Introducing ARKANE... And their EP FREE track "Triblist"

Please introduce yourselves...

Hi, we are Arkane, a production & DJ duo from Birmingham, UK!

You're up-and-coming on the Birmingham scene...  What are the best clubs and events to get your underground house and techno fix?

Being up & coming we’ve been really lucky... we’ve been asked to play some real nice parties in Birmingham. We actually formed as a duo when we were put as a B2B at our residency party ‘District’. This event is one of the best brands to be involved in if you’re up & coming or even established. It’s gone from strength to strength. There’s no rules... as long as the BPMs rising & the dance floors popping, everyone involved is happy.

Another event is ‘The Acid Experiment’. A good mate of ours Ben Price actually got featured on Dance Trippin TV with a set at this event. ‘The Acid Experiment’ was born in Birmingham & is now a major part in the rave scene here.

An after party called ‘Afta Dark’, started up by the best promoters & events organisers in 0121 has taken the city by storm. Again, we’ve been lucky enough to play this. 3:30am - 9:00am, Brum turns into Ibiza, seeing the sun rise up through the green house ceiling.

All of these events are held at the HUB of Birmingham’s rave scene... Lab 11, our favourite venue.

Who have been your biggest influences production wise?

It’s hard to point out biggest influences because there’s literally that many! If we had to pick we would say, Micheal Bibi, Hector Couto, Archie Hamilton, Klangkuenstler.  The vibe these guys' tracks create when you drop one is insane & that’s exactly what kind of effect we wanted to have on people.

What do you have lined up for 2018?

It’s been a good year so far for us being up & coming. We’ve played some mad parties & we’ve got some more coming up! 12th May we were involved in a DJ soundclash at Starworks in Wolverhampton. This was fun, all the local DJs battling it out to see who’s the champion underground selector.

19th May we took over Lab11 with District once again, then into June. And on the 15th June we play Basement 77, an underground house & techno night at Suki 10c Birmingham. Then the big one... we’re playing a 7 day tour of Gran Canaria with Dimensions. Playing 5 bars & 2 clubs.

If you were stranded on a dessert island and could only take one album with you. What would this be?

Tom – I’d take 50 Cent ‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. I love my house & tech but I love my hip hop just as much & when it comes to finding a go to album to whack on without skipping any tunes, it’s got to be this!

Arron - For my album. Chase & Status - Brand New Machine. There’s something about this album that just makes me realise how great it is to be alive. My go to album would make me wana live for the moment & that’s what it’s all about!

Are you boys heading to any festivals or Ibiza over the summer. Who are you looking forward to seeing?

We’re actually off to Music On in Amsterdam in a couple of weeks time, we’re buzzing for that! Hector Couto, Marco Carola, The Martinez Brothers, Claude VonStroke, Loco Dice. they’re just a few that we’re buzzing to see!

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Speaking with Filthy French about their "Haze EP"... OUT NOW!

The "Filthy French & This.Is.Sally - Haze" EP is out now on Beatport, so we thought we would have a little catch up with our French buddies FILTHY FRENCH!

Give us a bit of history behind this collaboration with This.Is.Sally…

We met This.Is.Sally randomly chatting online back in 2015. We seemed to have a lot in common so one day he flew from Stockholm to meet up and work on some music. We ended up spending the whole weekend in lock down mode in the studio and what came out of it was the title track of our Haze EP. We thought that collaboration was so special that we should each give it our own personal interpretation, hence the final package coming with “auto remixes” so to speak.

Last year you had a track called “Chirp” released on Dirtybird…  How did that come about?

That's a pretty funny story actually… at the beginning of last year, we started going through all the unreleased demos that accumulated in the back end of our SoundCloud account that we’d forgotten about. When playing Chirp, we realised that track had Dirtybird written all over it so we sent it as a demo to the label.

A few weeks later we received an email saying that Claude Vonstroke wanted to play it in his Birdhouse podcast, and asked about a better quality version. Right at that moment, the computer where the project was stored started playing up horribly and it was almost impossible to make any changes to the track without it crashing...we were nervous about missing our shot but Claude played the demo version anyways, thinking it was signed elsewhere (he even says in the podcast it’s released on “Funky”, not sure where this came from…).

We were determined to sign this track to Dirtybird so we hustled with the computer for a few weeks until the track was finally ready. We sent the track back to the label and they replied asking for a second track for a release on the Birdfeed channel. We made the second track “Dirty Disco Bitch” in less than a week and the 2-track EP was released a few weeks later.

What other releases do you have lined up for 2018?

We have 2 EPs coming out in June. The first one will be out on Lame Digital, alongside a banging Nick Olivetti remix, and the second one will be released as a single on Canadian imprint BADLQQK.

Tell us about your new podcast… “Filthcast”

The Filthcast is basically a place where we throw all the jams we're feeling at the moment, as well as unreleased from us and forthcoming records. We meant to do that for a long time but laziness got the better part of us...

Finally, feel free to plug anything else you are up to this year or any DJ/production buddies we should be looking out for…

In terms of DJing, we'll be playing a showcase for a HiFi speaker brand called Dali in May in Paris. We will also throw some beats at the Fête de la Musique in June in Paris. It's basically a day in the year where all musicians and performers are free to play in the streets, pretty good fun! Finally, we're pinning down a date to come and play in Italy with the Ciao Recs family in September.