This week we interviewed The Phat Crew, a name that has been terrorizing the blog with their aggressive “in your face” sound. The Phat Crew, are a duo based in Switzerland and started out by playing sets at parties. In the recent months they have been coming up with a few remixes and original tracks. Currently waiting for their debut EP “New Game” to be released on Ventuno and with a remix on Redial’s “Venom” and Electrophants scheduled for a release too, they seem to be making some noise in the hard electro scene already! Let’s see what they have to say about all this…
01. Hi guys, would you mind introducing The Phat Crew?
We are Etienne Rohrbach and Valérian Tripet, The Phat Crew! We started this project for fun, we just bought a controller and started recording some massive dope shit mixtapes for fun. It then all just happened, the people really liked our mixtapes and so we started to produce music.
02. You grabbed our attention with your “All I Do Is Party” remix, originally by Partysmartie. A Metalectro track by default (Partysmartie made sure of that by using that great mid-part)! Was that the first Metalectro track you ever did? How did you come up with the idea?
Hahah! “All I Do Is Party” was our first remix, but we still like it. We really liked Partysmartie’s track, so we decided to remix it and yeah, it was for sure the first metalectro track we did – with a massive break to make the crowd mosh like animals! FUCK YEAH!!!
03. You seem to adopt quite a hardcore style of sound and approach. Can you tell us a few things about this, how did it all start and how did you end up with this “in your face” style?
We are both coming from a Metalcore background. Valérian played Battery and me Guitar. We still listen to Metalcore now and some breaks for example are influenced by this kind of music.
04. What are your influences/music backgrounds?
Our influences are for sure Metalcore ( As I Lay Dying , Parkway Drive , August Burns Red ) and also electrotrash and dubstep but we also love the melodic side of the music in every genre. Our favorite artists are F.O.O.L & Trumpdisco. We love the feeling of a beautiful melody leading into a brutal breakdown with a massive distorted bassline.
05. Apparently you collaborated with Circe in your track “New Game”. How was that as an experience and should we expect another collaboration anytime soon? Any big news to give to the readers?
Yeah, we collaborated with Circe for this EP. For us “New Game” is not only a track, it’s an idea! Like the beginning of something new, something big! That’s the reason we wanted someone to sing. We really love the work Circe did and it’s a pleasure for us to have collaborated with her on our EP! We are also going to remix “Anxiety” by Redial as an official remix and Partysmatie’s “Panzerfaust”. We are now open now for collaborations and we’ve received many emails but we were too busy with the EP and all our remixes… So, just send us an email…
06. Back to your sounds, you have been doing quite a few remixes, do you prefer writing original tracks or remixing?
We love remixing , but it’s all about feelings… Producing is hard, the sound comes 100 % from you so you need a bit more time than you need for a remix and we both work a lot actually so it’s quite hard. But we still love producing! =)
07. What would you say is your biggest music achievement/highlight so far?
Hahah! We’ve got little story for you, we are drunk in every gig but this gig was a bit too much. Valérian just vomited before and Etienne vomited during the live… That was awesome! Also, our meeting with Belzebass, F.O.O.L, Haezer and The Boomzers is something worth mentioning.
Highlight… hmm… we think when Haezer started supporting us and when F.O.O.L and The Boomzers played our tracks live! That was pretty awesome!
08. Did you ever play in a rock/metal band?
Hahah! We were expecting this question… Yeah, Valérian played in a Metalcore band and Etienne played the guitar but not in a band! But if we had more time we would certainly love to play in a metalcore band, for sure!
09. If your studio was on fire, what would you save first?
Valérian: James, our luggage.
Etienne : My Camel
10. What do you think about today’s mainstream music?
We think that the music industry is dead but we don’t really care. We are not making music for money, just for pleasure, so it doesn’t matter…
11. Do you believe that an electronic music artist can earn his/her living from music nowadays?
We want to say yes but we think you need to be on the top to live from music. We’re still waiting… Who knows, maybe one day!
12. You’ve been DJ-ing and playing sets for a while now, before you started producing you own music. Is the fact of producing your own music now going to affect or change that you think?
We’ve got the same mentality as when we started our project. We still think we are two drunk bastards, we love vodka you know, without it we play bad lol! We only care about destroying the club and crowd, give the public the things you feel when you play trash music!
13. What are your plans for 2011? (live shows, release, remix etc)
We don’t really know yet… We’re booked every weekend now and soon in other countries as well, so maybe a booking agency and a manager? We still don’t have the time for all those things but we’d love to produce another EP as well as continue to remix. People who ask us for merch from our clothing sponsors, they’re also in our ‘to do’ list.
14. What are you listening to lately? Any tracks/artists you recommend?
Etienne is listening a lot to F.O.O.L and Trumpdisco, his two favorite artists. The track he recommends for everyone to check out is Trumpdisco “Rah Horn” (Draft One) and Haezer “It’s Not Our Fault” ( F.O.O.L Remix ) but they are both unreleased so…;)
Valérian is listening to Partysmartie “Suicide By Cop” and Q.G.’s remix on “Rapid Fire”, originally by Dj Antention.
15. What do you like doing when not in the studio?
We go to church, we read books and we go to bed at 20.00!!!
HAHAH FUCK! We’re always drunk, destroying everything and doing stupid things… We always had incredible history together, it’s amazing! We also love winter sports, we love going skiing with our friends every winter!
16. What do you think about the Metalectro blog and the music featured on it?
Metalectro is a really great idea! These two genres, metal and electro, are awesome to mix! We support the blog and the tracks/artists featured on it…
17. Something else you’d like to mention and we forgot to ask?
No, not really! We hope you will enjoy the exclusive mixtape we made for you. We just want to say thx to all the people who are supporting us, it means a lot to us! We’re also open for bookings and we’re really kind, just contact us! Thanks a lot to all the readers and all the people! The Phat Crew loves you!