Designer Drugs Want Your Hearts To Rave

There’s a definite musical divide: us and them. You’re either a remixer, or you’re an original artist. You’re either in your attic cutting edgy hooks on your laptop, session singing into a steady cam mic, or you’re cutting old vinyl to a new electro beat for a DJ set. Us: writing lyrics on the back of a bus. Them: sifting through thrift store white label and sending disco re-hashes to up-and-coming songsters. Only in 2009 it’s not going to be so clear-cut, like Justice and the Ed Banger stalwarts before them, Designer Drugs - armed with an impending Annie/Richard X collaboration - are set to buck the trend and help spearhead a new hybrid: the remixing original artists.
 
Dazed Digital: I recently interviewed Justice and they said they regretted doing so many remixes because now they can’t shake the tag. Is this a future worry for you guys?
Theo: I'm not worried about the remix tag too much. We like to work with a vocal and we're not quite ready to start singing. It's also cool working with other artists.
Michael: Remixes are interesting because the basis for the song, "the vocal melody", was not written by us, so aesthetically and artistically, we are not tied to it and therefore it almost falls into the category of design.
 
DD: How do you select who to remix?
M: like with Queen of War, Hail Social and Mission Control I meet them coincidentally on the internet and approach them.
T: …If we think that we can make it bangin'.
M: What the fuck does that mean?
 
I played your Little Boots remix at a party and everybody went INSANE - how do you decide on how to make a track sound and what is your intention?
M: WHOA that's great news. The thing with remixes is we essentially produce a new track based around the existing vocal so we try to make the best track possible. We mostly try to make them dancey so you can freak out to them. When working on the Little Boots remix we thought making the 80's style coke jam would compliment the vocals best so we went with that. Originally, the track was around 170 bpm and we tried slowing it down to 130 but it sounded boring to us so we found a middle ground at 155 bpm which accentuated the 80's coke jam vibe.
 
Are there any remixes you've done that you would change now in hindsight?
M: Yes, honestly I could nit pick every track I've ever produced and I have heard from other producers that this will ALWAYS be the case so once you understand that you can over come the pressures of finishing a track and become a better producer.
 
How do you define a successful remix?
M: I would define it on peoples responses. It's really nice to hear people say that they genuinely love a specific track. I write music for other people so that makes it meaningful.
T: If it makes my heart rave.
 
Will we see more originals from you guys in the future?
M: Yes, we just signed to Iheartcomix so we will be doing a bunch of club jams in the future and sometime after that we will make an album. I'm trying to conceptualize the album on paper at the moment.
 
The people you remix - are they the type of music you listen to normally - bear in mind you remixed Mariah Carey?!!
M: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes we just do them for money or a Mariah Carey Autograph.
 
Designer Drugs’ debut album will be released on Iheartcomix in 2009.