16 questions for Blasterjaxx (Interview)
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Blasterjaxx is a Dutch duo that has been consistently delivering some of the hardest big room tunes for year. Instead of turning away from the genre that has gotten them to this point, both Thom and Idir have doubled down by releasing a consistent stream of tracks especially made for the festival circuit. With 6+ months worth of new music planned for the rest of the year and into 2018, this duo is just getting started.
EDM Canada had a chance to talk to Thom from Blasterjaxx from their massive headlining performance at the Riverside Festival in Ottawa/Gatineau. We talked about their summer, sound, future, and more. Check it out:
How was your summer festival season?
Great. The summer went by so fast.
Did you play a lot of festivals? If so, where did you play?
We were in Asia as it's a really up and coming market. There were a lot of festivals in Europe so we spent a lot of time there.
What separates blasterjaxx from other DJs in the scene today?
In terms of productions we have developed our own signature sound which has separated us a little bit from other acts. Right now there isn't a lot of big room left which is good for us because there's less people that sound like us.
When it comes to the shows, we love to do crazy bootlegs of things that you would never expect. We try to be different as a lot of producers want to remix the hottest track, we want to remix a lot of throwbacks. We do this so it won't clash with any other DJ that's coming out after us. We try to create our own sound.
Does it get annoying when people declare big room as dead when clearly it still has a massive following and is a perfect genre for the festival season?
I thought for 10 years that trance was dead but it's still ridiculously big in some countries. That pretty much says it all.
Is “Temple” considered a different direction for Blasterjaxx, how did you get those vocal samples? The violin bits were also very cool.
That's funny because the track 'Temple” has been made even before Idir was involved with Blasterjaxx. So the melody was made 7-8 years ago.
Blasterjaxx at Riverside Festival in Ottawa/Gatineau
So why did it take so long for it to be released?
It was a free giveaway song just for fun and back then we had a completely different sound. When we were on break from the tour we were looking for new drops and we came across that track, and since it was a Blasterjaxx track, why not?
How was it working Tom Swoon for your latest single “All I ever wanted”?
We picked up Tom Swoon's demo because I thought it would be something interesting to the label. His demo was 4 BPM slower than the version we have now. The drop was completely different, it was more housey style, but we liked the vocals. We thought about using the stems to make a remix out of it but it turned out to be so much work that it turned out to be a collaboration instead. We had struggles with this one.
How long did it take you to create it?
3 weeks while working on it everyday. We couldn't find the right direction to go with. But we finally got it together.
What do you think of the new Latino influences in EDM like the new Mi Gente remix? If so, do you have anything in the works?
If you look back with Blasterjaxx you'll see that we started with this sound, about 6-8 years ago. If you go back that far you'll see those tracks on Beatport. For us it feels like it's going back to our roots. It's still one of the things that we still want to make a lot, we love latin stuff and we feel like our tracks are very bouncy.
Is there anything in the works?
There are a few collaborations in the works with people we don't normally collaborate with but we are still not sure if that's going to work out yet.
Blasterjaxx has been known to keeping it 100 and focusing on making music for the festival scene. But with a lot of producer success on the top 40, are you tempted to give it a shot and making a name yourself on the pop charts?
We tried and what we found out is that it is really not our style. We tried many things in a commercial way and we have so much laying about in the studio that we didn't finish because it didn't feel right. I won't say we hate it, but we disagree with the whole future bass trend. Chainsmokers tracks are really cool but there are a 100,000 copies of that style. When we try to put together a radio show, 70% of the demos are future bass, which is at 110 bpm, what are we going to do with that?
How has Blasterjaxx been since you've been taken over the live duties and Idir is more in the studio?
Right now he's doing more studio work, and since he's stepped off the road, we've had to define tasks. For a long time I did the studio work, and I still go when I'm back from tour, but life goes on. We're all a little older and we're all a little more serious about our personal lives. I used to do 4 days a week of studio time, but now that's gone down to 1-2 days.
How's Idir doing?
He's doing well and he's better in this place right now.
What's next for blasterjaxx for the rest of 2017 and next year? Any new EPs and LPs on the way?
Our release schedule is already so backed up already. We just created 2 dope new songs and unfortunately there's no room in the schedule to put in it.
So how many months is your release schedule fully booked?
It's fully booked until January. It's really great but at the same time very frustrating.
Have you considered putting some of these tracks together for an LP?
We considered an LP for the XX files but we are perfections and thought it wasn't good enough for an album. We'll consider an album for the future, and it has to be well thought out. It has to be carefully planned.
Can you tell us about your next release?
On October 6th we have a new track coming out called “Desire”. It's not a big room or a future bass sound, but it's more of a trappy track that has that Blasterjaxx style.
