SOFA SO GOOD H
Hard Rock Sofa are the Russian duo clocking up huge electro house hits, remixes and plays from the stadium DJ bigwigs. With Las Vegas residencies and support slots on the Swedish House Mafia’s farewell tour, their ubiquity seems assured... Words: IAN ROULLIER
ard Rock Sofa’s big break came in 2011 when Axwell signed the Russian duo to his
Axtone label. The aptly-titled ‘Blow Up’, an anthemic collaboration with St. Brothers, was the fruition of years of hard work, determination and profile building for Alexander Shapovalov and Denis Chepikov. “We got big support from Swedish House Mafia and many other famous DJs — it was a great step forward,” says Denis, alluding to the props they’ve received from everyone from David Guetta and Afrojack to Above & Beyond and Tiësto.
Hailing from Smolensk in Western Russia, Hard Rock Sofa have been plying their trade as DJs and producers since 2005. “At that time, we were under the influence of Daft Punk and ‘80s music, so our music sounded like French house,” says Denis. But it’s the past two years, and their switch to an audaciously full-on blend of progressive house and electro house, that have
HEAR ME ROAR! I
Californian producer Jeff Montalvo, aka Seven Lions, has merged trance sonics with dubstep beats ‘n’ drops to forge his own deadly, big room subjugating sound — and he’s poised to roar into the upper echelons of dance royalty in 2013... Words: TIM STARK
n the valley of the dance producer, words like “hybridization” and “cross genre pollination” are king. For Jeff Montalvo, such phrasings ring far
truer than most. To box-and-ship the 25-year-old Californian’s sound as dubstep would be as much a disservice as a misnomer. Trance-step, prog-step and glitch-hop — likewise, all significant oversimplifications. Montalvo took to his debut production (and breakout moment) with the type of producer-sans-frontières mindset that marked the early studio-ware of Skrillex, Deadmau5 and Afrojack. With his top-to-bottom reimagining of Above & Beyond’s ‘You Got To Go’, he drew as much from the chill-out, breakbeat and trance quarters as he did from dubstep. That’s a lot of balls to keep in the air at one time. But juggle them with absolute precision he did, arriving with something as innate and uncontrived as it was intuitive and downright danceable.
The genesis point for this fresh-minded studio perspective came courtesy of a distinctly non-dance upbringing. With punk and metal bands lighting the way throughout his school years, Jeff didn’t see the inside of a mix-comp cover or nightclub until 2007. Reference-wise, that counted out the first 20-odd chapters of dance music’s ‘manual’, which, when you think about it, is an intriguingly uncluttered
standpoint to produce from. Last spring’s arrival of the ‘Days To Come’ and ‘Polarize EPs’ saw a sea change again. Never being a slave to dubstep, he used it as an often-present element as opposed to a foundation. Drum patterns morphed from 4/4 to two-step and back, all in the space of five minutes. Spawning a Zane Lowe Hottest Track In The World with vocal collaboratrix Shaz Sparks, ‘Below Us’ from ‘Polarize’ ensured no further convincing was necessary. Trance music’s upper echelon came knocking… and then hammering. This skewed Seven Lions’ stylistic barometer once again. Alternating buzz-sawing dubstep devices with rug-pull ambient sequences, synth-trance and keenly crafted melodics, Paul van Dyk, Tritonal, A&B (again) and others became beneficiaries of some very, very different remixes.
As for Seven Lions’ immediate future — know this: if a workable pigeonhole for his music is ever successfully coined, likely Jeff Montalvo will have already recorded something to undermine it. Stay safe and file under “dance”.
truly placed their star in the ascendant. Among the scores of original productions and remixes they’ve released to date, they’ve regularly hooked up with fellow Smolensk locals, Swanky Tunes, most notably for their remix of The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ on Sander van Doorn’s Doorn Records, which has now garnered nearly 2.5 million YouTube views. “They’re our good friends and Alexander is also the cousin of Vadim from Swanky Tunes,” says Denis. Last year’s brooding, building ‘Quasar’ saw Hard Rock Sofa score another Axtone release — gaining an airing at Swedish House Mafia’s huge Madison Square Garden gig — and their profile was further boosted by their recent ‘Big Room Mix’ of David Guetta’s ‘Just One Last Time’. As for 2013? Expect to hear even more from the duo as they support Swedish House Mafia for some of their farewell shows, plan their Ibizan assault and continue to play alongside EDM royalty as residents at XS in Las Vegas.
djmag.com 021
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70