Summer has been a whirlwind already. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Nick and Rene, the American star duo known as Kronology, to speak about their contributions to the Technique Summer 2017 LP that released today, and catch up on their adventures.
“Star In A Jar” came as a happy surprise in my inbox– I feel it has so many different subgenres threading together to influence it, resulting in a beautiful and loungy galactic funk. How did you approach that track and the invitation to contribute to this year’s Technique Summer compilation?
This tune came about by us working with a new kind of style that we first explored on our tune “Everyday” off the previous Technique Summer album; it felt like the perfect opportunity to go further in that direction with our contribution to this years summer LP. A lot of our other music is very upfront and high energy, while these are more funky, melodic and experimental.
What is your favorite track on the compilation and why?
So many tunes to chose from! Can’t really pick one favorite; we’re definitely feeling both tracks from our fellow stateside bros Consouls, Des McMahon (and Canadian legend NC-17); of course “Gravitate” from Tantrum Desire is a huge anthem, amongst many many more that we’re feeling.
Name 3 things that are most important to your partnership as musicians.
It would probably come down to communication, work ethic and attitude. When there’s more than 1 person involved in a project, it’s always a struggle to balance personalities and make things work, so having the right approach to these things puts you in a solid place and makes everything easier. If you’re not on the same page with those things, the music suffers.
Environment has an interesting role in our identities. What is your favorite thing about your hometowns? How does “place” influence your music onstage and in the studio?
Growing up in LA and Southern California in general has definitely influenced us heavily. It’s the land of everything, both the good and the bad. One of the best things about the area is how much music there is. Almost every kind of genre you can think of has a presence here, so when you’re young and growing up you get exposed to all kinds of sounds that you might’ve not heard otherwise.
Drum & Bass for example has an abnormally large presence here, especially for an American city, so that played a roll in us getting in to DnB. The same can be said for many of the other styles of music that we love, like hip hop, punk, and metal that we grew up on as well house music and other electronic genres that we’ve been getting in to recently. You can hear LA in whatever music we make.
Damascus is immensely supportive company to our community– how was making a mix for them? Do you approach promotional mixes with any sort of strategy or routine?
It was great to get an opportunity to do a guest mix for Damascus. They’ve been a major force in bass music culture in SoCal over the last few years, and their mix series is always proper and done super professionally so we jumped at the chance to be a part of that. Our approach to mixes really depends on the mix itself; sometimes it’s a situation where it’s a showcase for a particular release, label, or crew so you feature certain music more, while for others you can be more free with it and really play whatever kind of flavors you’re feeling at the time. The Damascus mix was a good example of our broad taste in the DnB that we like and play out typically (although that’s always changing).
Follow up, what do you think makes a successful sponsorship relationship or creative collaboration?
A successful colab in that sense is where both sides help build the other up and bring attention to each other as much as possible. We liked doing the Damascus thing because we got exposure to the broader bass music community outside of DnB while they got the same within Drum & Bass. It ultimately led to them collaborating with Technique on a custom shirt line, which was awesome to see!
Last one– If you were to take one thing away from the year thus far, what would it be?
Expect the unexpected and go into everything you do with an open mind. A lot of our expectations have been turned on their head in the last few years, for both good and bad, which has led us to learn a lot and we’re going forward with a fresh perspective which has made our new music better as a result. More on that coming soon!
