David, you are the production side of The Juggernaut. When we last spoke at the SMOG dubstep show, you heavily endorsed Pro-Tools for your production. Can you tell me what software Erik uses for live sets?
He uses CDJs. We’ve moved away from Serato these days.
You used to use Serato?
Back when Erik and I were in DMNDAYS we were spinning straight vinyl. Then we switched over to Serato on vinyl. We went back and forth with those for awhile and finally we are now using CDJs. Serato is kind of frowned upon in the DJ community, especially in Europe. Going from vinyl to CDJs wasn’t that big of as transition and it adds a little more credibility to [performances].
Back when you and Erik were doing Demon Days, what records was he spinning?
The LA electro stuff. LA Riots, some Justice remixes, MSTRKRFT, a large variety. We occasionally threw in some dubstep stuff, and that’s how that got started.
How was the progression from DMNDAYS into The Juggernaut?
We really like dubstep and drum and bass. Actually, when we first started doing dubstep I couldn’t even sit through a whole dubstep set. The more we got into it we realized it just depends on what you do. A lot of our sets aren’t straight dubstep or the bro-step you see a lot of nowadays. It’s all about being dynamic with it.
The electro was big at the time; even when we switched over I was just getting tired of the house stuff. If we were going to continue spinning electro I would have to start producing that kind of stuff, and I wasn’t into it that much. We did one remix for HORSE the band, a hardcore/mathcore group. We were listening to the song and realized it couldn’t possibly be electro; it had to be a dubstep song. People liked it and we thought, hey, maybe we should be doing this. We had a remix offer for Black Eyed Peas awhile ago. We ended up not going with it, but we did an electro remix and a dubstep remix for them. To differentiate form the two, we are not DMNDAYS anymore, we are not doing the electro stuff, we cannot take “One More Time” every night.
Could you ever see a return to DMNDAYS?
No.
What about The Juggernaut evolving into something else.
We are open to it. We’ll see.
These aforementioned remixes, where can people find them?
Those old remixes were never released. We just use them ourselves. They were unofficial so we never bothered. We’ve been on several labels; Play Me, Ultragore, Chronos…
Why do you enjoy jumping around labels with each release?
It just depends on who we’re talking to at the time. We’ve known Reid Speed since we were DMNDAYS. We’ve remixed some songs for her. Borgore, we did some stuff for him. When we are working with other artists we don’t mind using their label. Right now we have a SMOG release coming out. We have 5 or 6 songs that are unreleased right now. Most of our songs are up on beatport and soundcloud. A lot of time’s Erik will put stuff on the soundcloud that doesn’t even get released at all. If we have something for a long time that doesn’t get released, we will just give it up for free. We do that a lot on our facebook.
You had mentioned that you feel the future of electronic music lies in dark dubstep. Could you elaborate?
It’s more reactionary with the way the scene is right now. Dubstep right now is peaking, so I think there will be a reaction where people are tired of listening to a beat down for hours on end. It’s becoming over saturated as well. Like I said before, we keep our eyes on what they are doing in the UK.
The UK generally being at the forefront of electronic music trends. You feel dark dubstep is a natural progression of that?
Yeah, it’s kind of happening like it did back when dubstep first started. It wasn’t about the glitch stuff, it was more about the groove. It will probably be less popular commercially, but bigger in the club scene and among other DJs.
Just like the origins of dubstep, I can see it starting in the underground and growing in popularity.
This time around, I don’t think it’s exactly the same as it started off. It’s simpler, and we’ll certainly have some leftovers from the heavy hitting stuff and the glitch stuff. More emphasis on melodies and less on who can make the dirtiest sound. It’s about who can make a song with the most swagger, whatever you want to call it. It’s not going to be grinding your head all day long.
Back to your production, are you doing this strictly on a laptop or do you have a home studio?
I have a desktop at home, yeah. I actually sold me laptop. I am not traveling around enough to own a laptop. Erik does all of the live performances, so he is traveling a lot. We have some shows coming up in Atlanta and Texas where he will be performing. I just stay home and make beats.
These cheap labels can’t afford to bring you out there?
Eh, yeah. That’s the point we’re at now. It saves us money if they were to buy an extra ticket and take it off the top, you know.
Touring can be grueling, anyway.
Yeah. We are not quite at the point where we can quit our day jobs just to play music. I don’t know how some people do it, but we are working men.
Where do you guys work?
Erik and I and special ed instructional aid for the Orange school district. We work with special ed kids when we are not working on music.
Cool. Where can people find tour dates?
Our Facebook is probably the most accurate place to find music and tour dates.
Excellent. Looking forward to some dark dubstep at a future Juggernaut show.
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