Detroit Swindle Interview

Motown, disco, hip hop, deep house…. these are just some of the musical strains which make up the duo known to us as Detroit Swindle. The Dutch pair of Lars Dale and Maarten Smeets came from relative obscurity around 5 years ago to become one of the globe’s most loved merchants of deep, groove-based house and disco. They also run their own and highly successful house label, Heist Recordings, which are responsible for some of the scene’s most credible and played tracks. In 2014 they released their debut album, ‘Boxed Out’, a critically acclaimed affair which also featured the vocal-stylings of contemporary crooner Mayer Hawthorne. And if further proof was needed of their popularity, then cast your eyes to the annual Resident Advisor Top DJ poll in which they have featured since 2012. On the eve of their Australian tour we manage to caught with the house masters for a quick chinwag…

You initially bonded over your mutual love for mo-town, hip-hop and early house music. I guess what you now produce is a mixture of all these influences, but how is the music you produce as Detroit Swindle different to what you were previously producing individually?

Maarten: Lars was doing mostly edits of different tracks for fun and was playing more hip hop and other stuff to make a living. I was playing records, but only started producing when we decided to get into the studio together on a regular basis. Still though, it’s obvious to see how our differences and similarities in taste together have formed the sound of Detroit Swindle. And to be honest, ‘taste’ or ‘inspiration’ or ‘style’ are not fixed things. They are constantly in motion based on what happens in your live, the choices you make, the experiences you have, so what we’re doing as Detroit Swindle now is not just different from what we did before, it’s also different from when we started doing this. And that’s a good thing. It’s a constant evolution and development of yourself.

Is mo-town and hip-hop still influential to you? Who are some of the mo-town or hip-hop artists that you find influential to your sound?

Lars: For sure. For me, J-dilla is still one of my all time heroes and I can still dream away hearing Motown classics from Marvin Gaye, but we’ve also had the opportunity to really dive deep into other genres, or the less obvious artists from the Motown era, and have found so many great labels and musicians to get inspiration from like the Soul Searchers or low profile bands with one or two amazing songs like Ahzz. A lot of Northern Soul records also have a unique thing to them. It’s this kind of originality in production, mix, use of instruments or general vibe that really gives us inspiration to explore new possibilities in our own music.

Heist Recordings has made it into Resident Advisor’s Top 100 Labels for the past two years. What is the recipe for Heist’s success?

Maarten: I guess our biggest ‘asset’ is our no-compromise attitude towards the label. We started it to put out music we love in the highest quality possible and we don’t deviate from this. So whether or not an artist is fairly unknown, or when it takes a lot of time to put a release together for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter. We’re not in a hurry and there’s no one telling us what to do or how to do it. The artistic direction is in no way based on trends and we’re not looking for a way to make money off the label. We invest in high quality vinyl, do special releases and look for music that really stands out. It’s great for us and our label family that we’re getting such a great response to our releases and the way we position the label, and that gives us the opportunity to really build something that will (hopefully) stand the test of time.

Who are some of the upcoming artists on Heist that we should keep an ear out for?

Lars: We’ve got a few really cool releases coming up. Fellow Dutchie Nachbraker has a great EP coming up, we’ve just had one of our personal favourites ‘Nebraska’ releasing an amazing EP and the next few Ep’s are equally amazing, with a fairly new Israelian guy called ‘Obas Nenor’ with a remix by MR. Tophat. We’re putting together a new EP with Urulu and have got Henry Wu remixing it, and the latest signing is Adesse Versions. It’s a crazy year with something like 9 or 10 releases, including the upcoming Round up (part 3), where each artist of that year gets to remix one of the other artists.

Your club night The Great Escape, has showcased a number of reputable artists from all over the world such as Trus’Me and Seven Davis Jr. How do you decide on the artists to play?

Maarten: That’s easy: we just look at producers and DJ’s we hold in really high regard and ask them to come and play a long set with us. Depending on the location, we’ll have a spot for bigger artists like SDJ, Trus’me or Roy Davis Jr, or more focus on upcoming guys like Glenn Astro, Max Graef, Dan Shake, Roman Rauch.

Detroit Swindle & The Programme debuted during ADE in 2015 and received accolades all around! How long has incorporating live visuals in your performance been an aspiration for Detroit Swindle?

Lars: Detroit Swindle & The Programme was a really cool experiment and the shows during ADE were great, but we’ve decided to put the concept on ice for a while. We felt like it was taking up too much time, and distracting us too much from our key thing: making music and performing live. We might work on it again, but for now, the live show is fully focused on the band setup that we have with Lorenz our key player and we’re working on ideas to expand the set up with other performers.

You seem to have dabbled in everything possible in the electronic music industry. How do you keep finding the inspiration to grow Detroit Swindle and better your act?

Maarten: I guess we do all these things because they’re all means of expressing our creativity. We’re both really high energy guys and we really thrive when we’re somewhere on the border of being way too busy, and barely hanging on. It’s a thin line, but when you look at all opportunities we’re getting, you’d be an idiot not go headfirst into it and see what happens.

You have returned to Australia for the past two years, how does playing in Australia differ to other places in the world?

Lars: Apart from the mind-bending travel schedule we have to get there, going to Australia probably doesn’t really differ too much from playing in the US, France or England. The places we get to play are amazing and we know that we can play pretty much anything we like. So we take a bit of everything with us in our record bag, leave some space for trips to the local record store, and we’re good to go. We’ve got quite a few ozzie friends who have moved to Europe, so we also hit those guys up to see if they’re back home and want to hang out.

What have you got planned for Australian fans this visit?

Maarten: We’ll play out a lot of stuff we’ll put out on Heist this year, and we’ve got quite a few of our own tracks to test, so we’ll throw lots of new stuff at the crowd.

Any travelling hot tips you can give our readers in regards to travelling to Australia? (ie. restaurants, things to do etc)

Lars: Always wear sweatpants on the plane. Winner.

Maarten: Ouch, tips for Australia? Have some fresh spring rolls in Melbourne, rent a van and go surfing. Take the ferry in Sydney to one of the cities great beaches and go see Detroit Swindle play their favourites disco, afro and house records in a club near you 🙂

Tour Dates

Friday 27th May: smalltown @ Brown Alley, Melbourne
Saturday 28th May: The Grand, Wollongong (Day)
Saturday 28th May: Chinese Laundry, Sydney (Night)

Interview by Isabella Olivieri