Kat Danson‘s hot new single ‘Sugarfree’ is currently riding high in the Billboard Dance Charts. The single features remixes by Tracy Young and Twisted Dee. Kat recently filmed this cool video interview for us on location in LA. She discusses what it was like growing up with a famous father, what she grew up listening to in the Danson household and what we can expect from her debut record! I can’t wait to see more from Kat!
SUGARFREE (TRACY YOUNG REMIX)
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SUGARFREE (TWISTED DEE REMIX)
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Tiga‘s new single ‘Shoes’ from his sophomore album ‘Ciao!’ is currently burning up the Billboard Dance Chart! It features remixes by Green Velvet, Spencer & Hill and more!
Tiga speaks with PRO MOTION about everything from working with Soulwax on his new record, to his remix work and who he is excited about on his label Turbo Recordings!
INTERVIEW
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SHOES (SPENCER & HILL REMIX) (CLIP)
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SHOES (GREEN VELVET REMIX) (CLIP)
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Tell us a little about your background. How did you get into music?
There was always music playing in the house. My dad collected records, I was always around records. I just love music. I started making tapes for people at school, the humble beginnings of any DJ and it just grew from there. I was exposed to travel to India a lot with my parents, they had an early rave scene there. I saw people dancing on beaches and I guess I was exposed to a certain type of DJ culture quite young.
I know that you own your own record label. What inspired you to create Turbo Recordings?
It was the late ‘90s and I owned a nightclub and I also owned a record store and I was involved in a lot of business that were annoying me because it wasn’t quite as close to the music as I had intended them to be. So I had the idea to open a label to work with all the artists I had met over the years as well as to promote myself and to promote other Montreal artists. And also at the time there was nothing really like that in Canada. It started as a pretty basic idea, just an electronic record label in Canada. It was quite a basic objective to begin with, but it’s grown. Just wanted to work with artists, basically.
For people that don’t know the artists that are on Turbo Recordings, who’s on there right now and who are you particularly excited about?
We have Chromeo, who’s a band based in Montreal, they’re signed to Turbo. There’s a Russian guy named Proxy. We have Jesper Dahlback, Swedish producer. We have Brodinski, a French DJ. The guys I’m most into right now are Brodinsk, Proxy and Chromeo. I don’t like to pick favorites, but I’m with some big records right now. There’s also another Montreal guy named Mike Mine, he’s also got some great records coming out.
How involved are you with the artists and artist development? What kinds of things have you learned from owning a record label?
When it comes to artist development I’ve probably learned more from my own career as an artist, dealing with others. With my own label, I’ve learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of the industry. In the early days, I learned a lot about the mundane- manufacturing, promotion, distribution. What I enjoyed the most is probably the manufacturing and production end of the actual process, even though those are dwindling in importance all the time now, since everything is digital. I always like the process of actually making things and getting them in your hand. I think the more you know about the industry in general, everything gets demystified and you get a wider, more holistic view of how things really work and what really goes into records being released and to them succeeding. Most of what we do at Turbo is quite underground so we’re not making videos, so that’s a different aspect. I’ve learned a lot. I feel quite comfortable because of a lot of the things I’ve learned.
How have you progressed as an artist since “Sexor” came out in 2006? What’s changed? Is the sound similar or have you gone in a different direction?
I think the second album is a little more song based. I think the songwriting became a little bit more evolved. I moved a little bit more to the right in the sense that I moved more into pop-ier song structure and a little bit away from track-ier dance tracks. I think that’s the easiest way to sum it up. I think my singing got better. I think lyrics got better. It doesn’t necessarily mean better music, but I think I learned more about production. I know a lot more now about how a traditional album is made since before that, most of my experience is with electronic music and techno and this time it was much more of classic studios, mixing as a separate stage, using different studios for different vocals. It was a little bit more in depth, more complicated. I know enough to probably never do it that way again.
I heard that you worked with Soulwax on the album and I know that you worked with them a lot in the past. How did that collaboration come about?
I think the friendship developed first. They liked some of my records and then I saw them DJ and I thought they were great. We just became very good friends very quickly. I really liked their bridge between pop and rock and hip hop culture- I think they have a very good understanding of it and they’re just very interesting people. They’ve always been a big inspiration for me, whether it’s the books they’re reading, the movies they’re watching, their record collection, their gear, whatever. The friendship was really the central starting point and then we had some early successes- we did the track “You’re Gonna Want Me” together and “Good as Gold” off the last album. I think we always had fun doing it together. I’ve changed a lot and grown a lot as a person out of this art because of our friendship. They’ve probably been the biggest, in the last five years, influence on me.
