Truth are about to embark on a new conquest. Care to join?
With three albums already to their name, the established bass music duo are gearing up to release their latest achievement on one of dubstep’s hottest labels. Having worked hand-in-hand with the Disciple team in the past, it was only natural that the prospect of a more in-depth project would come down the pipeline sooner rather than later.
Very rarely are we presented with a piece of work that seamlessly spans such a wide variety of sounds and genres, but Truth accomplish that feat with ease – and to nobody’s surprise might we add. The Wilderness of Mirrors LP cautiously navigates you through a musical journey unlike any other. From first to last, each one of the 14 recordings on the forthcoming album rolls out something completely different. In short: it’s marvelous.
Songs featured on the album are slated to be distributed one-by-one in the coming weeks. So while technically there is no official release date, the Wilderness of Mirrors LP will be fully available by May 19th. To help pass the hours between now and then, do yourself a favor and read up on both of the guys behind Truth. Tristan and Dre were kind enough to take some time out of their schedules to give us the down low on recent developments, and following our engaging discussion, we think it’s safe to say that all the hype is definitely justified.
New album is due out soon boys. What’s the word?
We’re excited! It’s been such a massive process, and now it’s finally time to unleash the music on the world! We’re both so stoked on how things have turned out, and the select few we have played the whole thing to have had nothing but great reactions. We’ve by far put the most effort into this release out of anything we have done to date. So just excited to see where it goes and how it’s received.
Why team up with Disciple for direct support on this release?
We’ve done a few track releases with Disciple over the last couple of years and our fanbase has embraced them, that gave us confidence that our fans would get behind a Truth / Disciple album. Disciple has a very strong team of people, and some really cool ideas and strategies… they are very forward thinking and have become well established in a very short period of time. Working with them has let us really focus on just doing the music and making the best possible album, that’s 100% been our focus while they can worry about marketing and all the other peripheral stuff around releasing a body of work.
Deep, Dark & Dangerous is a passion, we love where the label is going. But it’s also still a baby (albeit with big ambitions). We’re pretty blown away with the music we’re releasing on DDD in the next 6 months, some incredible stuff and working with some of our favourite artists! The cool thing with Disciple is that even though Deep, Dark & Dangerous is a completely independent entity, they still also back us fully with that as well. For example, when the Wilderness of Mirrors 12″ comes out, it will be released through DDD as we have all the Vinyl side of things on lock already.
Please give everyone a general overview of the Wilderness of Mirrors LP.
We were certainly wanting the album to be a balance of the kinds of music that we are into. It was all about making and releasing stuff we love. You can try to plan ahead, but really, when creating it’s just as much about the vibe and how you feel at the time. There is a balance between grime and dubstep, as there are a couple of grime artists featured on there. There are some classic deeper, darker dubstep tunes, some more heavy, some more reecey dubstep and then slightly trap-influenced stuff (Soldier for example).
With the “grimey” tracks, War (Ft. Killa P) we see as a nod to 2007 Skream. Lyrical Murderer was made the morning after a huge earthquake and tsunami evacuation in New Zealand – the track actually samples the sirens from that night – so it was all about channelling that fear. It just happened that D Double E really felt that beat and was with Dre in LA at the time. There are also a couple of of half-step DNB beats, tracks like Echo Chamber and Monster. Jack Ripper is quite jungly and oldskool sounding. Weird and Inside Your Thoughts probably border more on Trip Hop than anything else.
What qualities do you desire in a vocalist? Describe your MC selection process.
Qualities we look for? Something unique and interesting. Good energy. Catchy.
We worked with a lot of different vocalists in preparing for this album. Some of the decisions were easy, aka, they never sent us a final vocal. I don’t feel like we really had a strict process though as far as selection, it was more organic. We’d record people who happened to be passing through town. Or when Dre was last in London for a few weeks he recorded a lot of vocals, but it was almost a case of “who’s about and wants to come jam.” Some of course, like D Double E or Killa P are legends we’d always wanted to work with, and when the opportunity arose we really jumped on it!
