A beastly Brit and a Russian Tank: Magnetude’s firing formula continues to heat up and bubble over. Existent for two years as a collaborative entity with high profile singles on the likes of Eatbrain and Ram, their full force, full flavoured sound drives straight in to the heart of the dancefloor with absolutely no holding back. Don’t take our word for it, though. Here’s a reminder from last December…
Constantly chiselling and sculpting their strong-arm sound, Magnetude releases are to be strictly handled with caution. Pretty soon we’re going to need industrial strength gloves because there’s a whole load more to come. Having spoken to them exactly this time last year, we thought it was high time we tracked them down again to give them a good talking to. If only for our safety in which direction to look next…
We last spoke to you pretty much exactly a year ago! What have you lads been up to within that time?
James: Well that was based around the time when we released our debut single on RAM which was Snatch/Signals. Since then we’ve been extremely busy, we had three more releases on RAM, we’ve dropped a VIP mix of Immortality Protocol VIP with Task Horizon on Eatbrain.
Rustam: We’ve been doing a lot of post-production stuff, had a lot of gigs and we’ve also received massive support from a lot of artists whom we admire a lot and also have been employed as brand ambassadors for Subpac too.
What gigs have you guys been at too?
James: We played a number of Eatbrain events, several festivals in Slovakia (Bassment Festival) Romania (Eatbrain), Germany (Urge To Move) and ended the year with our first gigs in Czech Republic! We also played our first ever RAM show at Southbeats in Kent, that was amazing. Probably the biggest crowd we’ve played to, about 2,000-3,000 people.
The feeling must of been insane!
James: Mate, it’s always a great feeling when you’ve been working on a track for so long and it’s been so tedious with so much time dedicated to perfecting – then you drop it in a crowd and look up, and you see around 200 people separating the dancefloor and charging at each other creating a wall of death. My instant reaction to that was “whaaaaat?” and burst out laughing. It’s an insane and complete feeling. It makes all of that hard work, stress, time and energy so much more satisfactory.
Rustam: We’ve also played at Blackout party with Black Sun Empire in Switzerland with Julia Marks. That was pretty amazing too! We did a semi-live DJ set which incorporated all of our tracks we have done together as instrumentals with Julia doing the vocal parts live. It was really epic.
You also mentioned you’ve received massive support over the last year, who from?
James: It ranges from everyone. Andy C, Camo & Krooked, AMC, Koven, Delta Heavy, Rene Lavice, Kanine, to name few.
Rustam: The support has been very across the board too as there are also people such as Audio, Dillinja, Chase & Status, Phace, Joe Ford, London Elektricity, Futurebound championing our music.
James: I went to the Virus night in London at the back end of last year and was walking through the crowd and out of nowhere Andy C grabbed me and took me aside and he was telling me how much he loves our music and what we are doing and it was an immense feeling, the guv’nor, the man, the myth and the legend, whom you have listened to as a kid telling you how in awe he is of what you are doing. It is such an amazing feeling.
Rustam: It’s amazing when we read to reports from the feedback sheets, and we’re like “Oh wow, he really digs that tune” and that particular artist is in a total different niche of drum & bass.
Amazing. So you’ve recently released a free download bootleg of Twenty One Pilots’ Heathens. It took us all by storm! How have you felt the overall response has been?
James: We started the track almost a year ago and had a half done track and usually we make copy/paste edits of tracks we are working on to test out to see if they work, testing mixdown, how it sounds in the club and immediate crowd reaction to feedback to one another. The response was always good and we would always have people come up to us after our sets asking about this particular track and if it was an official remix.
Rustam: The feedback has been absolutely crazy. The last time we received this level of response was when we put out our debut release on Lifted Music and our debut single on RAM. The track has done the rounds across all social media platforms, the statistics we have looked at have been crazy too! It is such a nice feeling to see that the track went down well with a lot of people. It is a major morale boost and it motivates us so much.
Damn that’s a hefty response! But with Heathens out of the way, what are you both working on now?
James: Oh my, where to start?! We have tons of tracks we’re working on at the moment. We’ve also just taken on a hand full of collaborations. We can’t go quite into detail and let the cat out of the bag, but we think some will surprise quite a lot of people in the most positive way.
Rustam: All the guys we are working with are quite unexpected too. People often try and pin us up with people on who to collaborate with – but the guys we are working with have never been mentioned and will each be a major contrast of styles. We are massively excited to work with each artist as they are so talented.
