A Sit Down With DJ Dodge&Fuski
As of late, Dodge & Fuski have meandered from their dubstep roots and have begun to dabble with production at a slower BPM. Kicking things off back in September with their single ‘Vice’, Dodge & Fuski sprung out of the gate and up the charts with their new glitched-out tempo. Since the release of ‘Vice’, the duo have kept their sound firmly planted at 100BPM and justifiably so; their next release, a glitch-hop remix of Pegboard Nerds ‘High Roller’ followed suit and climbed its way to #1 on Beatport.
“Having a cool vocal to work with always helps me come up with ideas for intros and drops.”
How do you feel the sound of this latest EP speaks toward the D&F sound looking forward to the future?
It’s very representative of what I want to carry on doing. I’m gonna start working on an album this year and I’m aiming for about 50-60% 100bpm, some other hip-hop tempo tracks (85-110bpm) and probably the odd bit of Dubstep for old times sake on it. To be honest trying to predict what the next big thing is going to be is like gambling on the stock market so I’m just going to do what I like making and see how it goes!
How did you both learn to produce?
I’ve been making tracks for about 12 years and the game has changed a lot since then. When I started, there were no preset packs or YouTube tutorials so everything was a lot slower moving. I went to college, but honestly the people who were teaching me on the production side weren’t up to much. I mostly just learned sound engineering techniques on mixing consoles back then—how to mic up drums and stuff like that—so it’s been mostly a case of being self-taught on training my ears.
You’ve been getting a lot of heat for not playing at various places. Are you guy’s planning to tour again in the near future? If so do you think you’ll cover more states and or countries?
Everyone gets that – people in the internet have this weird notion that acts decide where they get booked. If we had control over that we’d be on nonstop tours around the Caribbean, so that is entirely in the hands of the promoters who decide to book us!
Is there a right way and a wrong way to go about constructing your own tunes?
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way for anything. The end product is what really matters, but that said there’s a lot more satisfaction in making as much of the core elements as possible. I use preset packs as a way to get new approaches into what I do but I almost always modify them entirely from their original format. It’s just interesting to always have a different starting point.
You were making “riddim” long before it had a name. But once it had a name, it seemed like everyone wanted to jump on the train. Your EDCLV 2014 set was a huge inspiration on how to do dubstep right at a festival. What do you say to producers just now getting into the game and wanting to jump on the wagon?
I actually have been producing music for 17 years. I had a D’n’B moniker “Infiltrata” that I was producing under for about 8 years before I even played my first SMOG or heard of Dubstep. But back to the “riddim” side of things, I was heavily influenced by Mala, Jakes, Caspa, Rusko, and Skream when I was first getting into to Dubstep, but it wasnt until people like Subfiltronik, Megalodon and Badklaat, brought the old school style back recently, with a more ferocious intensity that I found myself digging for more artists that were creating the music in the same vein. From those guys I discovered an entire movement of “riddim” or “swamp” happening in my own backyard for years without me knowing. Shouts out to the Savage Society crew, Lower Levels crew, Dubloadz, Trollphace, Essence Audio, Sub.Mission crew, SMOG crew and Future Events for truly inspiring me as an artist.
In the past you mentioned that your forthcoming EP would feature a remix from one of Circus Records’ most exciting producers. Now that the cat is out of the bag, can you speak to the inspiration behind having The McMash Clan remix the title track of the EP?
When I heard their debut EP I immediately wanted to get them involved somehow. They’ve got a really original sound which has bags of energy and a proper festival vibe. A friend of mine Culprate has taught them a lot of mixdown tricks and it definitely shows in their music, it’s really creatively arranged and brilliantly executed.
What has been your biggest learning experience this past year?
Probably not to try and keep up with constantly changing trends at the expense of quality. That’s not really a past-year specific experience but it’s a lesson often forgotten in this industry.
What’s the most important advice you can give?
That is a very open-ended question that requires a very long answer. I guess that’s the purpose of the seminars!
Its clear lately that the EDM scene is changing rapidly along with the styles and tastes of electronic music lovers. What are you guys doing to keep up? Do you ever see yourselves (god forbid) parting from dubstep?
I made music under a few different aliases which gives me a lot of room to experiment without having to break away from the scene each act is associated with. In terms of D&F, in my mind it’s always going to be at its core a bass music act of some description.
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