return of the Snitch
Summer Slammers
