Audiojack have turned a chance encounter into one of the UK’s most prominent underground house ambassadors.
Debuting on Matt Tolfrey’s Leftroom in 2006 before being snapped up by their long time home (and birthplace of their 2009 album ‘Radio’), 20:20 Vision, Audiojack have since gone on to releases and remixes for the likes of Get Physical, Bpitch and Diynamic.
Completing the Audiojack picture is Gruuv, a label set up in 2010 which has quickly become a must-check imprint, especially for new talent. Also attracting material from Uner, Deepgroove and Tiger Stripes.
Going forward, the duo team up with Kevin Knapp to release ‘Vibrate’ on Hot Creations. Berlin’s Re.You and Minus favourite Barem take the reins for remix duties.
“You can really learn a lot about a record over time”
As you will be releasing your new EP ‘Vibrate’ in January, I’m always interested to know the starting point of a track. For ‘Vibrate’ and its eponymous single, what was the first element of the track that came to you?
We were walking through Barcelona airport on route to a gig somewhere and were discussing ideas for a new collaboration with Kevin. The last Ibiza season had reinvigorated our love for stripped back techno, however that sound isn’t really synonymous with vocals, and neither are the vocal heavy tracks we’ve made with Kevin previously such as Stay Glued and These Days. So we agreed it would need to have a simple catchy line or phrase repeated to give a loopy, hypnotic feel that would suit the kind of sound we wanted to make, and the feeling we wanted to create.
Kevin has a great way with words and over the years we’ve made tracks together where he’s singing, rhyming and some spoken word. He sent over a few different lines he’d laid down and the ‘Vibrate’ vocal was actually part of a line that said “Vibrate, where we at now? What the rhythm say, on the record”. The latter part we used for a track called “On the Record” which featured on our 5 Years of Gruuv label project and for ‘Vibrate’ we simply looped that word; it was perfect for what we had in mind.
Music together with words has a time and place, but often in the depths of night wordy vocals can be a distraction. To be together with the music on the dancefloor in that moment is a feeling, rather than a thought. To encapsulate that feeling was the remit we set ourselves with Vibrate.
The track features vocals by the talented Kevin Knapp. Was Kevin always on tap to provide vocals? What is it about his vocal style that complements the track, as well as the EP as whole?
Yep we turn on the tap and get a nice cold glass of Kev. We’ve been friends for a long time now and have grown together as artists, collaborating on lots of projects over the years. Our alliance has always been mutually beneficial as Kevin provides great vocals and we feel we can get the best out of them. So with that in mind Kevin will always try to make time for us and vice versa. With regards to the vocal style, it’s the sound of his voice that resonates so nicely with the music and has now become very recognizable to people who listen to our kind of electronic music.
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