To call D:Fuse and Mike Hiratzka ambitious is an understatement. Releasing "Skyline Lounge," a genre-bending self-penned album fusing electronic and live instrumentation with vocalists including Kristy Thirsk, DJ Rap, and MC Flint is quite a gamble. But launching a new digital-only label Lost Angeles Recordings as the platform might just be their first step to world domination.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: How did the two of you hook up and start working together?
D:Fuse: I was actually a big fan of Hiratzka's stuff and I was
playing a lot of his stuff. We had hung out one night and I said
let's get together and do this remix for My Life With The Thrill Kill
Kult. When we got together, we realized that we had a lot in common
musically and also had an idea of where we wanted to go with it. We
work really well together, so it was just one of those chance
happenings.
RS: Did the XM radio show also came from that initial meeting?
Mike Hiratzka: Yes, it sort of developed. We did that first remix
together and then we started preparations for a mixed compilation. We
were talking about it and he wanted to do the whole People 3 CD live
- incorporating more live instrumentation into the show and record it
live in San Francisco. After we did the live show, we really wanted
to extend that into more studio production.
D:Fuse: Basically I called him out of the blue and I said that I
think a lot of people seem to a little bored with dance music and what
do you think about us getting together and basically doing a full
album. Mike had the same idea that it gets so difficult when it comes
to house and progressive house because a lot of times it's extremely
predicable. We wanted to shake things up just a little bit and we
both had the same kind of idea to do an album.
Mike Hiratzka: We both play instruments. He's a great drummer and I
have a background playing bass and keyboards. We felt like we could
bring a lot of organic quality and different sonic textures to studio
projects and that on an album we could really explore adding that live
instrumentation in. After we had seen how it translated into a live
show, with the phenomena and a lot more crowd interaction, we knew
that people could really relate when they can actually see you playing
what they're hearing. It's like going to a concert, but at the same
time presented within the realm of a DJ set. That really provided us
with kind of the incentives to really want to explore how that would
translate this into writing it as a full album.
RS: So that laid the groundwork for the CD and the goal is to
bring the live instrumentation in your live performances and actually
doing an artist album, which is so rare in dance music.
D:Fuse: There's a lot of DJs out there that put out an artist album
but at the end of the day it's just a collection of club songs. We
wanted to take it away from dance tracks and actually write songs with
vocal hooks. There's only two songs on the whole album that don't have
some sort of vocal on it. That draws people in and gives the album an
identity which is what we're really going for.
Mike Hiratzka: It helps people relate to the song on a level that
will take it beyond the few weeks or a month when a track is hot and
then it's gone out of peoples' consciousness. We wanted to deliver
something that people would hopefully want to look into again and
again and songs that they can identify with and have something that
sticks with them.
RS: When you're working with vocalists, do you usually write a
track and have the vocalist write the lyrics or do you go to the
vocalist with the lyrics already written?
D:Fuse: We always write all the lyrics and the vocalists express
themselves with their voice. We had an exception on this album as
we're really happy to work with Kristy Thirsk. We gave her the music
for one of the tracks and she came back with the vocal and the lyrics.
She had it locked up and I remember Mike and I were both calling each
other when we got the demo she had sent and saying that we couldn't
believe this song she had just wrote. That would be one of the songs
that was a different situation but we're both lyricists from way back
and so we both really like saying our own things and then having it
sung through somebody else. We do our own vocals ourselves, it just
depends on what's best for the song.
RS: What was it like recording your own vocals for this album,
because that's something you don't see a lot?
D:Fuse: Lots of correction on mine.
Mike Hiratzka: Vocal processing, vocal processing. We work with
vocals quite a bit in studio projects, so for us it was really about
trying to find whatever vocals really compliment the music. Each song
is different - whether it was kind of more like a small hook like "I
See Light" or "Sometimes" which is more of a repeated chorus with some
different harmony parts and things thrown in to give it some dynamic
changes throughout the song. As opposed to something like
"Perfection" where we both had ideas and just figured out what worked
on the track.
D:Fuse: It was one of the things where we had to really keep going
back to each other and checking ourselves a lot through the process.
I think it's really good that Mike and I both have a lot of years
behind us working with other musicians and writing music because we
were both able to sit back and check our egos at the door. That is
absolutely key for the process because there would be times like with
"Perfection" when I came to Mike and I'd go, 'here's a vocal I did.'
Mike said 'it's cool but it would sound a lot better if a woman was
singing this song.' Sometimes there was a vocal element in there and
I'd say 'Mike, I don't think your voice sounds that good, let's make
the process just a little bit different.' It's the fact that we can
be that honest with each other and not take offense to it, knowing
that we're writing from the heart with our best intentions to have the
best sound to come out of the album and not just trying to put one of
us in the forefront of the other one.
