Dynamic Dutch duo Lars Dales and Maarten Smeets have, it’s fair to say, smashed it over the past two years. Their stylishly raucous DJ sets, in countries ranging from Canada and the US to Australia and South Africa, are already the stuff of nocturnal legend; so too early Swindle productions on cult labels including Dirt Crew, Freerange and Tsuba.
The Detroit Swindle philosophy revolves around house with both brute edge and honey soul – an intoxicating mix of trademark percussive shuffle, precision drops and engaging melody and atmosphere. Of course, the duo’s reference to Detroit is all about that city’s rich Motown heritage rather than crisp Belleville techno. In a short space of time, Dales and Smeets have woven this historic inspiration into an innovative house blueprint that is making ever louder, ever more positive noise in the ultra-competitive, contemporary electronic landscape.
Star on the dazzlingly bright rise, Detroit Swindle plays Defected In The House at Booom Ibiza next week alongside Deetron, Agoria and Mark Fanciulli – it should be an amazing party.
Gents, promise us next Tuesday will be amazing!
LD: We’re really looking forward to playing. The line-ups have been great so far, and we’re looking forward to playing with Deetron again, he’s a cool cat and plays some amazing tunes.
How do you two prepare for the stage?
LD: It depends if it’s a live or DJ show. If we play live, the week in advance is usually filled with jam sessions and getting new music implemented in the set. For DJ sets, it’s always a bit of a fight to decide which records to bring, and which ones to leave out of the bag.
MS: Once that’s done, we always try to get to the club a bit ahead of our set time to catch the vibe, get into the mood and discuss what kind of stuff to play. After that, it’s all improvisation.
How do you think Ibiza fits in to the contemporary club landscape?
MS: It’s a weird one. The northern side of the island is relaxed and beautiful, and the south side can be complete mayhem. We’re actually trying to stay away from all the politics and weird things happening there, and just pick the parties we’d really like to play and look for the right dates, but maybe all those things need to be there to give the island the bite it needs.
Talking of bite, your sound has it in bundles. But how do you sum it up?
MS: It’s funny how people want to categorise things, or make comparisons. Sometimes that works well and it’s flattering, sometimes, well...we have no clue what people mean. So to steer clear of musical genres, let’s put it this way – it is house music with enough bite to get the guys going, and enough soul to get the girls going.
It’s also house with an affiliation to the recent Nineties revival....
LD: It wasn’t really what we planned or tried to do, but our music did get linked to the whole revival of Nineties house and we’ve certainly had an extra boost to the attention we’ve gotten so far because of it. As with every genre, there’s good, original stuff and there’s tracks that really lack any kind of identity and don’t add anything in particular. Trends are fine, now there’s house and the next thing is probably already waiting to pop up and a lot of people will jump on the bandwagon to get some attention while they can. We really don’t focus on trends, but rather think about the kind of growth we want to make and how we can expand our sound. Our biggest challenge is to add something that is new, that is original, but still very much Detroit Swindle.
Did you ever worry in the beginning that people would misinterpret your name?
MS: Not really, but we knew there’d be people that would think that this is a kind of ‘cultural appropriation’ and as such something fake or bad. We even spotted a blog where this whole discussion was going on that we’re earning money over the backs of unemployed people in Detroit. You can’t blame anyone for not reading our bio properly, or actually thinking about why we use the name - not for Detroit techno or house, but for funk, soul, disco and later on hip-hop - and what the word ‘swindle’ actually means. It’s something we don’t really want to focus on; it’s part of the game. There’s always gonna be people talking shit about you; if it’s not about your name, it’ll be about something else. The thing is we love disco, funk and soul, the whole Motown thing and that’s why we started this, so it’s our way of paying respect to a musical era and genre that has meant so much to us.
What do you each bring to the Swindle table?
MS: We’re very different, but we have the same vision, the same ideas. We usually start our sketches by ourselves, and then work out tracks together. With our live set, Lars does most of the chords and messes around with all our samples and stuff, I do the drum computers and live percussion. It’s a fun combo and we’re having more fun improvising each time we play.
Your studio career actually started by accident right?
LD: We didn’t think our music was good enough to put out, but our friends did. So one of them just sent over the demo’s he had to Huxley and that’s how it all started. We’re happy that it all happened the way it did, because who knows? Otherwise we would have still been jamming in our studio and not sharing any music with loads of people that happen to really, really enjoy it.
How do you feel about your music-making today?
MS: Every track we deliver is one that we have to be happy with; otherwise we’ll just not put it out or will work on it until it’s good. That said, if you look back on our catalogue and our earlier tracks, it’s interesting to see the progression in style and production quality. We’ve come a long way and we’re learning every day. I guess that’s the same with everything, not just with music. You learn, and you change, and you move on, but you need the first step to make the next.
So what are Detroit Swindle’s bold next steps?
MS: We’re working on loads of new material and we’ve got a couple of remixes coming out. We just finished a remix for Hercules & Love Affair which is out, and one for Chet Faker on Future Classics. Still to come is a remix for Romanthony’s track with Daft Punk, ‘Too Long’. That’s something we’re really excited about. Also, we’ve got a cool project with our own label [Heist Recordings] where each artist of the [label’s] first year is remixing another [label mate]. We’re remixing The Organ Grinder and Max Graef is remixing us. And there will be a new Detroit Swindle EP out somewhere by the end of this year, but what or where is still a question. It might be a collection of cheeky disco edits or a full EP. So many choices to make…
But that’s not all is it?
LD: We are quite busy at the moment but I think we always are! But this week might have been a bit busier than average because we’re finishing a remix, we just had a live set that we had to do a lot of preparation for on a big festival in Holland and right now, we’re filming a sort of mini-documentary with VICE. Oh, and we’re still not fully recovered from our jetlag since we’re just back from our latest US tour… Other than that, everything is really relaxed...!
Words: Ben Lovett
Detroit Swindle plays Defected In The House at Booom Ibiza next week alongside Deetron, Agoria and Mark Fanciulli - click for tickets
