Deep dark bass meets heaven trap in the new EP from the LA-based producers.
Slander and NGHTMRE have emerged as some of LA’s leading beatmakers. (Official sign of You’ve-Made-It Status: 3 tracks from their new EP premiered on set this past weekend at Coachella). In their own projects, both look to break down genre and sound barriers. Together, their work explores the sonic geography of Los Angeles: it’s gritty, dark, and crazy exuberant, in equal measure.
Nuclear Bonds is their first official EP. Your first listen is here. Pay what you want to stream or download the Nuclear Bonds Bundle, featuring four tracks and eleven remixes from Ghastly, Party Thieves, Kayzo, J Louis, JumoDaddy, and more.
We caught up with Slander and NGHTMRE to talk about creative bonds, building beats, and what it’s like to see your song breakout at a major festival.
When did you start working together? What inspired this collaboration?
We both started at Icon Collective in June 2013 and became friends right away. We didn't get to work on a project together until December 2013, when we created our remix of Showtek's 'We Like To Party,' which has now reached over 4 million plays. Ever since then we have always worked closely together sharing ideas, feedback and doing sessions weekly.
"This is about the idea of pushing the boundaries of certain genres as far as they could go."
The Nuclear Bonds EP is a project we had been talking about for a year before we started. We officially started the sessions in December 2014 and worked for about 3 months on it. We derive a lot of our inspiration from our friendship; the process of working together. We based the EP on the idea of pushing the boundaries of certain genres as far as they could go.
When it comes to working together, what’s your process like?
Our process is a seamless flow of switching control. Once one person runs out of ideas we switch, or if one of us is struck with a flash of inspiration we let that flow, and let it run its course. This technique has allowed us to finish tracks in about half of the time.
You’re both based in LA. How has the city impacted your sound?
Los Angeles is a city of competition, especially in music. Since we know there are so many other producers doing what we do, it pushes us to be more experimental and take more risks.
Beyond geography, what (or who) influences you? What themes are you looking to explore in production sessions?
With this EP, we were influenced by Skrillex, DJ Snake, RL Grime and GTA.
"The one constant theme we always try to achieve, though, is a combination of the feels + the turn up."
We always want a track to make you feel something before the climax.
What’s been your approach to distribution? What matters when it comes to sharing work with your fans?
Up to this point, most of our releases have been free downloads. We’ve stuck with this model because we want our music to reach as many people as possible. What matters most is that our music is easily accessible to our fans. That’s why we also post every single track to SoundCloud, so our fans can stream our songs.
The main reason we chose to release our first EP through BitTorrent is because it's a unique distribution point. The music industry is changing so rapidly everyday, we thought it would be a good idea to try something different, something new.
This past year’s been crazy for you guys. Best moment of 2015 so far? What should we expect next?
This year has been a whirlwind of awesomeness. For 2015, the best moment so far has been hearing 3 songs from the EP get played at Coachella by Flosstradamus, DJ Snake and Alison Wonderland before they were even released! Up next you can expect new original solo productions, a few official remixes and lots of touring this summer!