Yo guys, it's Zman here with Behind The Deckz.
We are at Army of Hardcore in L.A.
I am joined by the one and only raw soldier of the U.S., it's Mrawtek...Mrotek, fuck!
I fucked up already!
Every time! [laughs]
So, how's your trip out here been this time?
Good!
I actually just flew in today, usually I come out a couple days before.
Yeah, just came in today, it's good being back in L.A., it's always a good crowd.
Love it!
So it's actually about a half hour after your set so how do you think the people who are
the hardcore crowd felt what tracks you were bringing out today?
I think it went over really well actually.
Since it is a hardcore crowd, I can kind of push it a little bit harder, a little bit
heavier, than for my other shows and that's fine with me, you know?
I love pushing it a little bit harder and they responded really well, it was a lot of
fun, it was a good-ass set!
Yeah, awesome!
So, you did something really interesting in your set that I filmed a video of that you
guys might have seen by now.
You made a special edit of a track, "Substance Abuse", where you put, in the break...
...Yeah, I chopped my break and moved it forward and I put a metal breakdown in the middle
of it, just some faceless track like some brutal metal breakdown like deathcore.
It was interesting because the metal part kind of broke up the crowd in an interesting
way but then when the drop came back in, for the hardstyle, it definitely amped the energy
up in a cool way.
It was so funny to watch because, as you guys will see, the crowd was just confused like,
"Wait, what do we do with metal?"
James tried getting the mosh going but only a few people were really into it.
The venue didn't like it too much either!
Oh really?
Yeah no, the venue didn't like it.
[laughs]
I didn't even notice that!
Yeah, so certain crowds, I dunno, if you like the metal, let me know and when I play in
your city, I'll drop some more metal shit but, it really depends on the crowd.
That's why I thought I could do it here, but I mean it set up the next hardstyle drop really
nicely and that went over really well.
So, it's something to store away in the bank there.
Oh, absolutely.
Trying to push boundaries in some way.
Alright, so I have to talk about your latest track with Radiance, is it "Higher Revelation"?
"Higher Revelation," yeah.
That's such a tough title for me to remember. [laughs]
Yeah, "Higher Revelation," if you guys have heard the track you'll probably right away
notice that it's got such a strong Spoontech sound and it just blew my mind honestly that
you pushed for that on Dirty Workz and they were like, "Yeah, this is cool!"
Yeah!
So, can you explain that whole process?
Yeah, so I've released songs on Spoontech before.
Me and Arctus did a remix of "Biblical" by Prime Suspects.
We did a mix on the Spooncast and then our very good friend, The Wicked, he's on Spoontech
now, so me and him did a remix of a classic Delete and Vazard track so I have some good
ties with Spoontech.
I'm friends with a lot of guys on Spoontech so huge props to that label.
But yeah, when me and Radiance were talking, we have kind of like a difference in styles,
so it's hard to find a middle-ground a lot of the time.
But, that's kind of the fun in doing a collab is like,
what's that little sweet spot that you both agree on?
We were thinking of something like some old B-Front, some big, classic sounding.
Then I decided to make some gated kicks and Radiance put a bunch of his sounds in and
I'm happy with how it turned out.
Exactly, and I always get so excited when I see you in particular release a new track
because you're so notoriously like "I'm not going to put this out yet."
We joked about this with Paul (Heretik) in the podcast a couple years ago, but you really
stay true to that and it helped you get on Dirty Workz for sure because you only save
the best-of-the-best that you're like, "I want to put this out now."
Yeah, a lot of tracks don't get released but,
most of the time, I know that a track's going to get released.
I just take a long time dialing it in.
That's just my production style but, I dunno, it's worked out so far.
So, sorry for the wait guys!
At the end of the day, as long as we get to enjoy it at some point, I think that's what
is important, right?
And the release schedule is important so I try to not have a long time without tracks,
though it depends on what's going on.
Absolutely, so speaking of releases, you put on a few months ago a cheeky hard bass (edit)
[laughs]
So, what the hell motivated you to put that out?
I know there were some memes at the time going around...
Yeah, like that whole squatting Slavs in tracksuits, that's a thing!
Yeah, it really is!
But you really did it up with your video for that so what got you to go that extra mile
and become a Slav?
Well, Mrotek is Polish so I'm in the Slav family, I am a little Slav, so...
You have the cheeki breeki?
Yeah, exactly I have the gopnik blood coursing through my veins.
But I was at my agent's house and we were just listening to hard bass one night talking
business and he was like, "You should do a remix of a hard bass track" and I'm like,
"I don't know if a remix will happen?"
But I've never done a free track, and I'm coming up on 3,000 likes at the time on Facebook
so I was like, "Oh, free track, that'd be cool, I've never done one yet."
So for the free bootleg, I just picked my favorite hard bass track.
Yeah, I tell some of my friends if I'm ever playing at a club and I can't play hardstyle,
if I ever get booked to do something "club-y," I would just play hard bass the whole time.
So I like the genre and it was funny, so I just made the track in a week or two,
just as a joke.
My agent was like, "Yo, just come over and and let's shoot some shit show video footage
of us squattin' around town."
I'm like, "Alright, cool."
Got some of my friends to do some footage.
I don't know how, but it blew up a little bit which is funny,
it's a joke of a track but, it's fun!
I think that kind of sums up a lot of dance music marketing in general you know?
Because the weirdest shit ends up going viral and nobody can make sense of it, it just happens.
Now, for our Dutch viewers out there, tell me if this is true or not.
I feel like for the "joke tracks" the key is you just have to pick a joke
that the Dutch find funny.
If they think it's funny, you'll be okay, you'll be golden.
I guess the squatting slav thing was funny at least on some level.
Let me know if that's true or not. I want to know. [laughs]
Alright, do you have any other news you want to share, just anything I haven't asked about?
Surely I don't know everything about what you're doing.
Yeah, I've announced a couple times that I have a bunch of collabs in the works so we're
putting the final touches on my collab with Sledgehammers.
I played that tonight, that's Digital Mindz, Tarec, and Riiho.
That will be on their EP on Dirty Workz Anarchy so that's coming out semi-soon.
It's been a long wait for Sledgehammers, they've been talking so long I've just been like "man!"
They have a lot of content and, if it doesn't make waves in the scene,
I give up because it's so fucking good.
It's innovative, it's fucking sweet.
And Tarec, for those of you who don't know, he's actually a Foley artist which means his
job is literally to take weird sounds and make it work.
So bringing that to the studio is such a unique and cool thing, you know?
Yeah, in the "Sledgehammers Studio," they have a vocal booth but they have a board and
chains, metal pieces of scrap, sand, and they just record shit.
We have some Foley in the collab we did, there's a little bit of Foley they did so it's fun and exciting.
That's a good one, I can't announce the other collabs yet but I'm very excited about them.
Just got announced for Escape: Psycho Circus by Insomniac.
That will be in San Bernardino.
So, if you missed this show tonight, don't worry, there's another chance you get to see
Mrotek very soon in L.A.
Any show at the NOS is going to be massive.
It's going to be a massive, huge festival.
I've got a couple other shows coming up but that's basically it.
I'm excited for you guys to hear the new collabs.
They're going to be something special, I think.
Thanks so much for talking and we'll see you guys soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment