Dirtyphonics - In It For The Love

If you were to try and describe the sound of Dirtyphonics, 'bass' would be a good start. That might seem a bit too broad, but the fact that they push everything from electro-house to dubstep to drum 'n' bass and moombahton...well you can see the problem already. It's probably best to just stick with their own descrption, that of "high-energy, fun, power of the bass".

Renowned for their blistering live shows, the French quartet have been destroying youth-fueled crowds across the world to devastating effect, most recently at the now infamous Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. With an impending return tour of Australia in DJ mode on the cards, Pulse's Anneliese Pomering catches up with Charly and Pitchin of the group during a studio break.

Pulse: Hi Charly, where are you calling from? Charly: From France, we're back home right now. We just got back from touring the US, we've had a couple days back, and we're chilling at my place, having coffee, a couple of cigarettes, trying to wake up before hopping into the studio.

So you're not having too much time off, just straight back to work? There is no time off. Never ever.

How was America and how was Electric Daisy Carnival? That was crazy! One of the biggest festivals we've ever played. They're talking about 300,000 people there. There are so many stages, the production, the energy, that was incredible.

Is the Electric Daisy Carnival crowd and atmosphere significantly different to other shows you've played? The US crowd and Canadian crowd are pretty different in the fact that they love to party, they love to dress up, they love to make it a very specific experience. They're not just going to a show they're going to the EDC experience.



So you're coming back to Australia in July. Your last tour was pretty legendary, what are you planning to bring this time around? This time around it's going to be just Pitchin and I doing the DJ set. The other boys are taking to the studio to finishing writing our debut album while we keep touring. But you can trust that we're going to be playing a lot of brand new music, we've been writing a bunch of stuff recently, so keeping the same energy and the same need to party. We're going to be playing a lot of new music.

What can you tell me about the album? The album has taken quite awhile to be written. There was so many changes and a lot of stuff and remixes got in the way. Now we're almost done with it and we're looking at a beginning of 2013 release. And it's definitely going to be a bass music album, going through a lot of genres and tempoes, we're talking 110, 128, 140, 175, so you know, drum and bass, dubstep, moombahton, electro and things I'm not quite sure what name to put on it. But it's going to be very diverse and what Dirtyphonics is all about from day one.

You all came from quite different musical backgrounds, do any other genres influence your music as Dirtyphonics? Yeah definitely! That's actually what made Dirtyphonics who we are today. We try to explore as much as we want and bring in all these different influences into our music. When we were kids most of us played in hard rock, metal bands, and on some tracks of the album you'll definitely hear some guitars.

You've been touring pretty much endlessly the past 12 months, what's it like being on the road, especially when there's four of you? We love it, you know you have to love it more than anything, which can keep up the intensity of it. It's insane! We're lucky enough to travel all over the world, meeting so many different people, discovering so many different cultures and cities, and stuff like that. And being the four of us on the road is insane because you've got your best friend right next to you, you share all the experiences together, and party together, which is a really big part of it. We're super happy happy, and blessed that this is happening to us and that people are apparently loving the music we make and the energy we bring to the shows. So we definitely hope it is our job forever.


Pitchin: It's a dream come true.

What have been the respones to your live show? To be honest, every single show has been crazy insane. Once again we feel so lucky about this because we do what we like and what we want you know, we've never really come from thinking 'we should do this or that', we write the music we want we play it live how we want, and the way we want it, and when we bring it to the crowd, people fucking love it. You know, there's always been that thing about we first started, we didn't want to be that one DJ playing the music, taking the money and stuff. For us it's all about partying with the people, sharing the music, sharing the love and sharing the party.

Pitchin: We do some crazy stuff on stage, throwing bottles of water, stage diving, dancing in the crowd, it's fun.

Charly: Some people work, we just party. We love it.

How would you describe your music for people who haven't heard Dirtyphonics? High-energy, fun and power-of-the-bass.

What does the rest of 2012 hold for Dirtyphonics? We're gonna keep touring non-stop pretty much. Our summer schedule is insane and now we're looking at fall and autumn, we're booked till the end of the year. That's going to be really intense and as I said, we're going to be dropping our album soon so we're going to have to finish it, keep writing, we have a lot of new ideas for what's after the album already, a lot of new collabs that we're looking forward to make happen. So as I said, there's no time off and we love it like that so it's gonna be in and out of the country, and here and there, and studio and road all the time, and we're gonna keep pushing it and loving it.

Pitchin: So expect new original music, new remixes and free music, and we can't wait to make it happen.

You mentioned collaborations, you might not be able to give too much away but is there anyone you'd love to work with? As you said, there's names we can't really give away right now, but recently we've been working with Marilyn Manson. It's a really big thing for us and we've listened to the guy a lot over the years, we really respect him so being able to do something with him is pretty crazy. And that's all we can really say for now.

Listen to Dirtyphonics on Pulse Radio