Dusky

You guys have been producing together as Dusky for a few years now. How did you meet and what first inspired you to work together? Alfie: We met at sixth form college. We were both into producing and DJing and early on messed around with collaborating together, along with a few other mates as well. We found we had good complementary skills and interests within production, and so kept working on more and more music. Back then, we were mostly working on drum and bass and breakbeat.

You’ve also recently made the switch to releasing music on your own record label, 17 Steps, starting with the Love Taking Over EP. How have you found this process? Are there plans ahead to work with other artists, or will you be sticking to your own material? Nick: It’s been great - it’s something we wanted to do for a long time but didn’t have the opportunity or profile to do so. The next EP is from another artist – Christian Piers, aka A1 Bassline and one half of Laszlo Dancehall. It’s a killer EP and has been going down a treat in our sets.

Yoohoo has been released for a few months now. How have you found the response to the record? Alfie: The response has been awesome, lots of people seem to have been liking, it which is great. It’s also been interesting to see the reaction change from when we first played it to nowadays, when a lot more people are familiar with it. It’s definitely a big moment in our sets.

Have you found yourselves moving towards the more anthemic sound on Yoohoo as a natural progression alongside playing bigger gigs and venues? Nick: It’s difficult to say. We’ve definitely been releasing quite a lot of anthemic tracks, but in addition we’ve always produced deeper tracks and harder techno-based tracks too. We plan to keep that up and when possible, we play longer sets, so even in the bigger venues we still get a chance to play some different styles of house and techno.

What’s one piece of studio gear you couldn’t live without? Alfie: We do everything in the box, so it would have to be a particular set of plugins. Waves comes to mind as some of our most used processing plugins.

What’s been your favourite track so far in 2015? Nick: Erol Alkan – Sub Conscious (Tin Man Remix). It starts really dark but becomes very euphoric when the pianos start.