GLXY just dropped a remix of Before The Dawn, could you tell us more?
Rustam: Oh yes they did, and it is absolutely amazing!
James: Yeah! We did a single at the end of last year on RAM with Julia Marks called Before The Dawn which consisted of two tracks, a non-D&B Mix with a D&B Mix and shortly after it dropped RAM offered us the opportunity of getting it remixed.
Not only have you had releases on RAM, but you’ve also released on Eatbrain. During the last year you’ve released a few tracks, and even some stunning EPs on Eatbrain. Were they just a few odd tracks that you decided to release on Eatbrain, or do you plan to release more beast-y sounds on Eatbrain?
James: This is a really good question and I am glad you asked. Gabor AKA Jade AKA the bossman from Eatbrain is a really good friend of ours and our friendship goes even further back before the Magnetude project even begun. He is one of the most supportive, most humble and fair guys out there. I am sure everyone who knows and worked with him would absolutely agree.
Rustam: He always wants everyone to succeed and has always given us amazing opportunities, made us feel involved with a lot of Eatbrain events and has always supported us and it is always good to give something back to the people that have always been there.
James: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more.
So we just spoke about Eatbrain, but for other labels in between. Can we speak about what other releases you have coming up?
James: Yes, we are currently working on a ton of material at the moment. We have one we just finished that is scheduled for release in May and we’re aiming to finalise two more in the coming week as well as some non dnb stuff too.
Rustam: Since Before The Dawn we have wanted to experiment a lot more in different forms of electronic music too. It is quite tough as we’re trying to balance between the solo stuff and the collaborative tracks all at the same time. Not to mention post production work that we do in the background too.
James: But yes, we’re definitely lining up a nice little arsenal of releases on the horizon with the release announcements coming sooner than you think.
Amazing. With the amount of tracks you produce, how do you keep these creative ideas up? What is your source of inspiration for all of this music?
Rustam: That’s a pretty tough question – I sometimes find that inspiration comes in waves. I sometimes have moments where I am totally lost with ideas, where to take ideas to the next level and need time to completely take a step back from music until I feel the inspiration hit me.
James: Inspiration also comes through chains of events. You can lose it as easy as it is to find it sometimes. Where we live in two different continents, sometimes we watch a film over Skype together and then off of that, it immediately kicks off an idea. For example we watch a western movie and then Rustam comes with a Western themed idea which then we put aside and start watching a whole load of western movies to get a mood for the backdrop. Then comes the story. We create themes and stories for our tracks so every track has its own theme to which we work towards. As you can tell, we are nerds!
I know you have close links to Task Horizon. Have you got any more projects going on with them?
Rustam: We currently have quite a few tunes with our brothers in Switzerland, but we have decided at this current time to put them on the back burner because we both have so many solo tracks we need to finish.
James: I recently moved to Bristol and finished building my studio and have talked to the boys to come out so we can wrap some tracks up. But might even be a case that at some point later this year we both go out to Switzerland and finish some bits off together.
It’s early in the year and summer feels like miles away… But have you got any big places you’ll be performing this year?
James: We have recently changed booking agency to Urban Agency and everything’s been happening behind to closed doors. Switching over from one agency to the next, unfortunately bookings don’t immediately come flying in. However, there are a lot of dates that we will be announcing over the next couple of weeks and we can confirm we’re playing at Creamfields this year.
Rustam: Yes! And Let It Roll too!
Yes!
James: Honestly, we’ve already began planning and discussing our Let It Roll set since November. The moment we got announced for it, we already began talking about ways we can improve out sets and mixing, so when we go to Let It Roll we will try to obliterate the place! Plus we get to see each other! So it is very mixed as we do not know how it will be, we are Let It Roll virgins
Rustam: Let It Roll has always been on the bucket list of festivals we have always wanted to play at, and we will both be there to enjoy the moment together and also get a chance to meet a lot of fans and producers who we have been talking to for a very long time too. We are really looking forward for this as we heard so many great things from so many people.
What else can we look forward to from you guys?
James: We’re about to launch our website….
Website, eh?
James: We have been working with a long-time friend Vlad Olareanu (AKA Foken) who does a lot of our graphic and visual stuff. It was a very daunting process to compile a lot of details but also a reminder of our journey and accomplishments too.
Rustam: The website will have everything there from news, releases, store, competitions, and we will be launching a number of very interesting ideas we are putting together through there too.
When do you plan to activate it?
Magnetude: We plan to activate it, riiiiiiiiiiiiiight… Now!
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