Stanton Warriors Interview

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One of the biggest touring duos to have ever graced the earth, the Stanton Warriors have gone from strength to strength since ‘The Stanton Sessions’ back in 2001. Their sound has been unleashed on dance music fans around the world and become the soundtrack to many a party and festival, whether you’re hitting up an East London warehouse, staying up all night at Burning Man or dancing through the streets of Notting Hill Carnival. Making bass music with tinges of garage, house and techno, Dominic and Mark are unstoppable, releasing new music and touring Australia, America, UAE and Europe this year. With new album ‘Rebel Bass’ on the way, we caught up with Dom to chat about the Australian music scene, unforgettable career moments and the sound of the Stanton Warriors.

Hi Dom, how are you?
I’m good; I was up late last night listening to tunes, done a stint at the gym, got a start in the studio, and it’s only 11 o’clock!

Where in the world are you right now?
I’m at home in north-west London.

You’re pretty busy this month, with the release of new single ‘Loving Me Wrong’ and your Australian tour; how are you anticipating heading Down Under?
Well the weather’s pretty shit here so for that reason alone I’m looking forward to getting there! I’m just deciding what shorts to take with me! Going to Australia’s always great, we have a good following and we’ve always done pretty well, so we’re looking forward to it. We just got back from the Far East which again is a tropical climate, so it’s nice to be avoiding the English winter as well as doing the parties. We’ve been working late at night getting our tunes finished and a few remixes and edits so we’ve got something special to drop for the crowd.

You’re playing at some awesome venues including Chinese Laundry in Sydney and Melbourne’s Brown Alley; how familiar are you with the live music scene in Oz?
Not that familiar, but we have played Australia for many years and we’re more familiar with the festivals, and on that scene, they love the DJ culture more than live bands, and they put underground DJs on the main stages, as opposed to America where the cheesy EDM get headline status. Radio stations like triple j don’t just go for a Katy Perry remix, they’ll play some good stuff from producers and that’s a cool thing about Australia.

What can ticket holders expect from the set then?
With the internet age we live in, any DJ can get tunes off of the internet, so when we travel to far-flung places, we like to bring tracks that no one’s heard before, to make the performance a bit more special. So, we have all the stuff from our album, a lot of exclusive remixes that we keep to ourselves until we do something special, and some tracks from our friends. That’s the thing about the Stanton Warriors: you’re probably going to hear stuff you’ve never heard before. It gives us an angle as opposed to playing the top 10 EDM classics. It’s important that fans that have travelled all that way, to give them something a little bit different. We also have our own sound, in the same way a band has their own sound.

And what would you like to get up to outside of the shows?
See some of the sharks… Go to the beach… Drink beer… Put some shrimp on the barbie… Get some sun… Compare my pasty body to all the ripped dudes on Bondi Beach… In reality, it’s probably all about DJing, eating and sleeping, because when you do these tours and you’ve got a gig at night, sleep’s a premium. You’ve got to keep your energy levels up for the gig, so everything does revolve around them, but the gigs are amazing.

Stanton Warriors ‘Loving Me Wrong’

Onto music, it seems like you’re leaning closer to drum and bass than garage nowadays; is this in an effort to evolve or have your personal music tastes changed?
We’ve always used sound and genres and mashed them together, like ‘Loving Me Wrong’ has an electro beat and deep house organ sounds, so we’ve never been pigeon-holed into one thing. A good beat is a good beat, and everything else can go over that. Like, we made a track the other day in China, we picked up a record in a second-hand shop that had Mongolian Tibetan bells on it, and we sampled it and put a beat underneath it, and it sounded great. Our sound does evolve but at the same time we keep our own style and what we think is important.

Has experimentation been important?
Yeah, just for our own sanity. You don’t want to sit down in the studio and go, “What’s everyone else doing?” We like making tunes that we wanna hear, try to originate and not duplicate.

When will we see the release of ‘Rebel Bass’ and what can we expect from it?
That’s probably going to come in March, but it’s all happening soon. There’s a lot of good vocalists, collaborations with Cause & Affect and AC Slater. In our travels we’ve been to L.A and New York, so we’ve got collaborations from people whose music we love and the vocalists are really cool and they’re young garage and drum and bass producers. It’s got a theme to it, but you can’t quantify what it is, but it’s got a definite Stanton Warriors-ness. One thing we do know, the tunes certainly work and with different crowds, whether you like drum and bass or house or garage, they seem to cross the genre divides and that’s a key thing for us. If someone who loves techno can get into it and someone who loves garage can get into it then we’ve achieved our objective.

You’re referenced by Disclosure as being an influence on their ‘Settle’ debut, but who influences you?
The early electro sound and pre hip-hop sound; a lot of 90s American house which has come back around now but the original stuff was cool and raw; good beats, anyone who can mix a good beat from James Brown to Dr Dre, and all interesting sounds you can put on said good beats, from Tibetan bells to a Hungarian drum.

Stanton Sessions are such a huge part of the Stanton Warriors’ identity; would you say you’ve honed your craft when it comes to live shows, or are you still learning and discovering?
We’re always learning and open-minded to new production techniques and DJ styles. You’re at a disadvantage if you rest on your laurels and think you’ve got nailed and use the same formula. The best thing about dance music in general is it’s always trying to be different and fresh and not just rely on the same things, for that reason we’re constantly pushing forward.

Throughout your career so far as Stanton Warriors, are there any parties that still stand out?
Ones that stand out are Burning Man when the sun’s rising, playing the main stage at Exit Festival, playing Notting Hill Carnival and festivals in Cambodia; we’ve done a fair amount of epic life moments. We’re lucky to go to all four corners of the earth to do what we do, last week we were in India, Indonesia and Thailand, so we’ve clocked up the air miles!

What’s planned for the rest of 2015?
We’ve got mad tours in Australia, America with eight weeks from LA to New York and Canadian cities, Spain, Italy, Hungary, France, Dubai, and Sheffield randomly! We’ve got remixes going on, Stanton Sessions nights, our label Punks is doing really well with loads of brilliant artists, and doing our podcast which now has 800,000 subscribers which we’re really happy about. A busy, busy year!

Thanks, Dom!

See the Stanton Warriors live on their Australian tour. Head to www.stantonwarriors.com/live for tickets.

By Charlotte Mellor
@cmellor_03

Travel to Western Australia