Category Archives: The Scene

The Treaty has been Enacted

Hot off of weeks of Kissy Sellout dropping PeaceTreaty track after PeaceTreaty track, the boys are hitting the clubs with their tunes. They’ve been mad busy in the studio creating amazing sounds that hit hard, and now they’ve begun to pound your ears with bass, siren and true to form Dutch inspired awesomeness.

Their Funk in Deep EP will be released May 3rd, with two tracks, and they’ve hinted at another coming out in the near future. So what does Boppernation do with such an amazing artist? We interview them and ask them to do our next Bopcast, that’s what.

So Boppers, I bring to you, the PeaceTreaty interview. Look for the Bopcast soon and listen to the Treaty DROP!

Bn:
First, guys, we really want to thank you for taking some time to talk with us. We’ve really been impressed with the productions you’ve been putting out!

PT:
- Sam: No problem, man. We’re really glad for all the support Boppernation has been giving us.
- Josh: Totally.

Bn:
As far as everyone knows, Josh, you started PeaceTreaty. How did you end up with the name and how did you two get together?

PT:
- Josh: Well, I started out with a track called Cheaters. See, I used to be engaged, and then that ended because I fucked that up. And a few other relationships. So, I did that Cheaters track. And then, once I got the hang of it, I started doing all this production stuff. So one day Sam and I were at Dim Mak and we were like ‘Why don’t we get together and work from there?’ so that’s how it started.

Bn:
So, we’ve been seeing your name all over the place, recently. But it’s never spelled quite the same. Which is it… with or without the space?

PT:
- Sam: *laughs* No space, two uppercases. It’s been difficult, especially since on Twitter we have that underscore in it.

Bn:
Speaking of that, what about your Myspace links to that PeaceTreatyUp?

PT:
- Sam: That was our original link, that Josh had started. It didn’t really work for us, so we changed it. We couldn’t get PeaceTreaty though, because some girl already had it. Maybe she’d be nice enough to let it go for us? *laugh*

Bn:
You guys have put out a great set of tracks. What’s your favorite gear in the studio? Or what about when you’re playing out? Is it different?

PT:
- Sam: My monitors. *laughs* I dunno, we use it all, man!
- Josh: I dunno, man. My mini USB. Without that I can’t do nothing!
- Sam: When we’re playing out, we gotta have Pioneer CDJ 1000s. Fuck Serato!
- Josh: Yeah!

Bn:
Don’t you use Ableton in the studio?

PT:
- Josh: Yeah. Sam uses Ableton, I’m on FL Studio.

Bn:
FL Studio? Have you always used that?

PT:
- Josh: Yeah, all the tracks are done so far in FL Studio. I just learned it really well, that’s all. I know what to do in Ableton and Logic, too. Logic, though, is where we want to go. There’s no walls. In FL Studio there’s walls in automation, global automation. Single channelling VSTs and plugins on one channel, it’s kind of hectic, because globally you can’t tweak it how you want to, like you can in Logic.  Laidback Luke even states some of the dilemmas in FL Studio. You can only go so far. It’s frowned upon deeply in the production side, so whatever.

Bn:
Well your productions have been fantastic. What about playing out? I know you were both playing solo before doing PeaceTreaty. How is it different?

PT:
- Sam: Well, there’s a lot you can do with two people you can’t do with one. I mean, you only have two hands. Depends what you can do on the mixer and the CDJ at the same time. So..
- Josh: Effects would be the biggest thing.
- Sam: Yeah… or the scratching. When you’re one person, it’s harder to worry about beat matching and effects.
- Josh: Effects.
- Sam: When you’re one person you can’t worry about beat matching… can’t throw in a cool loop and start tweaking it and throw in an effect too, ya know?
- Josh: I scratch…
- Sam: He does a little bit. He’s the looper-master…
- Josh: Well, he’s the beat master. *laugh*
- Sam: We each have our strengths, so it works well, to be together, I think.

Bn:
What about all the Kissy Sellout stuff that’s going on? He’s been giving you mad props and plays…

PT:
- Sam: He likes PeaceTreaty! *laugh*

Bn:
I mean, you’ve gotta have fans over there in the UK. Are you planning on making it over there?