I know that you’re very famous for your remixes of different artists- that’s how you more or less started off- such as Scissor Sisters, Depeche Mode, and Pet Shop Boys. Is there any particular remix that you’ve done for an artist that you consider one of your favorites?
There was one I did for this guy Thomas Anderson that was relatively unknown, but it was a really, really big track, a very big club track. The song was called “Washing Up”. That was a very good one. I really like one I just did for Fever Ray, they’re a Swedish band. I really like that one, I don’t know if I like it just because it’s my most recent, but I really like that. Of the bigger name artists, I did one for Depeche Mode, I did two for Depeche Mode, but I did one for the song “Shake the Disease”, an older song, which I really liked because when you’re dealing with a classic song like that it’s not so easy to give it a twist. And they liked it, so I was happy. I didn’t like my Pet Shop Boys one very much. It’s one of my least favorites and least inspired. I felt bad because I love Pet Shop Boys but they caught me on a bad day.
You like to do a lot of covers of different songs. Is there any song that you didn’t write that you wish you’d been responsible for?
Like, a million songs. “Unchained Melody”. “Ashes to Ashes”. “Kiss” by Prince. “Heroes” by David Bowie. “Sympathy for the Devil” would have been a good one. There are so many great songs. Songs that are a little more recent, I really like that song “Umbrella” by Rihanna, that’s a good one. That’s the kind where you’re like “Damn!, I wish I’d wrote that!’
Who do you think is an interesting artist in music right now? Obviously, you’re an interesting artist, but do you have anyone that’s coming up right now that you think has an interesting career so far?
I guess everyone talks about them, they’re not really new anymore, but I really liked MGMT’s first album. I’m looking forward to their next album. I think The Knife. And Fever Ray is a very interesting artist. What they’ve done, how they’ve done it, their own way, with their own visual language- I think that’s very interesting. I think in a lot of ways it’s kind of like what Bjork did- very smart and creative. The band called The Horrors. And Miike Snow, I like their track.
Nadia Ali is the former front-woman for the band IIO, whose massive hit ‘Rapture’ tore up dance charts around the world back in 2001. Nadia is back on the scene as solo artist and has just released ‘Fine Print’ from her forthcoming album ‘Embers.’ The single features hot remixes by Serge Devant, Carl Tricks Fritzy, Alex Sayz and TyDi. I promised you an interview with her and here it is!
Check Nadia’s video introduction for Fine Print and preview the remixes here!
INTERVIEW (PART ONE)
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INTERVIEW (PART TWO)
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I wanted to know a little bit about your musical influences, who did you grow up listening to? Who are you influences at the moment?
Well I grew up listening to a lot of Indian music and a lot of Eastern music because I come from a household that is from that part of the world. I definitely was exposed to a lot of different types of music because I grew up in Queens and in Queens one of your neighbors is Jamaican, another of your neighbors is Asian and another is Latin, we get literally every kind of influence possible. I got into my rocker years as a teenager. I was a big fan of alternative and grunge music, and then I mixed them all together.
Nowadays I’m influenced by a huge diversity of artists I definitely, believe it or not, love folk music and country music I also really enjoy a good pop song so all of those things count.
Who are some of your musical guilty pleasures?
I’m gonna get in trouble for this, you see some of these people I know people are gonna be like “Why are they guilty pleasures, they are so good!” I’m just gonna admit to some of the people that I really love. I really love Bryan Adams, I love his music, he is I think a huge eighties pop rock icon, so I really love him. I really love country music, and some of the artists that I love are actually Taylor Swift, but she’s more pop, I love the Dixie Chicks all that stuff is really good
I know you started out in a group, IIO what was that experience like being in a group?
Sure, well I originally started recording music it was meant to be for my solo project, and what ended up happening is I happened to do a dance song. That song was just meant to be for fun and it ended up being Rapture. That song took on a life of its own so we were asked to create a project name for doing stuff that was more dance, because the stuff that we were working on was actually quite different from dance music. So it was actually meant to be a temporary thing, but it ended up lasting four years, that’s kind of the way things happen. We did that for a while and it was awesome and I loved being able to make electronic dance music. Then that just kind of segwayed into my solo project, which is what the original intent was, you know to do that music in the first place.
I know that you are working on a new album right now, and its been a long time coming I know that you finished with IIO a while ago, why was it such a long process for you to finally make the album that you wanted to make?
