Throughout 2011 and beyond, one of the main aims of Azuli is to bring some previously unknown talent to the attention of the world's clubbing community, and fresh talent doesn't come much tastier than the Dutch duo Roul & Doors. With a few big remixes already under their belts, their debut EP on Azuli is primed to do some serious damage on the global stage. Here, they discuss their entry into the world of dance music production, the tools of their trade, and also drop an exclusive mini-mix, which includes some of their forthcoming cuts.
Exclusive 'Roul and Doors' mini mix for Azuli by Azuli Records
How did you guys meet?
Stijn: We met when doing our studies in Maastricht. We were both a member of the same student organization, which had a bunch of commissions you could enroll in. We both chose the DJ commission which gave us the opportunity to play at a lot of very nice (and of course crappy) parties in the night live of Maastricht and neighboring areas.
Roul: It didn’t take us long to realise we had the same views on how to work the crowd and that we also kind of liked the same music. It created a friendship and quickly after that we started producing together.
You both studied at University, for fairly different vocations…why the decision to become producers?
Roul: Well, we are lucky to have found something that we love so much that we wouldn't want to do something else. Of course you need to be realistic though and at least try to finish something which you can always fall back on.
Stijn: A funny fact is that the necessary push to get into music actually came in our last year of study. In 2008, for my International Business Master, I was doing a final thesis on the success of DJs and the influence of networking and their social environment on this. Among others, I ended up interviewing DJ Roog and after the interview I gave him a demo of our track ‘Revelation’. A week later he called back with the question to release it on Hardsoul Pressings and that was the start of our new future.
Will you eventually go and pursue these original career paths?
Stijn: Although at the moment it’s not very big yet, we do run our own company now (RnD Musik), so it has definitely something to do with my field of study. Although I could do many different things with my Business Master, at the moment I don’t see myself working in a typical large corporation environment, unless it’s because of our own company in the future. The freedom to decide about your own daily activities and priorities is just really great.
Roul: At this moment I feel like I'll be working in music for the rest of my life, hopefully that opinion will never change.
You used to promote club nights in Holland too, do you still?
Stijn: Yes, we took a break from it for a little while since we moved from Maastricht to Utrecht last year, but we’re back in Maastricht on the 6th of June with the first party of our new concept called ‘RnD Musik Sessions’. It’s in the Clinique.com club and will feature us and headliner Azuli’s very own Ricky Rivaro.
Roul: It's gonna be awesome!
How did you come to work with Azuli?
Stijn: That’s really because of our friend Ricky Rivaro. I interviewed him too for my thesis and since then we have kept in touch and we have sent him demos. He even visited us in Maastricht a few times and considering that for people in Amsterdam that’s the end of the world, it gave us a good feeling about what we were doing.
Roel: Shortly after that we did a remix for Daniel Bovie & Roy Rox ft. Haze – Preacher which was released on Ricky’s True House Music. Moving to Utrecht created the possibility to meet him more often and in our eyes he kind of became our coach as well as a critical listener. With years of experience he has proved us right ever since. When he became A&R manager for Azuli last year, he introduced us and here we are.
When producing together, do you have specific areas of expertise or do you both get involved in everything?
Roul: We used to do everything together, but this has changed over the years. In the beginning we both wanted to have our separate ideas worked out in the tracks and besides that we wanted to be part of every production stage. However, this is definitely not always the right way to go, because it can be rather frustrating from time to time, making it less fun.
Stijn: Being around each other basically 7-10 hours almost every day now for almost three years you notice more and more who has what qualities. Roul has played piano his whole life and therefore he’s the real musician. More importantly, his ears are just amazing, crucial for sonically good productions. He comes up with the main ideas and then I give feedback and come to the studio to work it out for about 2-3 days a week. I also make sure that everything works fine in the studio. The rest of the time I basically manage the other aspects of our company as DJs and producers on which I in turn get feedback from Roul, such as promotion, finance, contacts & mailing, social media, software research etc. We’re definitely a team, can’t imagine doing this with somebody else.
