Hailing from house-happy streets of Hamburg, Germany, the Adana Twins have been taking clubbers on all-night rides through deep beats since the pair’s 2006 formation. The DJ/producer duo—comprised of Take It Easy and Friso—has made its name with a tasty mix of luxuriant melodies and enchanting grooves.
After a big year of club and festival appearances, the pair wrapped up 2014 with one final release: a remix of Human Life & Anabel Englund’s hazy disco dream, “El Diablo,” which is available now on the Exploited imprint. We recently caught up with the Adana Twins to discuss this and other DJ-related topics.
DJ Times: Your remix of Human Life and Anabel Englund’s “El Diablo” has made quite a bit of buzz, from a Pete Tong world premiere to huge online success.
Friso: First of all, we would like to thank everybody who supported this tune so far, especially Pete Tong who has been a big supporter of all our stuff for years. This makes us really proud, as he is definitely a legend.
DJ Times: How did the remix come about?
Take It Easy: The remix request came through Exploited. We think Shir Khan knows that Anabel & Matt [Human Life] are really big fans of us and that we like them both, too. Anabel’s performance on Hot Natured’s “Mercury Rising” particularly gave us the chills. The circle was closing and at this point it was the logical consequence that he asked us to do this remix.
DJ Times: It feels like anything that’s not massive hands-in-the-air EDM that’s come out recently is automatically labeled as “deep house.” What’s your take on the new sound being dubbed as deep house?
Friso: Of course, we are deep into housey and techy music, but for us not everything is automatically deep house. Firstly, we don’t consider ourselves a deep-house act. We play a wide range of music ranging from house to disco and techno—simply music that we like. Perhaps the people who are not so music-savvy need a label and it just happens that deep house has been the most hyped label for the last two years. It feels like everybody started to put music into this genre just to jump on this train and have success.
DJ Times: Does this change affect the “genre” of deep house?
Take It Easy: On one side, it’s cool that everybody is now talking about deep house; but on the other side it’s bad as there is a lot of music labeled that way, which is definitely not deep house. People should not care about a genre. They should care about good music.
DJ Times: What have been some of your favorite clubs to play this past year?
Friso: Definitely Warung [Beach Club in Itajai, Brazil], D.EDGE [in Sao Paolo], Watergate [in Berlin] and Revolver [in Hamburg]! These clubs are just amazing!
DJ Times: What sort of energy and vibes do you try to bring to your DJ sets?
Take It Easy: We try to take people on a journey of the sounds we like. That’s also the reason why we love to play longer sets. We can start really slow and build up a great vibe. When we get to the point where we overtake the crowd, then we can do whatever we want and we can almost play all the music we like. This obviously only works with long club sets. For festival slots with only 60 or 90 minutes playtime, our focus is more on pumpy music with lots of drive.
DJ Times: What have been some of your favorite tracks of the past year, both for your DJ sets and outside of the clubs?
Friso: Definitely Hodgson’s “One Spliff,” &ME’s “After Dark,” and Matthew Dekay’s “Fangtango.” Those tracks are badass.
DJ Times: Do you as a pair prefer DJing or producing? Is there a split between the both of you in terms of focusing on the studio or live show primarily?
Take It Easy: We like both. But we come from the traditional club scene and learned while playing as residents in Hamburg. Considering that, we definitely have a soft spot for DJing.
DJ Times: What releases and projects do you guys have planned for 2015?
Friso: At the moment, we have an EP on Exploited scheduled for the beginning of 2015 and some more nice stuff which is still secret at this time! Stay tuned. Exciting times are coming up.
– Chris Caruso
