Da Tweekaz discusses Disney’s Frozen song and how that has changed his life as a DJ, Hardstyle DJ, plans for 2019, upcoming songs for this year and many more.
Norwegian hardstyle duo, Da Tweekaz also known as Kenth Kvien and Marcus Nordli signed to Dirty Workz are both here to discuss how the “remix/bootleg” of Disney’s frozen changed their career, Summer tour schedules, Tweekalution, upcoming songs and many more. Read Below for the interview.
ASL365: Is there a song changed your journey as a DJ
Da Tweekaz: Probably the song that initially put us into the picture was our “remix/bootleg” of Disney’s Frozen. That was literally played everywhere and we still play it now – it’s probably about 5 years old now and works every time. We’re also known for many serious tracks – but another one that has definitely been a big part of our sets lately has been “Jägermeister” which is a little tribute we made for our favourite liquor 🙂
ASL365: 6 months has passed, tell us about your plans for the rest of 2019.
Da Tweekaz: Well, we’re already in the middle of a very heavy (but fun) Summer tour schedule. Probably the highlight of this Summer, although there are many more we should be mentioning, would have to be performing at the Main Stage of Tomorrowland, which is obviously a huge honour.
We’ve also got some cool tours coming up as well as our Tweekalution concept that we’re bringing to many countries throughout the year and a HUGE amount of music that we’ll be releasing very soon.
ASL365: Da Tweekaz had been mainstage headliner around the world, would this year mainstage appearance at Tomorrowland means anything special for Da Tweekaz?
Da Tweekaz: Well, for us this is very special and actually for Hardstyle in general this is really special to be giving it even more spotlight on one of the biggest stages in the World for Electronic Dance Music. So, we’re hoping it will open some more doors for events to think a little out of the box and try something different – we promise they’ll love it.
ASL365: What does it takes to elevate an artist from the club level to the festival stage.
Da Tweekaz: Well, in The Netherlands there are so many festivals which have so many stages, that they literally have a lot of room to try new and upcoming talents on smaller stages or opening slots, so that’s a great start. However, we also LOVE playing intimate club bookings. It’s a totally different vibe. But, if you mean – what does it take for ‘new’ artists to break through? We think a very unique stream of music that you create and probably also a strong brand to really put yourself out there.
ASL365: Talking about Hardstyle, from your view how Hardstyle has evolved over the past 10 years?
Da Tweekaz: Obviously, the sound has evolved quite a lot. And that’s not only due to the creative aspect, but technology has also advanced quite a bit, that we as producers have so much more new toys and computing power to play with. Also, productionally, Hardstyle is one of the most advanced ‘technical’ styles we know. If you’re a Hardstyle producer, you basically have the skillset to make any style you want because you’re so fixated on EQing, frequencies and fine tuning everything so much, distorting sounds and samples that you can really start to think outside of the box and implement so many different styles into your own Hardstyle productions which really helps the style evolve quite a bit as well.
Also, the fanbase has grown quite exponentially on a global scale, which is only a good thing.
ASL365: Can you tell us more about Tweekacore? What type of sound and performance can we expect from Tweekacore?
Da Tweekaz: We grew up listening to UK Hardcore / Happy Hardcore and we’ve idolised Darren Styles for many years. We thought it would be fun to take a little side step from our normal ‘Da Tweekaz’ style and so some Happy Hardcore that turned out to be a very big success! Together with Darren Styles (!!) we even started our own label “Electric Fox” especially for this type of sound. So, Tweekacore is just that – Happy Hard. It’s fast but still highly appealing and easy digestible and doesn’t directly conflict with our main artist brand ‘Da Tweekaz”.
ASL365: With the booming of electronic music in Asia. How would that affect a DJ touring calendar?
Da Tweekaz: That’s difficult to say. Usually, we need to know many months in advance so we can block our calendar for Asia shows. But the landscape in Europe is so fast paced lately that bookings are coming in so fast, that we’re usually fully booked MANY months in advanced which then makes it very hard to block dates for Asia who book a little more “last minute”. In any case, we love performing in Asia. It’s such a different vibe and it’s so great to show Asia what we stand for.
ASL365: How often do you perform in Asia and in China? And which is your most favourite city
Da Tweekaz: Mostly we do about 2 to 3 tours a year. And each tour consists of about 4 to 6 shows.
Hard to pick a specific city. As we’ve been coming to Asia for a few years now and we’ve really seen how the scene has been growing. When we first came, it was good, but we think that the audience didn’t really understand it at first. And then the next times we’ve been coming, you just keep seeing more and more dedication and passion. And that goes for every city we’ve been to. So, let’s just say we love ALL of Asia! Especially the food. Actually getting hungry just thinking about this…
ASL365: Given a chance to host a stage at one of the big music festival? Who would be in your lineup?
Da Tweekaz: Hmmm… we’ve actually done a few hostings at many big stages. But, we usually bring artists to the lineup who we feel we have a connection with, who we ourselves love to listen to and watch and also what we think would work in any given region. That goes from what an artist plays, to also the popularity of the artist. So, we wouldn’t necessarily go for a full on Hardstyle line-up so we’d do something out of the box. Like… wouldn’t it be awesome if we had Pendulum or Alan Walker tag along!? Haha.
ASL365: Any new songs for 2019? Would there be a chance for an Asia producer to work on a song with you?
Da Tweekaz: Wow, we have quite a handful of songs. We’ve been hard at work prior to the European festival season to finish many tracks so we can freshen up our sets during the festival season. So, just keep an eye out because YES, we have A LOT of releases coming up!
Would definitely love to work with an Asian artist… does BTS or Black Pink count? 🙂
ASL365: Is there anything you can exclusively reveal to us?
Da Tweekaz: Exclusively? Well.. by the time you’re reading this, our latest “Disney” cover will be out. Circle of Life (from The Lion King!). Fun fact: David Spekter did ALL of the vocals and we even got someone to play the part of the pan flute you hear in the track. So, every single element of that track we made from scratch! So… SURPRISE!
