A Few Words with Filthy Dukes

We recently had the opportunity to chat with one of our favorite DJs/artists Filthy Dukes via email to catch up on their new album and summer plans. The boys are stoked to be playing the mainstage on kick off night of the Wireless Festival alongside Basement Jaxx!  Be sure to catch Filthy Dukes at the festival (wish I was there) this weekend at London’s Hyde Park, full line-up can be seen HERE. Enjoy the insightful Q&A and MP3’s below.

Everyone who is creating and writing about current music is having an increasingly difficult time categorizing a lot of the music that is being made today. I would like to know where you feel that Filthy Dukes falls on the grid, feel free to make up a new “genre category” for us all to use!
Yes it’s a really hard question to answer, I would say both on our dj sets and as a band we are fairly schizophrenic. Nonsense in The Dark is a combination of kraut-rock, disco, house, electronica & pop. I guess overall it is a pop album, but it has become very cool to call your music pop, like its some sort of ironic statement of difference, I really don’t mean it like that.

There is no irony in our music, its fun and we made it to make people dance so that is why it is pop…but that doesn’t mean that the creative drive was simply to please people. You have to have ideas too. There is also a very different side to our album from the singles that have been released, it is quite dark in places.  Okay so that is as clear as mud I guess but there is no snappy answer to what we make.

Do you feel that remixing tracks for other artists takes away from Filthy Dukes’ own projects?
I think we used to feel like this when we started doing remixes, after a while we wanted to stop giving away ideas and make our own tracks. We then spent a year making our album so really got a lot out of our system I suppose. Now we love doing remixes, it’s a very different experience to making your own records. We also learn every time we work on a new track or remix, new production techniques or recording techniques or even just a new way of approaching the whole process of remixing. Our remixes tend to sound pretty different too, we don’t really have one style.

Do you find yourselves regretting giving away a track that you could have used for your own record?
Sometimes, but then we think we can take that idea and work on it in a different way for one of our own tracks. They can provide a starting point that develops into something totally different.

MP3: Filthy Dukes – Nonsense in the Dark or zShare
MP3: Maccabees – X-Ray (Filthy Dukes Remix) or zShare
MP3: Filthy Dukes – This Rhythm (Fred Falke Remix) or zShare