That’s a good question, it took a long time because I was experimenting a lot with different productions and different sounds and I wrote over 50 songs for the album, and it was constant process of eliminating songs and also figuring out which ones you wanted to really develop, and that takes time. Most of the producers that I worked with were in different cities so there was lot of traveling involved. There was also a lot of touring involved while I was making the album, so it was kind of like when you are really busy you have to strike when the iron is hot. You gotta go do all those show so it ends up taking you away from the studio which is probably the biggest reason why it took a while to get it down, but I’m definitely very excited about it.
What is the title of the new album, can you tell us that?
The title of the alum is ‘Embers’ and I called it that because I wanted to address the fact that most of the songs that I wrote were about relationships that I’ve experienced and how they leave like tiny embers inside me still. I’m very excited about the fact that I was able to write so much of what I was feeling it was definitely therapeutic and also a really fun process working with the producers that I worked with, and the songwriter. I worked with Scott Fritz, whose also called Fritzy, he’s based out of Chicago and we wrote tones of songs and it was just a really wonderful organic process. We sat in the studio for hours and hours and we co-produced a number of the tracks on the album. I also worked with Sultan and Ned Shepard and they were wonderful, they are doing their own thing in electronic dance music but when we got into the studio we literally wrote those songs on the piano and a guitar, Sultan plays guitar and Ned plays the keyboards so it was a really fun process working with them, they are so talented. I was really pleased with the fact that they were able to produce four of the songs on the album. Lastly, I worked with a Swedish producer named Alex Sayz , he is so talented, he’s really young and he’s got all of these thing going on with this own music and when I heard his production I asked him to work on my album. He ended up doing three songs. I’m really happy with those combination of those three producers
What are some of you favorite tracks from the album?
Personally I love all my songs but there are some that I just can’t get enough of. My favorite song on the album is probably ‘Point The Finger’ and it’s not released as a single yet, but its one of my favorites. It’s a very empowering song and it’s supposed to make you feel like maybe the person didn’t really know you and maybe they are not the person that they thought you were. I love so many of them but I especially love ‘Fantasy’ which is actually a ballad on the album it’s a really beautiful song, I wanted to have a variety on my album, I didn’t want it to be a typical dance record, so I went a little experimental.
I’m sure people will be excited to hear that kind of music from you
Yeah stuff is always gonna be remixed, so it will suffice for the dance lovers.
The Noisettes have just released ‘Wild Young Hearts’ their follow up to the ‘What’s The Time Mr. Wolf’ PRO MOTION is currently working with them on the release of ‘Don’t Upset The Rhythm’ in the U.S. The band are currently here on tour and will soon move on to Europe. Shingai took a moment out of her busy schedule to talk to us about the Noisettes. Check out the interview!
INTERVIEW (PART ONE)
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INTERVIEW (PART TWO)
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DAVE AUDE CLUB MIX (CLIP)
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SOUL SEEKERZ CLUB MIX (CLIP)
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Tell us about the Noisettes. How was the band formed?
The Noisettes are made of 3 people who have a passion for all kinds of music from musicals to folk stuff to rock and roll to jazz to old soul and what we do is make pop music that sounds fun and brings together our own influences in an actual way to make something that really stands out and will wake people up. It’s very, very fun, exciting pop music. We met nearly 5 years ago. Dan and I were introduced to Jamie who was then in another band. Me and Dan had met in school a few years before and we had played in cover bands together and stuff, but we weren’t in any specific band at the time. We were in a band, but mainly just for enjoyment and fun.
I understand this is your second album, “Wild Young Hearts”. So why do you think that it’s this album as opposed to the first album, that’s giving you mainstream success now?
I think it’s just connecting at a time when people are kind of ready to hear different inflections in pop music again. When our first album came out, there were a lot of manufactured boy bands and manufactured girl bands and solo artists who were kind of the staple diet of the day. I don’t know what’s happened since then, maybe the recession has meant that people aren’t too much into bubblegum stuff anymore or maybe people aren’t just going onto eBay or going into record shops and just spending a hundred quid on like 5 potluck Cds, maybe only buying 2 or 3, maybe spending their money on something that might be a little more timeless. It’s great that our music touches on different influences, so the 5 years olds like my nephew love it and 50, 60 year olds love it because of the crazy, old-school backing vocals and stuff. So I think it’s all just about timing. And then, we never had a big campaign for the first album. The first album was sold by us just touring the world and bringing our music to people live. This time we’ve got a label, before we were signed to Motown in America as an import from the UK, which was a difficult position to be in because every decision seemed to take a few weeks. Now that we’re signed to Mercury directly from Universal, it just means that whenever we want to get something done, like we want to tour or we want to do a video, it can happen straightaway and we don’t have to wait until the music’s not fresh anymore.
