Dutch double act ANOTR have pushed their sound to the masses via releases with elrow, Armada Subjekt and Food Music, and recently made their debut with Josh Butler’s ORIGINS RCRDS.
We spoke with the pair about the new EP, how their studio sessions typically work as a duo and what they think of Amsterdam’s dance music culture. Grab the full interview below!
You recently released your ‘Turn On Me’ EP with Josh Butler’s ORIGINS RCRDS, describe the process of producing the original tracks?
We made this track not long after we started working on Ableton, so the process of making this track was a bit different than before. We knew we wanted to make something a bit deeper and housey so with that idea we started making this track. You never know where a track is going to go exactly but when we found the vocal that we liked, we built the whole track around it.
And it includes a remix from Seb Zito, how did you react when you first heard it?
We were really excited when we heard Seb was doing the remix. We really like his sound and his music inspires us both. The funny thing was that we had our own No Art event planned where he would be headlining so it felt as if everything just fell into place. Now that the remix is out, we’re really happy with the result and he’s done an incredible job with the remix.
As a duo, what does a typical studio session consist of? Are you always in the studio together?
No not always. Sure, we jam together in the studio, but most of the time we like to create separate ideas, so we have double the amount of tracks. And then mostly on Mondays and Fridays we come together to listen to each others ideas and that’s where we put the finishing touches on the tracks that we’ve made separately to give that ANOTR-touch.
You’ve released with elrow, Armada Subjekt, Food Music and your own label NO ART. What other labels are on your to-do list that you haven’t had the chance to release with so far?
We’ve got some ideas of labels that we would like to release on but we don’t want to talk too much about labels. We just love to make music and we’ll see which label comes on our path.
You call Amsterdam home, is this because of the city’s vibrant music culture?
Music has always been a big part of our lives, and we live in Amsterdam. Living in Amsterdam has given us a place to showcase our music in various clubs & festivals, even in the early stages of our career. We always say that living in Amsterdam means you’re closer to the fire, which helps you to build up your career.
And can you share details on any big releases or gigs you have coming up? Summer festival plans maybe?
We’ve got a big release coming up on Solid Grooves in July, it’s a single called ‘Up To Love’. It always goes off when we play it out, and we believe that one is gonna do good things for us. Next to that we’re planning to do a release on our own label No Art again in August called Universal Love. Also we’re focussing on getting a lot of new artists on our own label No Art.
Thanks a bunch for taking some time to chat, good luck with the release! Let’s finish up with your favourite release so far in 2019?
Our favourite release of this year is ‘Fantanized’ by Toman which came out on our label No Art. Toman is a good friend of ours and he’s really making a name for himself and for our label. It got a lot of support and we’ve been smashing that one for quite a while now. Always goes off. Thanks for having us guys.
ANOTR’s Turn On Me EP is out now on ORIGINS RCRDS.