Dirtyphonics

For Charly, Pitchin, Pho and Thomas partying and music go hand-in-hand. Without the party, the music would perish. Without the music, there would be no party. BBM’s Alexandra MacLeod talks to Charly and Pitchin of Dirtyphonics, to establish what’s behind all the Dirty energy that is causing the band to be one of the most successful bass crews to explode out of France in the past 6 years.

So in the beginning how did you guys, Thomas and Pho meet?

Charly: Thomas and I met in school, then we met Pho at a house party and just had that good feeling of ‘hey, we could make music together!’ Then a couple of years later we met Pitchin on the road, who was doing his own little project back then, and same thing really, we clicked right away. We asked him if he wanted to be in the band, he said ‘yes’, and we were in the studio the next morning making music!

Were you all producers in Drum n’ Bass when you first started out?

Charly: Yeah, we all had the same vision in music, we were all producing, playing, and partying, which is also an important part of it! It’s like one of those friends that you make, and you think ‘wow, it feels like I’ve known you for years’, its just makes sense that we all do it together and make it happen.

What were you initial intentions with the band, did you start with any preconceived ideas?

Charly: There were two things that were very important for us; on the production side, because there are four of us in the band we all have a bunch of different influences, and what we were sure of, in coming from the drum n’ bass scene was that we wanted to explore different genres and tempos as well as keeping the same energy within the bass community. From day one when we started writing, it was Dubstep and Electro and what is now called ‘110′. So we wanted to explore as much as we could with the music we were evolving in, as well as pushing boundaries. We wanted to be able to write the music together, and share that experience altogether, and with the crowd too.

When you started performing live shows in 2006, did you have any idea how huge they were going to be?

Charly: We wanted to take it to this level, but had no idea it would happen so fast and so big. We just got back from Vegas, where we played for 300,000 people, which is insane! It brings you that adrenaline and nothing can really compare.

What do you enjoy most about being Dirtyphonics?

Charly: It’s definitely all of it, and you have to love all of it because its so intense that if you don’t like every aspect of it you can’t stand the intensity of it. Actually our first intention was to share everything together, whether it’s hard times, and you know you’ve got friends you can count on, and when its great times and successes, there is nothing like having friends there to share it with, and that we did it together.

Pitchin: With the four of us it just makes life easier…

Charly: … and it means you’ve got friends reminding you what went on the night before when you don’t remember!

You guys are on the road all the time, what do you get up to, to keep yourselves busy between shows?

Charly: Well you know, it’s a very important part of our life, we’ll always carry a portable studio setup, so when there are down times, like being on the plane for 10 hours, or hanging around in a hotel room before or after a show, we’ll always try making music.

Pitchin: You have get used the hotel rooms, because you need to keep producing and pushing your ideas, you know its all about releases and making an album so you’ve got to keep producing, keep producing and keep producing.

Charly: Especially after a show, you’ve got all this energy and adrenaline that you’ve got from the crowd, and there are a bunch of ideas popping into your head. And you might be on the other side of the world, so you’re experiencing new things, seeing new things, and if you’ve got a bunch of ideas in your head from it, you need to studio setup because otherwise you might lose them.

Pitchin: It helps you really to finish tracks. When the track is all done, we’ll play it maybe 10 times before we release it to see how the crowd reacts, and then if we need change some details, or the tempo switch, you know it really helps you.

Is there an album release on the horizon for you guys? When can we expect it?

Charly: We’ve been saying for long time we’re going to release an album, it’s taken us a really long time! We’re looking at an early 2013 release, and we’ll hopefully start releasing singles September/October time.

What does the future look like for Dirtyphonics?

Charly: The past five years has been such an incredible adventure, and so many things we didn’t really schedule happened, so to be able to say what is going to happen in the future is hard and we really aren’t sure. We know we’re going to keep writing music. We have so many ideas, and so many people we want to work with! Recently we’ve been working with Marilyn Manson – we love what the guy does and have done for years – but there are many more, we love pop, we love rock, we love soul, but unfortunately a lot of people we want to work with are dead now, but there are a bunch of people we’re planning to work with, and you can expect good things happening really soon!

By Alexandra Macleod