For more than a decade, Latvian duo Taran & Lomov have devoted themselves to underground music: running their imprint Amber Muse Records, producing an international radio show, party organising, and devotedly bringing electronic music to people via their online mags testpress.news and heedthesound.com. We are delighted to welcome them for a podcast & chat.
Thanks for taking the time to record a mix for our podcast series, was there any special concept behind your mix, or tracks played form your own releases?
It’s a pleasure to make this mix for your podcast series. As soon as we produce a weekly Amber Muse radio show, every mix we do for someone else – and we don’t do them often – is a special one. In this selection we wanted to play a couple of our productions, forthcoming, just released and older one, so built the the mix around them also showing what we like musically these days.
Listen on MIXCLOUD.
Where did you record the mix, and what equipment did you use?
We did this mix in our studio at home. As with the radio show, we put it together in MixMeister software, which always allows you to work carefully on the mix composition.
What is your process when creating a podcast and how do you compare this to playing in a club, is there much of a change in your mixing style and track selections?
Recording a mix in the studio and playing in a club has one in common preparations wise: in both cases we make a selection of tracks that we want to play (for club gigs it’s super convenient Rekordbox software); in the club we usually pick out the first one or two cuts depending on the mood in the room, and freestyle it from there. Meanwhile putting the mix together in a software is kind of writing an essay: you can try different combinations of tracks to achieve the right mood and to take the listener on a musical journey.
What stores or other places do you normally look for new music… is it all sourced online, or do you also pick up the odd bit of vinyl?
If we speak about digital stores it’s mostly Beatport: thanks to My Beatport section we follow the latest releases from artists and labels that we like – the more careful you make selection of producers and labels you follow, the better the music in your section will be. As soon as we have been doing a radio show for quite a long time, we also receive a lot of promos – some gems could be found there as well. We also spend a lot of time on Soundcloud listening to particular radio shows, DJ mixes and sometimes premieres, which also is a good source of music information… Speaking about vinyl, we have a big record collection since mid-90’s, though these days we mostly use USB sticks. We sometimes throw vinyl parties where we play only records – we love vinyl so if there is something on wax we really like, we buy a copy for the collection. Juno, Decks.de, Deejay.de are for new music, and Discogs – for rare releases or some classics that we wanted to get back then but these were sold out.
Could you tell us a bit about your most memorable DJ experience?
It’s always good to go abroad to see the new crowd and places. Last summer we went to “I Land Sound” festival on Saaremaa in neighbor Estonia. It’s an absolutely beautiful isle and young and open minded wonderful people there. We spent a weekend outdoors with a stunning views, with one night on one of the stages organized by ourselves under the helm of Amber Muse – this was a brilliant and inspiring experience both as DJs, and as promoters.
What other projects do you have lined up, do you have any new releases or forthcoming gigs we should be watching out for?
We’re excited about releases lined up for this year. We just put out “JF Raw” single with Rennie Foster remix on our own Amber Muse, you will hear its reprise version in the mix. Other production in the podcast, “HX3” will come out on a vinyl four-tracker via Runermark this week, we have a couple of new Taran & Lomov EPs ready soon, so watch out for them. Last summer we launched another project, Queer On Acid with strong debut on a self-titled label, and remix of Walker & Royce’s “Fetish” released later on Amber Muse. Literally today we signed two new Queer On Acid EP’s for the new Shadow Child label – both of them should be pressed on vinyl, and it’s a big thing for ourselves as this has been a goal of ours for the past few years… Last year we also became a core team of UNDER Festival, the fourth edition of which will take place in Riga on May 21-23 this year, so it’s another big thing for us. If you’re around, save the date and come over to see our beautiful city and have a 24-hour electronic music experience with cool international and exciting local artists. We’re active in social media, so feel free to follow our projects in Facebook, Soundcloud, Spotify, Instagram etc.