What’s the process of making a record? I understand that some of you play instruments. How does it work when you get in the studio together?
There’s no particular way of doing something, I think sometimes you’ve just got to start playing until you all hear something that makes you kind of excited. As a vocalist and lyricist, sometimes it helps to maybe take stuff home or sometimes it helps to just put your instrument down for a minute and then concentrate on whatever crazy poetry comes from your heart and your head. Then after a few minutes or a few hours or a few days, it turns into something you can’t stop singing yourself. It’s nice to have a producer who really shared our vision of making a sound in pop music that no one has heard for a while. I mean, there’s a lot of pop musicians that manage to get their own sound that doesn’t really sound like one style. I mean, there are people like Queen, who never made the same album twice and people like Radiohead, people like Grace Jones, people like Prince, people like Portishead, Massive Attack…they allow their personality to come through. I guess a lot of female singers feel like they’ve got to sound like their favorite singers or they’ve got to sound like Mariah Carey, maybe their idea of perfection. I think nowadays, there’s so much music out there, that you’ve got to be really a bit more sensitive and you don’t just go in there copying a starlet that’s already done before and copying all the hard work that another vocalist has put down before you- to just take their framework, I think is a bit unfair. You shouldn’t be afraid to let the texture of your own voice come through.
When I think of The Noisettes, I think of you as being a very creative band, very visual, as well as having a great sound. Where does your inspiration for that come from?
My inspiration personally comes from a childhood that was very, very colorful and very flamboyant. I was born in London and in South London it’s a very, very beautiful crash of cultures. You’ve got in Brockley or Brixton or Peckham, which is near where I grew up, one minute you’ve got Little Lagos where you just hear people speaking Youruba and then you’ve got Little Shanghai and Little Kingston. Then you’ve got your next door neighbors is a huge 12-piece Irish family and then next door might be a single parent family. I grew up in a very, very colorful community and also went back and forth to Africa quite a lot as a child. My mother’s family is very creative, very flamboyant and it’s just normal for people to get up and put on very colorful head wraps and colorful clothes. The language is very poetic and where I’m from, it’s like Zimbabwe and Malawi, so the way that my mom would speak English to us is very colorful and very poetic and also very humorous. I kind of can’t help but be quite flamboyant and interested in the world. I’m interested in people’s stories. I’m very much in love with life, because I suffered quite a few losses as a child, so it’s just normal for me to want to get up and make the most out of everyday.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about the live act. I know you are currently touring in the U.S. and I heard that you were described as “Britain’s Best Live Act”. So for people that haven’t seen you play live, what can we expect from the show?
You can expect a bit of a journey. The album is quite like a film- it goes from a ballad to a very up-tempo song quite naturally. What we’ve done is we’ve added some new people to the show sometimes. We have big shows now- we have a chamber quartet or a trio of strings playing with us on some of the songs. We’ve also got a couple of backing singers, as well, with us sometimes. It’s kind of like dancing and singing. It’s basically the three of us doing our own dynamic thing, which is pretty memorable and, obviously our “out there” outfits that make us very excited about telling the stories to the songs that we do onstage. So add that with some other dynamics, like strings and other vocals. There’s definitely a lot of surprises. I like to try and be flexible on stage and take the music to whoever’s in the room. It’s not just all about the front row, it’s about every single person, even the bouncers.
What are some of your favorite songs at the moment that you like going out and dancing to, when you have a chance?
We’re all into a completely different array of music. The last album I went out and bought was- we’re into the new Empire of the Sun record I think is really good. Jamie is really into Lil’ Wayne at the moment- good beats on that to dance to. There’s a West African folk singer/songwriter from Nigeria who’s based in Paris called Ayo, who’s really good. There’s definitely a bit of everything. You get on our tour bus and there’ll be Fela Kuti to Prince to even a little bit of Alesha Dixon in there. I mean, the pop music that we like has to be a little bit more than manufactured bubblegum stuff. Although that can be fun to go out and dance to sometimes. You might not necessarily buy it, because like I said, times are hard. Maybe that stuff is kind of cool for the dance floor, but when you can only fit so much stuff into your bunk on tour, you might not buy an album full of every song that sounds the same.
What can we expect from The Noisettes in the future?
