VIRTUS //

Hi Gents, thanks for taking the time to chat with us at Virtus. How are you both doing and where in the world are you right now?

Hey guys we're great actually ! We're currently in our studio in Maastricht, our hometown in the Netherlands.

Can you tell us a bit about how the duo Hush & Sleep come about?

We've met at a techno party through a mutual friend and we discovered we had the same vision and passion in music. So that's when we decided to team up and start this project.

How did you come up with the name? Who's Hush and who's Sleep?

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That's a question we get asked a lot ! Well in the beginning we started with a much softer style of music so we tried to find a fitting name. The idea behind it was that you could dream away on our music into a different place and time, So Hush & Sleep. Currently this is a bit less fitting tho since we've developed our sound quite a bit but the name stuck !

Do you guys have any musical background, such as a being enrolled on a music production course in the past or are you both just self-taught?

We both have a background in rock music, having played in different bands when we where younger. Frankie played drums and Tom played guitar. Then we started to get interested in electronic music and we just started fiddling around, looking for tutorials and basically just turning knobs to see what it did. During the years we've gathered some advice from other people in the scene but apart from that everything is just self-taught.

Where do you draw influences from when working in the studio?

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It depends really, sometimes we go into the studio with a certain emotion because of something that happened and we need to let some frustrations out. This translates in a more aggressive sound. But we also do love the emotional side of Techno. Since we love to listen to many styles of music i think here and there we pick something up that we like and translate this into our own tracks. It can vary from Classical music to metal.

Can you tell us a little bit about your studio setup?

We work on a very simple setup (Two monitors a midi keyboard and a soundcard +laptop). Since we work mostly inside our DAW (ableton) But we have a couple of pieces of hardware we like to hook up every now and then.

What is one piece of hardware or VST you just can't live without?

We really love the Arturia VST's, they all sound so nice. But what we simply can't do without is ValhallaRoom Reverb. It has become such a major thing in the developments of our synth sounds. 

Your label Ellora has been around now for a few years, can you tell us a little bit about the label and what kind of sound you guys like to push out there?

We started our label with the vision to have upcoming artists release their music on our own platform with a sound that fits ourselves as well. It's hard for unknown talent to get a spot on a big label (this is what we also experienced ourselves). So that was our main motivation, plus so that we'd always have a platform to release our own music on.

If you could give one piece of advice to any aspiring producer, what would it be?

Work hard, don't give up and stick to your own sound. You will get rejected 9/10 times but the one time you will get into something it's a huge step ahead.
Make the music you love to make, don't fit a certain style cause you want an easy score.

Any producers right now you feel the world should be keeping an eye on?

We would lie if we wouldn't include ourselves in this question haha ! But we really love what our friend Rudosa is doing, he's going hard!

You've had numerous releases now on Etruria beat, how did the relationship and Luca Agnelli come about?

We've sent him some demo's since we loved his sound and the label as well. Later on we met at a festival here in the Netherlands and we kept in great contact ever since. Luca's always open to listen to our new stuff and we're very grateful for that.

Where can we catch you playing in the near future and any new releases coming soon you can shed some news on yet?

We'll be playing on a few small festivals in the summer, but after festival season we have a club residency at Complex Club in Maastricht, one of the Biggest techno Clubs in the Netherlands. Besides that we're booked on a couple of big events in the Netherlands but we can't reveal that just yet. Releases wise there's a big EP coming up on Virgo with an Ilario Alicante Remix and of course there will be some new work coming up on our Ellora label. That's all we can share so far ;)