Designer Drugs: R-Rated

By Alif Omar Mahfix  •  in Interview
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Theo was a Med student, and that’s something people wouldn’t expect a DJ to do. What about you, Michael, is there a vocation or something that you originally wanted to do?
M Ever since I was a little kid this was what I wanted to do. I’m into art, I do photography and stuff but I don’t do them much anymore. Now it’s music, that’s what I’m interested in, that’s my main thang.

Theo, you gonna pursue med for real?
T Umm… I don’t know, maybe someday. I kinda lost interest when I saw how corrupt medicine is in the US. Yeah, it’s just that you can’t do what you really need to do to help people; you only get 15 minutes per person and it’s a lot of work and it’s depressing. This is a little bit more fun, I get to travel a lot more. I don’t make as much money per se but it’s a lot more f*ckin’ fun. I’ve always wanted to do this as well, I just never thought it was possible.
M The cool thing about this is I feel like we’re kind of on our own y’know. Yeah, we have to deal with the record label and they suck and we’re dealing with some shit with the lawyers and record labels. For the most part it’s just like us f*ckin’ going from town to town, f*ckin’ playing music and making music when we want so you could pretty much do whatever the f*ck you want.
T Yeah, you feel a lot less like a slave doing this.
M If we didn’t wanna do shows, we could say no and stay home but we wanna do shows, we wanna make music, so it’s pretty open to whatever you wanna do.

About two years ago you guys said you were barely back home in New York, is that still the same now?
M Yeah, but we’re touring a little bit less, but we’re doing better shows, we’re a bit more selective. At that time we were doing like a lot shows, so it was pretty hectic but I think now we’re doing bigger, better shows. The scene was smaller then so we were doing lots of small venues… underground venues, rock venues. It was like four nights a week sometimes, so yeah we were barely home at that point. It was crazy but we’re still super busy, I think we get enough time off like between shows, it’s comfortable.

Were you guys from a rock background?
T Yeah, I had a rock band when I was like 15, before that I did classical piano but it was mostly rock’n’roll stuff.

And how did you transition to dance music?
T Umm… I just got bored of it I guess since I started going to raves and stuff, and doing drugs, and got into the music
M Same. I mean I was into rock music – we were into hip-hop too – obviously everyone in America is and then the whole rave thing happened and we were at the right age and we were like, “Oh f*ck, let’s go to a party.” I was always into the psychedelic music scene, like ‘60s music, and then I went to a rave and I was like, “Oh, this is pretty f*ckin’ psychedelic but it’s contemporary.” It was new so I was really excited about that.

Curious though that the rock scene hasn’t fully embraced the whole dance music trend…
T I think it’s been fully embraced in the US for the most part.
M When we first started doing the Designer Drugs thing, it was very rock influenced. It was all rock remixes, the chord progressions were rock, the bass lines were too, it was all rock and then that sorta died off and went back to trance-y- EDM, stereotypical dance music, which I feel is where the music scene is at now. When we first started, it was definitely a lot of rock influences, all the stuff we were playing were remixes of bands. Then I felt like it was very infused but then I felt like EDM just got big and the rock thing just branched off from dance but at one point I felt like they were pretty intertwined.
T I think most people I know go to dance festivals more than they do rock concerts. It seems to be a taking over in the US for sure. Even Lollapalooza used to be all punk rock and shit.

It’s actually pretty much the same here. At our festivals, the first day is usually the dance stuff and the second day is all the bands, and the second day always have less people for some reason.
M I’m not a huge fan of seeing bands live. Some of my favourite bands I’ve seen them live but I’ve never been a huge fan of rock music live

Why is that?
M I mean if the band is like really good then it’s good but I feel like for the most part especially in this day and age, these bands don’t sit around and play the songs, they just f*cking record it and cut it up. It’s not like seeing The Rolling Stones, those guys can just f*cking play!
T But there are some bands that are really good.
M I’m not like hating on bands or anything but, like getting the sound right, it’s difficult; it’s very difficult to get that correct for a band. You know, you’ve got so many things to mix and you’ve got the space to deal with so it’s difficult. I’ve seen some bands and the sound was horrible, the band was great but the sound was bad. So there are a lot more variables in that.