Aside from spending hours of their time telling people how to pronounce and spell their name, Munich dance heads Schlachthofbronx have been mad busy in the last few months, putting together some of the heaviest bass you have heard. We asked one of the crew, Jakob, how they manage it, what’s coming up and what’s making them blow their homemade airhorns.
(Big thanks to Schlachthofbronx for taking the time out of their holiday to answer our questions!)
Who are Schlachthofbronx – how did you come together/start making music?
Schlachthofbronx is Benedikt and me, Jakob. We both DJed seperatly in Munich, Benedikt started with gabba, then played in a dancehall soundsystem and so on, and I started with hip hop and ended up with electro, dancehall and miami bass. In the beginning of 2009 we teamed up to produce some tracks with a certain vibe that we’d always wanted to play but couldn’t find enough of in the record stores.
How would you describe your sound / what’s your beat manifesto?
It’s quite difficult to describe our own sound. We don’t wanna focus ourselves on one or two styles, since we basically think about what we would want to play out as part of a DJ set. We like it to be quite diverse, with lots of different tempos and genres. Our main aim is to make people dance with heavy bass.
You’ve remixed/collaborated with a lot of mcs from all over – Timberlee, Spoek Mathambo, Leftside – how do you decide what vocalists you want on which tracks?
Collaborations come quite naturally: we send some beats, get vocals back and see if we want to use them over the beats we sent, or sometimes we build a whole new tune around the vocal instead, chopping it up. Sometimes we just like a tune so much we remix or edit it just to have an exclusive version to play out.
Who would be your ultimate collaboration at the moment?
Ludacris, Busy Signal or Ferro Gaita.
Your tracks are very crossover, and very influenced by a variety of global beats. Do you plan to tour to any of the places where your music takes its influences from, and where would you most like to play out?
We’ll hit the USA in march this year, but no Miami (bass) or New orleans (bounce) for us this time, damn…! It’s gonna be great anyways. We played in Johannesburg and South Africa in 2009, which was great! We’ve got no plans to go to South America, or other African countries at the moment though. We would love to play nearly everywhere, though we don’t expect any South American or African dancer to be waiting for us especially…
You’ve marked your tracks on your soundcloud as ‘bass’ and loads of your songs feature the word ‘bass’…this, along with your tracks, show a definite dedication to everything low frequency. What’s your favourite bassline?
I couldn’t name just one, really…I’m still deeply in love with 70s roots bass in general though.
Tell us about the scene in Munich – how does the music go down over there and what are the biggest sounds in the clubs over there?
Munich always had a scene for new interesting music, and people pushing it. sometimes the scene seems quite small though. At the moment there are some quite interesting parties in the city, pushing styles like booty bass, future garage, moombathon and so on. All this is happening in quite small locations most of the time, and the big ruling style is still tech house, deep house and nu disco. However there is a crowd that is definitely interested in new music which is well informed about all new tracks. All in all its healthy and growing i would say…
You’ve got your own airhorns now. What tunes are you currently blowing your airhorns to?
Yah, I made them by hand on my balcony actually. They’re in store now! Our current favourites are:
Spoek Mathambo – Control
Cham ft Timberlee – Tump Mi
Busy Signal – Wine Up (nuh pop dung)
Diamond Bass – Se Prepara
Manuel Palafox – Indie buda (DJ Tekda edit)
Sissy Nobby – Pop dat dick up & Spinning Top
The Binary Cumbia Orchestra – La Inconformable
JW & Blaze – Palance
Demarco – About My Money (hustler)
What’s your production process – what equipment do you use, how do you go about building a track and how long does it take you?
Most of the recent stuff was produced with Pro Tools, just recently we’ve been doing more and more on Ableton live on the road, though. We sometimes borrow some hardware equipment from our studio neighbours, but most of the time end up doing it on the computer anyways…it’s always good to have an 808 around though…
Some tracks take lots of time before they’re finished, and some are just a matter of one or two hours ’til we can take a first rough version to the club. We roadtest new stuff really often and see how the reactions of the people are.
How do you work out playing live when there’s more than one of you?
We always play some kind of extended DJ-set, with an additional sampler, dubsiren and other toys. This year we’ll try to incorporate some selftriggered visuals aswell…
You just put out an amazing EP on Mad Decent – what other plans have you got coming up?
We’ll promo the EP in the States in March, and then head back home to prepare for the festival season and work on new stuff aswell. There will also be a release on the best label in the world [he means us] coming up, in our selfproclaimed year of 165&220 bpm…
Can you tell us about that ‘upcoming special’ at the end of your Nasty Bass promomix – the backwards beat one?
Haha, actually this one is secret, cant tell you any more than that, sorry…!
Interview by Susannah Webb
