The German duo of Kruse and Neurnberg have been enticed by the house culture for over 5 years now and this week sees them drop their first full length ‘Lets call it a day’. They speak to Plain and Simple about the album and how they both found love for the music industry.
http://www.beatport.com/release/lets-call-it-a-day/965452
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kruse-Nuernberg/153194867440?ref=ts&fref=ts
How did you guys meet? Why did you get on so well?
We first met about 10 years ago on a private birthday party of a friend we have in common. While having a few beers we were talking about music and found out that we both listen to the same stuff. We started producing together and to make the story short we finally decided to build up a business in 2008 with our label Save Room Recordings. Due to our daily work there wasn’t enough time to focus on the music. After a long day at work there isn’t much energy left for creativity. The whole life is packed with stuff you wanna do. You need time for your girl, time for your friends and time for doing sports. So in 2009 we quitted our jobs, rent a studio together and founded the Kruse & Nuernberg Prod. GbR. Since that we have enough time to produce music and that’s probably why we get on so well!
Why did you decide to start working together?
Well… It just happened and we didn’t really think about it too much.
Maybe because we have the same vision of how to run a studio and how to produce music.
Of course it is essential that you have the same taste of music when it comes to producing together but mainly you have to trust each other.
We are just passionate about what we do.
Does each of you have set roles or do you both do everything in the studio and booth?
We have the same skills and have studied audio engineering. There is not a random scheme we follow when we start producing a track or doing a remix. Sometimes Nils starts something and after a couple of hours Florian is taking over and sometimes its the other way around.
Most of the time we are working together in the studio and sitting right next to each other throwing in comments, listening to music and talking about our ideas. That’s how we make music!
Tell us about the new album, was there a plan for it from the start?
Of course we had the plan of releasing an album one day. It was a dream of both of us.
We are producing club tracks and remixes all the time and really wanted to do something else. Having an excuse to produce something with more persistence guess that was the main impulse of doing the album. We wanted to try out new styles and use different elements, record instruments and vocals. We really hope that people understand the sound of our album cause we wanted to give something that works in different places – At home, in your car, on your ipod and of cause on the dancefloor, too.
Lots of vocals on the album – why is that?
Ha! That’s right! Vocals are giving a special character to the tracks. You have a real story you can listen to, think about it and probably compare it with your own life. Most of the lyrics on the album have a deeper sense and you can feel that the singers are telling something personal.
Are they harder to work with? Where did you find the singers?
We found Nathalie Claude while we were browsing beatport, actually a few years ago. She did this amazing song with Andre Lodemann that caught our attention.
Stee is a friend of Lovebirds and Lovebirds is a friend of ours who also lives with us in the same city (Hamburg)
Miwaki also is a friend of Lovebirds and Florian’s brother Vincenzo. We accidently met her in Berlin last year and decided to work together. Her voice is simply outstanding.
Vocals in general are always a little harder to work with as they give the whole tune a totally different meaning and you always have to work on adjusting the arrangement to the main element, the vocal.
From the technical side of things it is a challenge, too… A good vocal recording needs a proper microfone, a decent recording booth and a good singer… and a good engineer.
You also do plenty of remixes – how differently do you approach those from originals?
Remixing is a totally different task compared to composing your own music. You have stick to a certain path but it still has to sound way different to the original. That’s the main challenge and we really enjoy doing it.
We usually search for the strongest element in the remix kit and build our own ideas around it until we have a rough contruction and then we start building the arrangement which is usually totally different to the original tune.
What is the next project you will work on now?
We have quite a long list of remix requests and labels asking for original tracks, eps, etc… but we are taking it easy for 2012. No stress…
In 2013 we really want to focus on tunes that are more club oriented and where people would probably say that this is the typical Kruse & Nuernberg sound.