This year, America might just have its own answer to Justice. Based out of L.A., Villains have been building a respectable resume of remixes, and grooming themselves to be super producers.
Mad V and Koncept met seven years ago in sound engineering school, and after years of appreciating one another’s production style, decided to team up, hit the studio and craft some beats.
Now, they’ve remixed everyone from New Young Pony Club, Hot Chip and Lykke Li to Britney Spears and Bloc Party, and stirred up huge tremors of excitement along the way. Featuring them once wasn’t enough for us, so we sought them out for more.
LA seems to be a hotbed of activity for DJs, producers and mixers, what stimulated this scene?
LA is an underrated city as far as art is concerned. I think in the past few years it’s really grown to a point where a lot more people are starting to notice it for its creativity and ingenuity. The explosion of music that has come out of there recently goes hand in hand with the artistic renaissance we have seen in the city. People always think of New York and Paris -- LA was an afterthought when it came to art --but now, it has to undeniably be in the discussion as one of the most artistic cities in the world.
Is there a close-knit community in LA?
The closeness of artists in the city doesn't end with the musicians either. The music world, fashion, and art worlds are really intertwined in the city and the outcome is unique. It gives LA a different feel than anywhere else in the world.
What remix would you say you’re proudest of?
I think we both feel our most recent Bloc Party, the "Ares" remix, is our strongest work so far. It's a culmination of everything we have learned as producers and engineers to this point and we applied a lot of the techniques and tricks we have learned along the way to that project. We were happy with the way it turned out because we think it stayed consistent with the energy and emotion of the original, especially when it comes to the contrast of the harder and softer parts of the song.
Is the crossover between dance music and alternative music becoming more and more obvious?
The lines that separate musical genres are getting more and more blurry. You find rock in dance music and hip hop in rock music and dance music in hip hop nowadays. It's really exciting that all the genres are converging and barriers that existed before are coming down daily. It's really a time for musicians to be expressive and true artists.
Have you started creating your own original tunes? If so, can we expect an LP from you in the future?
Yes. We're taking a bit of a break from doing the remixes right now for that exact reason. We want to push the envelope a little further and take Villains beyond a traditional remix project to the original artist level. We haven't totally stopped the remixes because we still enjoy doing them and we get to work with some great people on them but the originals have taken a lot of our time up. They're what’s going to bring us to the place that we both know this partnership is capable of reaching and allow us to us express the music that’s inside the both of us without boundaries.
Which artist and track would you like to work on the most?
We both grew up listening to a lot of ‘90s rock and hip hop so it would have to be someone from that time period. Especially Nine Inch Nails or Rage Against the Machine. Both of those bands were so incredibly ahead of their time and were really influential on us then and now. Maybe a track like “Closer” from NIN and “Wake Up, Freedom” from Rage. Something that’s really expressive and energetic.
What does the future hold?
I don't want to give too much away from our end, on what we are doing and whom we’re doing it with, but let's just say there are a lot of big things in the works from us, both on the original and remix tips. The next 12 months should be interesting to say the least.
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