PT:
- Sam: Well, yeah we had a blog over there that did a write up on us and has a sponsorship at a club. So theyr’e trying to set up a mini-tour with a bunch of other promoters in the UK in September. Play a different club every night, between England and Scotland. But Kissy has been a huge supporter. In fact, we’re doing a remix for his label, the new Hot Pink Delorean track that actually just sent for mastering today.

Bn:
And when can we expect that to be released?

PT:
-Sam: That’s up to Kissy, I’m not really sure… They were pretty adamant about the deadline.. *laugh* so I assume fairly soon
- Josh: We actually remixed that song like 5 or 6 times, up until we finally got some feedback from Hot Pink Delorean, going back and forth, to where they were like, pretty involved.
- Sam: Yeah, we had a version we were happy with and Kissy talked to Hot Pink, and they had a few suggestions and things they wanted to see, so we went back and did some of that stuff. I think what we came up with is pretty great.
- Josh: You can, like, levy off them.. it balances…
- Sam: If someone was remixing one of our songs, I would want to approve of what they did. I’m not going to let someone put out a remix of one of our songs that we hate. I don’t see the point of that. We were more than willing to hear what they had to say.

Bn:
What about any of the other bootlegs that you’ve done? Have any of the other artists given you flak for them?

PT:
- Sam: Eeehhhhhh…
- Josh: Uuhhh…
- Sam: Well, Bart B More loved the one that we did. *laugh* There’s one artist, that shall remain nameless, that objected to a certain aspect of it, but, we don’t need to go into that. It wasn’t the track that he objected to, it was more the fact that we called it a remix, and not a bootleg, because we used samples…
- Josh: And then that shit gets played out, and Kissy plays and tweeted it out… so, I mean it’s that way…
- Sam: Some people care, some people don’t. I mean, we apologized. And we have that Laidback Luke bootleg, which we’ve actually done 2 different versions of also, and we’re waiting for feedback from Luke on that. He knows that we did it, he’s talked to us about it, he’s just sifting through a pile of 5 or 6 hundred other promos that people have sent him. He’s really cool, cuz he listens to almost everything. He’s one of the few people that will literally everything that everyone submits him. We’re just waiting for him to get to ours in the stack. He’s eager to listen to it.

Bn:
Well, people have been playing your tracks out. Is there anyone you really want to have play your track?

PT:
- Sam: Oh, god… well, we heard a rumor that Wolfgang Gartner dropped one of our tracks at Coachella, but we have yet to be able to verify that? Friends of ours who were there, who said he did, were in various states of intoxication, so we’re not sure we can really trust whether or not it was actual. *laughs*
- Josh: That would be pretty massive though.
- Sam: Yeah that would be pretty great. But we’ve had some pretty cool people drop them. Hot Pink dropped our New Disco Villains remix, and they liked that a lot. Swedish Egil’s dropped our tracks, Hyphy Crunk’s dropped our tracks. We get hit up all the time by people saying ‘Oh, we used your track in our podcast’ and stuff. Mustard Pimp used two of our tracks on their recent mixtapes that they put out. So that’s a big supporter right there. And then, of course, there’s Kissy. I mean, we’ve had our tracks played almost every week on his show for the last, you know, 5 or 6 weeks.

Bn:
Alright, what about collaborations? You’ve done a lot of remixing. Do you have any collaborations happening?

PT:
- Sam: Well, we have the EP coming out, with the two originals that’s being mastered right now. Comes out in May, from Ho-Ju Records in Australia, called the Funk in Deep EP. And the tracks are Funk in the Ganja. Meditation, inspiration, creativity if you will. And the other track is called Deeper Insider and it’s kind of our take on the classic Deep Inside by Harddrive. And that’s the one we did with DiskJoSlim. It’s sort of our modern Dutch take on that classic, so…

Bn:
Why did you guys choose those two tracks?

PT:
- Sam: The ganja track, you know, we just wanted to write something about something we love.

Bn:
*laugh* Wasn’t that what the 420 song was for?