I’m very much a family person. The last 3 or 4 years I haven’t seen much of my family. I’d like to know that the next time we make an album, we’ve experienced a few things on about the road because that keeps you having things to sing about, that you connect with people. So I expect us to probably travel outside of touring for a change and explore those hearts desires that we’ve had, maybe keeping an eye on relationships and families and how that’s going. And maybe falling in love would be nice! Some normal things would be nice. We’re definitely going to keep on making music, but I can’t say in what capacity because it could be musical kind of stuff, it could be writing music for other people. The sky is no limit.
Danny and Arthur aka Moto Blanco, the British duo, have worked with PRO MOTION on remixes for some of the biggest names in the business like George Michael and Mika. They usually keep out of the spotlight so we feel very lucky to have gotten an insight into their world! Check out the interview, I hope you can all understand our British accents!
MIKA -- LOVE TODAY (MOTO BLANCO REMIX CLIP)
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GEORGE MICHAEL -- THIS IS NOT REAL LOVE (MOTO BLANCO REMIX CLIP)
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MOTO BLANCO INTERVIEW
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You guys have been in the business for 20 years now. What keeps it exciting for you? What makes you want to keep making music?
I just think music. It’s either in you or it’s not. It’s always changing and it’s something we all love anyway, it’s not just a job. That’s the main thing, really. Music is music , food is food, soup is soup. We live and breathe it, we’re playing it everyday. Not just our stuff, all styles of music. I can’t imagine a world without it to be honest.
In 2004, you moved into the mainstream, you started doing remixes for big artists like Jennifer Lopez, Mary J. Blige, and Rihanna. How did it come about that you were thrown into that?
We’ve been mixing other people for years and years under different names, so it’s not the first time we were mixing big artists. But it took off with that name with, I think it was one of the first people was J. Lo, actually. And Rihanna, we did one of the early ones, we did “S. O. S.” It’s just because we’ve got good management, really. You have to be in the right place at the right time, as they say.
Is there anybody left that you would really like to be commissioned to remix?
We’ve done them all now. No, not really. Obviously, ones that are not with us anymore, is the obvious choice . Stevie Wonder, I’ve always wanted to do Stevie Wonder. The greats would be nice. No offense to the young, up and coming people that we’re doing, but you know what I mean. I mean, you can hang the contract on your toilet wall and say “Look at that.”
What has been your favorite track to remix for an artist so far?
The obvious choice would be The Marys (Mary J. Blige) because they’ve given us a lot of international success. Like ‘Be Without You’ or ‘Just Fine’ We are lucky, we do get really good songs. A lot of people say ‘It’s great what you do’ but we’re starting with good song anyway. You should hear the things we turn down!…. No i’m just joking!
How does the process of remixing as a team work? Does one person take one part of a song or do you do it together?
It’s 50-50. I’m really good with a kettle, I must say. It’s a team effort, Arthur is the brains of the outfit and I’m the good-looking one. Yeah, it’s a joint effort really. A guy called John Cohen who works with us musically, who’s really good. And there’s a guy called Julian Jonah, that also is around and helps us with cleaning jobs and whatnot. It’s a good little unit.
What software do you guys use to create the remixes?
Basically, it’s Logic. And all the plugins we can get our hands on, really.
Because you work as a team, do you ever have any differences of opinion of the direction a remix should take?
We’ve actually got quite a large studio where we work and we’ve actually got a boxing ring outside. If it gets to the point where we really can’t figure it out, we just get the gloves on, oil up and get in the ring. I’m in the blue corner he’s in the red corner and we just have a fight. The only rows we have are about his outfits. He comes in wearing some shocking outfits, so I have to put him straight.
Where is your favorite place in the world to play?
We played on a mountainside in Switzerland once and it was beautiful. And the actual DJ booth was in a cave. It was like something out of “James Bond”. And it was strictly a party for models and like very, very rich debutantes and stuff. It was quite amazing.
What are some of your favorite tracks to play when you’re out DJing?
I still say Frankie Guarda is still one of the best records we play at the moment. A mashup of Lady Gaga “Just Dance” and a Pryda track which really works for us well. A track by Leggz and Femi B called “Take Me Up” with Inaya Day on vocals, which we think is unsigned which is a crying shame. We try to and throw in some things that people are not going to know with things they’re really going to know. Danny loves to play a disco record now. Gotta get a disco record in.
What sort of stuff are you guys working on at the moment? What have you got in the pipeline? I know you just remixed a Shakira’s She Wolf.
We did Pixie Lot, her new single, a new track for HedKandi, We’re working on a new one at the moment, but we can’t tell you what it is, because we’ll have to kill you. We’re keeping busy.
Danny and Arthur aka 
