Interview #1: Rambla Boys

Today, I’m glad to share with you the very first interview I did for the blog. It’s hopefully the first one of a long series!

To inaugurate this section, I decided to ask the Italian duo Rambla Boys if they would accept to answer my questions, and they kindly agreed. I’ve been following them for a while, and post most (if not all) of their releases: click here to check out the articles about them!

Read the interview to discover this great band and learn more about them, their remixes, projects, influences… You can follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, and visit their website…

Hello guys! First, thanks for accepting to answer my questions. You know you’re often featured on this blog so it’s a big pleasure to interview you!

How did you start Rambla Boys? Where does the name come from?

We actually started in 2007, and we were four, 2 djs and 2 vjs. We knew one another since we were children, as we were growing up in the same street… the one we used to call ‘Rambla’. And this is where our name comes from.

One thing I like about your music is the mix of deep house, nu-disco, italo disco… What are your major influences? And how would you describe your music?

We’re not big fans of Italo disco, but we like that sound for sure. We both come from rock backgrounds somehow: one of our favourite bands is Rage Against The Machine, and we really like the rock from the 90’s, bands which have become classics since then. Talking about electronic stuff, our first influences came from Chemical Brothers, Booka Shade, Cassius, Basement Jaxx, Royksopp… We slowly got interested in electronic music, and we started playing togheter when we discovered we had almost the same tunes in our hardisks. At that time we fell in love with projects like Soulwax, who have been able to link rock and electronic. And nowadays, Mario Basanov definitely blew up our minds.

About our style, we’ve always been loving big, groovy basslines and great breakdowns. You cannot be fixed to a genre, you evolve your sound depending on your tastes and what you’re listening to at the moment. Actually, we’re quite influenced by labels like Hot Creations, Exploited and Need Want.

It seems that there is a very active electronic music scene in Italy with artists like Scuola Furano, Italo Brutalo… Would you have other Italian producers to recommend us?

We’re good friend with Scuola Furano, they have been quite a big influence and inspiration for us when we started, and they still are/is.

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Talking about people to recommend, we really like 2 Guys In Venice, from the label Nano Records, who are our good friends and have a massive production level.

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Then Fireflowerz , even though they are a bit into dubstep, they still have a great house touch and a wonderful big bass characterizing them. You should take a listen to the great remix of our Valderrambla they’ve done.

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At the moment there are many Italian producers we really like, it would be too long to name them all! But you should also check out Broke One, and Analog People In A Digital World, for whom we remixed “Tattoo Girl”.

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What are your best memories of playing live? (where, with who…)

Well, we should separate our live experiences into two categories. On the first category we should put those big lives we made outside Venice. In this case one of the first gigs was in Warsaw for Big Bang Party and it was amazing. One of the last was in Rome at a pool party organised by Surfdisco crew. Simply astonishing!

In the second category you have to name those parties that give you special memories just because of the setting or the people who are surrounding you. One of them was in Lisbon, taking place on a rooftop garden, with an amazing view of the city. Another one was at a snowboard event organised by Forward Motion in Italy during 3 days in which we ended up to play in a sky cabin. And this mid august we played at Rulez Party in Lido, which is the island in front of Venice. These guys are organising their events each time in a different place, and I just know this particular one ended up late in the morning, with lot of friends feeling good around.

You’ve been releasing a lot of new material since this summer…. How did you manage to work so much?

 Yeah, we released a lot of new stuff this summer but we mainly worked on ‘em between March and May. We’re actually working on more new projects, waiting to be released. We use our free time to produce and that is okay this way. We have been away from each other because of Erasmus stays or jobs abroad, but we always managed to work with the distance. In fact, the distance can be good too to avoid conflicts between us.

You mainly released remixes recently, do you plan to produce new original songs as well?

 Definitely, we have a new song coming out on Smile Recordings. It’s supposed to be released in February 2013. There is a great singer on vocal duties, but it’s still a secret! We are waiting for some confirmations about some remixes, some of which are great tunes for bands or DJs we could only imagine we would have remixed one day. I can’t tell you more details yet but more info will come soon. In the while we’re working on another EP, hopefully ready for next summer…

How do you usually get approached to remix a song?

 It depends… We started doing remix competitions and re-edit. One of the first was for Franz Ferdinand, but we put our hands even on Chromeo, Groove Armada or Italian indie band Amari.

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Talking about Italo Brutalo’s one, he remixed our track Cocomero, so then he asked us to make a remix for his Paradiso Analogico. About Jeremy Glenn’s one, we have to thank Mickey who actually recommended us to Smile Recordings after listening to our remix for Dempsey.

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So, that’s how it goes: you start with your own productions and remixing artists you like, then some artists ask you to remix their track. And after a while, you hopefully get so many remix requests that so you can even choose the ones you prefer. 😀

 Could you tell us 5 tracks you’re loving and recommend at the moment?

– Shindu – Just Go

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– Luca Lozano – Lover 106

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– Hot Natured feat. Ali Love – Benediction

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– Manik feat. Jeremy Glenn (Climbers Remix)

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– Kraak & Smaak feat Romanthony – Built For Love (Psychemagik Remix)

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Is there anything you would like to add?

 We want to thank you a lot, we really appreciate the fact that you like our stuff and write nice things about it, it’s nice you post music you really like.

And to conclude… Forza Parma! (NB: “Go Parma”, the football team they’re supporting in Italy!)

Thanks! Good luck with your next releases, we’re looking forward to hearing more from you!