Category: Interviews

INTERVIEW: Todd Terry (2013)

The superstar DJs of today owe a lot of credit to Todd Terry, or Todd the God as he was affectionately nicknamed.? Back in the day, he was criticized when he DJed and played a lot of his own productions.? Can you even think of a superstar DJ today who doesn’t do his own production?? Reenergized and embracing his heartfelt house grooves, Todd Terry is back to creating music for dancefloors embracing a multitude of genres – samba, hip-hop, and even electro with original productions and great collaborations.? I must say it was a true honor to speak with one of the true legends of house music.

DJ Ron Slomowicz: How was the OWAP (Original Warehouse Acid Party) event at Amsterdam Dance Event?
Todd Terry: It was great, gritty and dirty and exactly what I was looking for when I do OWAP. They just know how to fuse it together and make it real house and real funky.

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INTERVIEW: Stars (2013)

Stars released their gorgeous album The North recently.? The Canadian indie pop group is quite eclectic, having started as mostly electronic and gradually going more rock as they added more instrumentalists to the band.? The new album is like a mixtape with a bit of EDM, shoegaze, ambient, and rock flowing together like a soundtrack. ? On tour with Diamond Rings, I spoke with band member Chris Seligman before their show in Nashville.

DJ Ron Slomowicz: Everyone contributed to the album, what was the song writing process like?
Chris Seligman: Well it depends; it usually starts with the music. We either hang out in our home studio or jam space and come up with different ideas and either send them off to people or, if we are all in the same city we just cram into a room. Generally Amy likes to have us give her music and then she writes at home and spends time on it. Torquil tends to write pretty quickly, so he usually does it in the room. Once we have the basic idea for a song, we then have to figure out how to produce it. Producing songs takes on a whole other world of thought. If it?s an electronic tune, it can take a lot of different steps. We did both electronic and more organic rock that we wanted to do live off the floor to capture a real moment in time; in that case, you do the production as you go. There are tunes that we spent a whole day in the recording studio working on and we gradually got more comfortable playing them. The guys engineering the track would engineer it and we would go back and listen to it, then from there pick out what direction we wanted it to go. That is it in a nutshell.
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INTERVIEW: Bimbo Jones (2013)

Bimbo Jones, the team of Lee Dagger and Marc JB, are probably best known for their consistent output of top flight vocal remixes for artists like Lady Gaga, Pink, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, and Kylie Minogue.? What you might not know is that the two started as songwriters and producers signed to 19 Management. ? In addition to their remixes, they are launching three record labels with a new artist album set for release.? I caught up with them during Amsterdam Dance Event to catch up with them about all they have going on.
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RS: Congratulations on the Kristine W record, how did that come about?
Lee Dagger: It came about last year when we finally got to meet Kristine in Miami. Marc and I had wanted to meet her for years. We have always been a big fan of ?Feel What You Want? from back in the day, which is an amazing house record. When we met her, she invited us to go stay at her ranch any time. ?I was shocked and when we took a trip to the states, we went and stayed on the ranch. Marc and I took one of our tracks that we were really passionate about that had a real strong backing track and sat down and wrote it with her. It was an amazing experience and we gelled really well together. She is a great girl.
Marc JB: She is very talented; she is not just the dance artist that you see in all the PR. She is an accomplished jazz vocalist and saxophonist, a very technical, clever and creative girl.
Lee Dagger: Yeah, she is great on the sax.
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