What is your studio set up?
Stijn: We’re one of the rare species still working on Windows, but with our recent 64 bit update we have absolutely no issues at all. The main set up is Cubase 6, Steinberg-Yahama MR816x audio interface, Adam Ax8 monitors, Yamaha P-85 Digital Piano, Novation X-station, AKAI MPD-32, and the SeX1 mic with isolation screen.
Roul & Doors - Forget / Gita EP by Azuli Records
Roul: The main plugins we use are Omnisphere, Trillian, Sylenth, Fabfilter, Maschine for sampling and for the rest almost everything from Native Instruments. All these developers did an excellent job.
Forget / Gita is already creating quite a buzz and is hotly tipped to be a big summer tune, what was the process, how did the EP come to be?
Stijn: Forget is a collaboration we did with Luke-R, a young, talented producer in Maastricht. He sent us a demo of the record last year and we thought that if we worked the track out properly it could have some potential. Luckily more people felt that way too. It’s a combination of his melody and our production and arrangement. Gita is a typical example of Roul sending me this demo of something he was doing and then me completely feeling the track. For some reason I always try to imagine us playing our tracks to a big audience…I had goosebumps right away hearing the first proper demo, which is a good indication for me, since I also had this with Revelation and Forget.
Roul: Yeah Gita is our Latin banger. We’ve always had something for Latin. It works so well on the dance floor, it makes us happy and it’s fun to make. As you noticed it’s a rather diverse EP. We wanted to let the crowd hear that we are interested in producing different genres of house. We can’t do the same thing every time. We always start with a completely empty production file in order to stimulate creativity.
What’s your biggest ‘back-catalogue’ Azuli track to date?
Roul: That’s got to be Afro Medusa – Pasilda (Haji & Emanuel Edit)
Stijn: Soul Providers – Rise is really great too
Ricky Rivaro tells us one of you is a mean cook. Who is that? What other hobbies/pastimes don’t we know about?
Roul: That’s Doors here. Damn he can cook. We practically live in a restaurant. I can't remember the last time I cooked...
Stijn: Well considering ‘other hobbies’…some things are better left unsaid, aren’t they!? But apart from my interest in cooking I’ve also been interested in sports my whole life. It’s mainly been football, skiing & skateboarding. However, my ankle is pretty messed up because of all of this, so now its gym and cardio. I also like to read books, from Dan Brown to Carlos Ruiz Safon to books about journalism, philosophy and psychology. I do a little designing for our own shirts and obviously listen to loads of music, especially Hip-hop/RnB, Indie-Rock, Soul and of course House (Latin/Progressive/Electro). Oh… and I’m quite an American TV-series freak..
Roul: I'm a social guy, so I go out with friends a lot. I love to dance, for example salsa. As with Stijn, sport is also a big passion of mine. I really like mountain biking, especially on hilly grounds, of which there are a lot here in Holland…not! Besides making music I also work as a personal trainer in a Gym. It's great fun; you meet lots of interesting people and it helps me get my mind off music.
What else do Roul and Doors have in the pipeline?
Stijn: We’re very happy to say…a lot! This year will see the light of at least two more EPs on Azuli as well as our edit of Sidney Samson’s Panorama. We’re also busy with a remix of the legendary house record Hardsoul ft. Fierce Ruling Diva – Self Religion for Defected and look out for collaborations with East & Young and Michael Mendoza along with some serious new peak time tracks we’re hoping to finish somewhere in between all of this!
Roul: We’re also working on some very exciting pop-projects and recently got some very great news for a vocal version of forget as well as for one of our tracks on the second Azuli EP. Unfortunately we can’t elaborate on those at this moment, but we’ll keep you posted! Be ready for Roul and Doors in 2011!
Forget / Gita is out now on Azuli
