Global bassist duo Baja Frequencia announce 10th anniversary EP Fast & Purrious, featuring new track 'Kapepela' featuring them. Wanny S King, in addition to the singles 'Hotchip' and the Chocolate Remix collaboration 'La Caracúlica' which will be released on November 3 on all platforms.
We have had the pleasure of interviewing them and this has been the result.
Firstly, congratulations on the release of 'Fast & Purrious'! Before we get into that, can you tell us a little about your experience? Where are you from and how did you get into music?
Hi and thanks! We are Baja Frequencia and we are based in Marseille, France. We started playing music almost 20 years ago as musicians, myself (Azuleski) as bass guitar player, and Goodjiu as drummer. Then we met in a Dj's collective/soundsystem called Massilia Hi-Fi in which we organized parties and raves. It's in this collective that we started to do some tropical parties and created our musical journey as Baja Frequencia.
Can you give us a brief overview of the EP and its inspiration?
Fast & Purrious was made using only hardware, so it sounds more "electronic" than what we used to produce. It still has the tropical flavors that are our identity, but in a more technoid way. It's definitely more inspired by certain artists like Prodigy and Chemical brothers, who were among our first experiments in electronic music at the time, but also by more contemporary influences like the South American nu-club scene, such as the label Hiedrah Club de Baile, Naafi, AGVA etc..
What was the creative process like for 'Fast & Purrious'? How did the EP come together from concept to completion?
When it comes to composing the EP, we decided to go for a more creative and raw process on analog machines. The tracks on this EP are the result of many hours of research and jamming on synthesizers, Grooveboxes and loopers with some electronic percussion and some small synths, looking for sounds and vibrations. And to reinforce the unity of sound color on the entire EP, we added a number of samples recorded during our tour of Europe and South America.
Then when we had a few good patterns and were happy with them, we made a pool of drum patterns, percussion and leads that grooved well together and built our track “Fast & Purrious” around that.
Any personal favourites or tracks that have unique stories behind them?
Ah, it's hard to choose haha! But Kapepela might be the favorite. Actually Wanny S King, who sings on the track, is from Congo and we met him because a friend of ours was working in Nigeria and met him there, then helped him come to Europe. Reggae MC for many years, he sent us a voice he'd recorded on one of our very first tracks and we loved it but we wanted to refresh the beat backward. So when we produced the Kapepela beat, we thought it was the right opportunity for us to use that voice so he re-recorded it and that's how this sound finally came about.
How is your sound evolving? What artists and genres do you like to mix at the moment?
Our sound evolves at the same time as what you could call a mix between the nu-club scene, the Internet scene and Global Bass Music. A mix of a lot of influences, I think a lot of artists and people these days are used to listening to a lot of different things depending on their mood etc, and it’s the same for us and you can feel all these influences in our tracks and mixes. At the moment, we're really into mixing the kind of artists who mix different universes in their tracks, artists like Dj Florentino, El Plvybxy, CRRDR, Joao Lagrima de Ouro and labels like Tratratrax, Maloca Records; Hiedrah etc.
How do you think your music influences or impacts its listeners?
We try to be like promoters for all of this underground scene that we love and just talked about before. So yes, we hope to be like "mind openers" for our listeners and invite them to dig a little deeper into this nu-club scene.
Has that sound changed much in recent years? What is your musical criterion in your latest work?
Yes, I think a whole new generation of artists has grown up with lots of different influences and this has created such a creative music scene that it has changed the approach to music (electronic or otherwise) in many ways, and you can feel this in some of the more mainstream artists like Rosalia. And right now our criteria are not based on a "code" attached to a specific style of music, but more on vibrations and groove. That's why it's always difficult to put a specific genre or style into our sound, because it can't be classified as a specific style.
There are a couple of interesting collabs on the record, how did those come about, and how do you think they added to the overall vision?
Yes, on this album we chose to minimize our collaborations (the previous EP we released was all collaborations). On this one we wanted to be more instrumental, with only two featurings : the first one with Wanny S King we were just talking about, and the second with our friend Chocolate Remix from Argentina. We explained how the first one came about, and for "La Caraculica" feat. Chocolate Remix, we had already worked with her on our previous album and we really liked working with her. So when we produced the reggaeton beat, we immediately thought of her to sing on it and we loved what she sent us! I think these two tracks kind of define the type of artist we like to hear, on the one hand an African artist doing more reggae-dancehall vibes and on the other a South American artist more into the reggaeton vibe but in a more militant way.
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