Douze and Lo Galbo – a French / Dutch producer collaboration released ‘Dawn’, the original motion picture soundtrack to their own film concept on 27th November. The project aims to create an authentic, retro soundtrack designed to spark nostalgic memories of a movie that never existed. The producers focused on emotive music, specific to different scenes, guiding each listener to imagine their own unique celluloid version of ‘Dawn’. Written and produced almost entirely outside the box on original 80’s analogue hardware, this album is about the music and its ability to become a catalyst for imagination.
Read our interview with the prolific pair and stream Dawn below.
Describe a pivotal music moment for you in terms of movie soundtracks. Did this influence your approach to your album ‘Dawn’?
There’s no pivotal moment per se. There is no point in time where we thought “oh we should do a soundtrack”. We think we have been influenced by 80s references throughout time and decided to do a soundtrack as we made demos that sounded movie-influenced.
How did you become drawn towards making retro and synth-focused music?
We are both born in the 80s and have always been inspired by the era. All the music we have made and released in the past has some sort of reference to the 80’s. We mainly use synthesizers and drum machines produced in the 80s, as well as effect units such as the Alesis Midiverb II.
If Dawn is a soundtrack to a movie that never existed, is there one particular scene that really comes to life in your imagination when you hear the music?
On our ‘End Titles (One Last Ride)‘ track by 3615 Nuits Blanches, we really had this idea of a classic slow zooming-in shot on Dawn’s fierce and smirking face with a fading to black screen when the drums kick in.
Stream the video for ‘End Titles (One Last Ride)’ below:
What does your current software/hardware setup currently consist of?
For Dawn, we rented a studio in the city center of Paris and brought in our own collection of vintage synthesizers, and some other equipment. We mainly recorded synth takes using the Moog Minimoog, Roland Juno-60, Oberheim OB-Xa, Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, and the Roland SH-2. In order to get a more gritty sound, we re-recoded some takes on our Akai X-7000 sampler or the Tascam Porta One 4-track.
Outside of music, what inspires you?
Movies, books, songs, trips, the sky, real life… Quite anything actually.
What kind of relationship do you have with the internet? How does this inform your artistic expression?
We love the internet. It’s basically where the retrowave subculture lives. Without the internet, we would not be able to discover everything we know and learned about music. The internet also brought us together, via an email of Kris Menace that introduced us when we were both making music for his label Work It Baby.
As a performer or as a member of the audience, what single show has been the most memorable for you?
Seeing Daft Punk performing live was probably one of the most intense things we have ever experienced.
Any new or upcoming artists on your radar we should know about?
We are really into Pol, a new wave Dutch band that is just starting to tour all across Europe.
Aside from ‘Dawn’ please suggest an album for us to listen to.
The recently released 10th anniversary edition of Innerworld by Electric Youth is great. It includes remixes by Fred Falke, Lifelike and Dear AB that really hit the sweet spot.
What can we expect from you in the near future? Any upcoming projects or gigs in the pipeline that you would like to tell us about?
We are currently working on the second album for Lo Galbo’s Drums Allowed project. On the side, we are recording demos for an album project by Jogg. This concept album references those 80s aerobic work-out albums like Yuji Toriyama & Ken Morimura – Aerobics (1982), and will include music for working-out and running.
Famous last words?
Buy our record 🙂
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Follow Lo Galbo:
