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Fouk's Room with a View
Sep 23, 01:00 PM
DJ/Production duo Fouk are back with a massive release ‘Heavy on the Bacon’ on the excellent Room With A View label. We caught up with them to talk about the track, their forthcoming Traxsource Live show and their plans for the future.
Dutch Production/DJ duo Daniël Leseman and Hans Peeman (Junktion), better known as Fouk, have already racked up an impressive roster of releases in their brief recording career. They run their own label Outplay, alongside quality releases on labels like Heist and Local Talk, whilst Hans’ solo work as Junktion has come out on Razor’n’Tape amongst others. Their debut as Fouk, ‘Stuff Your Dad Liked/Cat Lady’, was hugely popular on the more discerning dance floors and then they finished off a great run with their killer remix of Lay-Far’s ‘Side 2 Side’ earlier this year.
We were buzzing in Traxsource HQ to hear that they had an original two-track EP coming out on Hamburg’s ‘Room With A View’, a label popular with DJs across the board, from techno heavy-hitters like Carl Cox and Laurent Garnier to deep house dons like Jimpster and Danny Krivit. Phil Dairmount of RWAV originally approached Fouk after becoming hooked on the sounds of their Outplay imprint. ‘Heavy on the Bacon’ and it’s sister track ‘Coconuts’ are what happens when a quality label encourages talented artists to push themselves. This isn’t a project that was banged out in a couple of hours, instead you get two premium originals, created with love and targeted for the dance floor.
The Fouk boys said -
“When we started working on the EP, Phil (Dairmount) told us he wanted to give us carte blanche, so we could take it in any direction we wanted. Since it would be a two track EP (a super single) we wanted to have one track that was a little bit different than our usual Fouk sound. With ‘Heavy on the Bacon’, we gave it a more disco/live band feel, whilst ‘Coconuts’ is more like our other Fouk stuff. We’re very happy with how the two tracks have turned out!”
Fouk’s commitment paid off with two really strong tracks that are sure to do big time dance floor damage and they’re right about ‘Heavy on the Bacon’ being a bit special. It’s a timeless slice of disco funk with one foot in the past and one firmly in the present. You can hear the influence of their 70s funk/jazz/disco heroes in the live instrumentation and soulful feel – artists like Roy Ayers, Idris Muhammad and Isaac Hayes. Both members of Fouk have been obsessive music collectors for over 15 years and all that time crate digging and DJing has created a keen sense of what works on the dance floor.
Fouk aren’t just disco revivalists however, they also cite contemporary artists like Session Victim, Nu Guinea, Max Graef and Harvey Sutherland as inspiration and their pristine production values show they’re no slouches in the studio. This EP was put together in Logic Pro X, made up of samples and programmed parts using Acturia’s Mini V, Spectrasonics Trilian, Logic’s Retrosynth and Addictive Drums. Fouk also used their ‘go-to’ hardware toys the Moog Sub Phatty and Slim Phatty for a bit of analog grit.
Moving to their forthcoming appearance on Traxsource Live, we asked Fouk about their track selection and about DJing generally.
“Of course we wanted to play our new EP and the other tracks are a selection of new promos that we really dig and tracks that we’ve been playing lately. We do plan pre-recorded sets, since this would be more of a showcase of our musical inspirations and own tracks. For live sets we have an idea of some tracks that we want to play, but we tend to go with the flow. It really depends on set times and the venue.”
Aside from their blossoming music career, both Fouk members are also creative away from dance music and DJing, with Hans a graphic designer and Daniel creating sound design for multiple projects such as movies, commercials and animations.
Fouk are currently working on new material, keeping up with their DJing schedule and planning to put together a full live show. For a storming example of their wonderful work, check out ‘Heavy on the Bacon / Coconuts’ by Fouk released on Room With A View.
This Week In Pictures Week #39