Of the vocals we didn’t use, it’s not a case of not liking or loving it, but maybe the track was too similar to another we already had. Or maybe we thought it would work better on an EP or single.
Tell us everything there is to know about The Moon and Endless Universe.
The Moon was the very last track we made for the album. The two of us got together after about 3 months apart in different countries. It was about 2 days after Christmas, and we had one or two days to make music. That one just fell together totally naturally, it just felt right the whole time while making it. Once it was made we knew we’d found the last missing piece to make the album complete!
Endless Universe was a very different process. A lot more laboriously put together, we went back and forth with it online for awhile. From the moment we had the first half of the track complete it became a tour and gig favourite for us! In fact, it was a very well gig-tested, half-track for literally 6 months. Toward the end of last year we decided that we had to include it on the album and expanded the idea into a full blown piece, but it still wasn’t right. It took a lot of tweaking, addition of vocals, subtraction of vocals, trying other ideas, going back to the original ideas etc. etc., before we finally got it right.
Run That is almost unlike anything else on the production. Why incorporate this track into the mix?
We really like the step up in energy that Run That adds. It’s noticeable because of where it appears in the playlist as well. Endless Universe comes after some slightly deeper stuff, and then Run That steps the vibe up yet another notch. It’s still 140 bpm, but all the percussion is what gives it the faster feel.
We’re hoping that each track on the album has a different feel to any of the others, while still making sense as a coherent whole. Juxtaposition, point of difference, tension and release are very important to us musically. It was a lack of any noticeable difference between tracks that killed brostep as a genre for example, it just became this bland flavourless soup.
When you need to get your mind off music, how do you escape?
Wait, what? There’s life outside music? The two of us have very different approaches to this.
Tristan: I love to nerd the fuck out for a couple of hours a week and play this rather complicated table-top wargame with Star Wars ships – it’s called “X Wing Miniatures Game” if anyone doesn’t know what to get me for Christmas. I love it because it’s totally immersive, stupidly complex, and I get to play with cool spaceships that go “pew pew”.
Dre: I’m a big foodie; when I’m not touring I’m usually mobbing around different food establishments, trying all the different flavors. I love to cook too, I also collect toys – mainly figurines from the 80’s like Masters Of The Universe, Transformers and ‘Gi Joe”. I’m big into walking around and exploring new places, so when I get a chance to have an extra day on a tour stop, I usually take it.
Let’s play some word association with some of my personal favorites from the Deep, Dark, & Dangerous imprint.
– Arkwright
Tristan: Pure bassweight. Sub shaker.
Dre: Bass assassin.
– DMVU
Tristan: “Spicy Habanero” – DMVU just oozes talent.
Dre: Crazy cat man who has been locked in his basement for many years.
– Kloudmen
Tristan: Consistently heavy, yet also drenched in emotion.
Dre: Sweden’s greatest music export (after Ace Of Bass of course)
Does operating as a duo ever complicate matters?
Honestly, it’s not that difficult. When we disagree about something, we tend to resolve it pretty easily. Perhaps the hardest thing is that we are in different countries and timezones, so sometimes it can be hard to get on a call every day.
On the flip, it’s super-rewarding. We bring different ideas and influences to the table, but still get hyped on the same stuff as each other. We’re able to bounce ideas off each other, so we don’t really get stuck in an internal battle-with-self when making music. We’ve also found that because we often do shows separately, one of us can be finishing off music for the tour, while the other is travelling and playing the beats!
In an ideal world we’d play all gigs together, but there’s the fact we live in different hemispheres and gig promoters aren’t always prepared to fly both of us out.
Hypothetical situation: A disgruntled individual storms into the green room and demands that you both don helmets/headgear for your performance that evening. What would you choose to wear?
Tristan: I’d bring a diving bell helmet, because that’s about as Deep, Dark & Dangerous as it gets!
Dre: I’d put on an Octopus costume that spits slime into the crowd out of its cycloptic eyeball.
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