2011 has been a very promising year for electronic bass-influenced artists. Acclaimed releases by artists like James Blake, SBTRKT and Mount Kimbie have seen many artists lazily attributed with the tag 'Post-Dubstep' rise from the underground and familiarise themselves with the ears of the masses. Next in line for success surely, are 17-18 year old Lancaster duo George Townsend and Adam Kaye, who go under the moniker of Bondax. Bondax's sound involves intricate, textured rhythms with prominent dub influences while still remaining wholly accessible and immersive. With an EP released later in October described by the duo as "Romance dub" I quizzed both of them about remixes, collaborations and more.
You've done a lot of remixes recently, what is your favourite out of the ones you've done so far?
Your song 'Just Smile For Me' features Bobbie Gordon, how did that collaboration come about?
Well this isn't particularly interesting. It was through Last Japan who knew we wanted to sort a vocalist the re-do some parts for us. He got in touch with her and everything was done through the internet so I guess it's a good example of modern day producing. Our collaboration with Dee (on our forthcoming track Only You Know) was a lot closer, we aim to team up with more vocalists in the future.
What would be your dream collaboration?
In terms of vocalists Alicia Keys. In terms of producers, probably Bonobo but it's very difficult to say really there are so many great musicians.
Being only 17 and 18, how do you juggle making music with other commitments?
Well we do find it very hard and due to the fact we tend to work late at night both our sleeping patterns are pretty wrecked. We try and work only at our peak times to ensure music doesn't clash with commitments, but we have to admit our EP has been massively delayed
because we just can't keep up with the workload at the moment.
You're clearly influenced by more contemporary bass-inspired artists, is there anything in particular about that genre that inspired you to go in that direction?
Yeah there are many things that took us in this direction. I think primarily it was a lot about how diverse some of the producers are in this sort of genre. Electronic music like music is general will always evolve however there's a lot of commercial and indie styles that don't actually seem to be going anywhere at the moment. For us we fit into a style of bass music due to the weighting of our production but I think the beauty of this style of music is that not only is most of the sound completely original, if you tweaked it slightly, maybe replaced a few synthetic parts for real instruments you could create a massively complex and unique sound that would lie miles away from dance music.
What are your favourite things to do outside making music?
This is a weird one because a lot of going out and our social lives evolve around music but we are both pretty big football fans and I'm (George) very into art. We both like getting to as many things as we can and now I'm 18, we try to get out to any decent nights.
You're set to release an EP this month, what can we expect?
The EP will hopefully sound fairly original with emphasis lying upon creating a dance sort of sound with a more melodic twist. It's hard to describe but a lot of the tracks are centred around romance and are highly chord based. Naming genre's can get ridiculous but we all need to categorise things or we go insane so we're gonna call it romance dub. Expect romance dub.
Thinking long term, what is the ultimate goal for Bondax?
For both of us it's to get to a point were we can live off what we do. That's pretty much the main goal because if we can live of the thing we love, isn't that like true happiness or some shit? Haha but in all serious our primary goal is to be able to put this as the main thing in our lives and not have to worry financially.
By Toby McCarron
I think the Monarchy remix was the most fun for us because although in most of our remixes we attempt to generate a new vibe to the original, in the Monarchy remix we completely changed the direction an only used a couple of ver short 8 bar samples. It was a kind of experimentation of sounds and ideas. In the end we were both pretty chuffed with the result. We love to remix anything with a really attractive vocal though, vocals tend to always be a big part of our productions.
Your song 'Just Smile For Me' features Bobbie Gordon, how did that collaboration come about?
Well this isn't particularly interesting. It was through Last Japan who knew we wanted to sort a vocalist the re-do some parts for us. He got in touch with her and everything was done through the internet so I guess it's a good example of modern day producing. Our collaboration with Dee (on our forthcoming track Only You Know) was a lot closer, we aim to team up with more vocalists in the future.
What would be your dream collaboration?
In terms of vocalists Alicia Keys. In terms of producers, probably Bonobo but it's very difficult to say really there are so many great musicians.
Being only 17 and 18, how do you juggle making music with other commitments?
Well we do find it very hard and due to the fact we tend to work late at night both our sleeping patterns are pretty wrecked. We try and work only at our peak times to ensure music doesn't clash with commitments, but we have to admit our EP has been massively delayed
because we just can't keep up with the workload at the moment.
You're clearly influenced by more contemporary bass-inspired artists, is there anything in particular about that genre that inspired you to go in that direction?
Yeah there are many things that took us in this direction. I think primarily it was a lot about how diverse some of the producers are in this sort of genre. Electronic music like music is general will always evolve however there's a lot of commercial and indie styles that don't actually seem to be going anywhere at the moment. For us we fit into a style of bass music due to the weighting of our production but I think the beauty of this style of music is that not only is most of the sound completely original, if you tweaked it slightly, maybe replaced a few synthetic parts for real instruments you could create a massively complex and unique sound that would lie miles away from dance music.
What are your favourite things to do outside making music?
This is a weird one because a lot of going out and our social lives evolve around music but we are both pretty big football fans and I'm (George) very into art. We both like getting to as many things as we can and now I'm 18, we try to get out to any decent nights.
You're set to release an EP this month, what can we expect?
The EP will hopefully sound fairly original with emphasis lying upon creating a dance sort of sound with a more melodic twist. It's hard to describe but a lot of the tracks are centred around romance and are highly chord based. Naming genre's can get ridiculous but we all need to categorise things or we go insane so we're gonna call it romance dub. Expect romance dub.
Thinking long term, what is the ultimate goal for Bondax?
For both of us it's to get to a point were we can live off what we do. That's pretty much the main goal because if we can live of the thing we love, isn't that like true happiness or some shit? Haha but in all serious our primary goal is to be able to put this as the main thing in our lives and not have to worry financially.
By Toby McCarron
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