PT:
- Sam: *laugh* Yeah, but that was more as a DJ tool, something for fun…
- Josh: Yeah.. *laugh* that was from Sam and I sitting in the car and we heard something on the radio and he goes ‘This would be a cool one to do.’ and ‘Aw, yeah, we’ll try it.’ Next thing we know, we’re throwing in all these different sounds from different tracks..
- Sam: We got a Sublime sample in there, Peter Tosh..
- Josh: And then the bad battery. The laptop battery less.. So we hit the cord halfway through what we were doing, and it went out.
- Sam: We lost everything.
- Josh: We had to recreate the whole thing.
- Sam: But it came out better than when it started, so it worked out.
- Josh: Yeah, definitely.
- Sam: Anyway, so we have a couple other original tracks out now. One on Beatport, actually, called Cheaters that came out on Not Small Records… and Silly Boppers This is a Killer is a track we have on our Soundcloud…

Bn:
Don’t worry, we didn’t take any offense. *laugh*

PT:
- Sam: *laugh* Yeah, well… We also did another track with DiskJoSlim, which was a bootleg we released of French Fries. The track is Senta. And then, our next collaboration is probably gonna be another EP of original tracks, probably 2, that we’re gonna hope to get Whiskey Pete to do vocals on both of them. That one is going to kind of be inspired by … well, I don’t want to give too much away, but inspired by a certain gendre of music, from LA, from the 90s. But what genre of music that is, will remain a secret till it comes out. If it turns out the way we’re hoping it will, it’s going to be unlike anything else that anybody else has ever really done.

Bn:
Is there anyone you really want to collaborate with?

PT:
- Josh: Actually yeah, I hit up the Squatters, they’re on Kissy’s label. Dem Slackers, I’ve talked to them. They’re all like young funny producers coming up on Kissy’s label. So we’re doing those guys, like French Fries. They’re on that level, and we want to get on their level, and also want to help ‘em out.. do a remix of somebody, like the Mowgli one.
- Sam: Well, Pete definitely, because he’s a good friend, so that’s why we have that one on the books. Other than that, we haven’t really talked to a lot of people about collaborating. *laugh* We’ve had a lot of people hitting us up, asking if we wanna do tracks, but we’ve been so busy right now with all these other remixes we’ve been doing that haven’t been able to say yes to any of them, yet. But we’ve kinda of been collaborating with this guy, Kissed With a Noise, who’s from Canada, and we played a remix tonight, of a track we remixed for him. An original he did, with a Young Buck vocal. He reached out to us and asked did we want to remix it for an EP package, and it’s gonna include remixes from us, Disco Villains, Skeet Skeet, Marletta and B Rich, so that’s all going to come out and it will be free.

Bn:
I heard about a remix for Disco Villains. You tweeted about that.

PT:
- Sam: We finished a remix of Disco Villains’ Crickets and it’s been getting a lot of good response. They’re currently looking for a label for that release, so we’re kind of just waiting along with them until they find someone.

Bn:
Rumor has it you have some Big Name Artist that you’re doing something for?

PT:
- Sam: Ah, yes. Well, he’s actually … well, that’s got to stay a secret for now.

Bn:
So what new gigs are coming up for PeaceTreaty?

PT:
- Sam: Well we’re doing Mode 7 with DiskJo Slim, our good friend and also Colors and Sir Charles on May 7th, at the Glass House in Pomona, CA. Santa Cruz at a club called Motiv, on May 1st. Josh is playing at Stanford on April 28th, yeah, next Wednesday. So that’ll be half of PeaceTreaty. And we’re doing a big rave at the end of May, called Nu Disko, with DJ Bam Bam, Paul Ahi, Cold Blank and a bunch of other local DJs. We’ll also be doing the House of Blues in San Diego with Designer Drugs in July. And hopefully the UK in September and in Canada with Dmitri Vegas and Like Mike, both soon. Lastly we’re also doing another gig with the 1107 folks, who put on Dance, the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, at the Glass House again, with Paparazzi and Religion.

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Fantastic guys! Thanks so much for talking with us!

PeaceTreaty tracks are all over the internet, so here’s just a few of the awesomeness… And don’t forget to look for their new release EP, and on Beatport for their already released tracks!

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PeaceTreaty
myspace | twitter

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