The newest mix of musicforever.hu series, the „autumn”  is ready by Collins&Benham. They had a long way through techno, house and other genres till they got to their present sound. Their music is full with energy, verve and creativity. But in this mix we can hear a different sound that is not typify their usual style.

My first question: did our request surprise you?:)

B: It gratified instead surprised us. We always glad to receive interview and mix requests. And now we can make it for a site where we haven’t appeared before.

C: I was surprised because you had some concrete requests about the mix. That’s a usual thing only at labels. But we’ll try to make it.  

Ok, let’s go on! You have been in the scene for a long time, and your friendship is continual. How did you meet and start to deal with music together?

B: 7 years ago a radio was started in Gödöllő and both of us applied there. We got own shows, but none of us wanted to be an anchorman.:) Our shows was related to electrnoic music, Gabi’s on Tuesdays, mine on Fridays. So this is where our friendship is from.

C: About 1 year after our first meet we started to write music and sent them to different labels. After we got more and more positive feedbacks, we took the whole thing seriously. From the first amateurish tries we got to the recent releases, and honestly, very good to feel our own developement. Though we’ll never be satisfied with our works, and this motivates us to reach professional sound.

During the years haven’t you thought that you may get on better alone separately?

B: Basically we are very different persons. Gabi is calm and considired, I’m faster and easily hit the roof. Because of this we sometimes have conflicts. But I won’t tell you them. J But the successes we reached link us together. That’s not mean we won’t try to make some projects alone, who knows. This collaboration doesn’t except to make music or gigs without the other.

C: When we are djing abroad, we always think about that how boring would be it alone. And another advantage is that we can share all the background tasks as well.

The people know us together so if they saw us playing alone, they would think we felt out. This is a common project, so maybe we will try it alone, but this will be always the first.

From my point of view you make very interesting music. I know that the artists don’t like to categorize their music, but please, tell us how could you typify your style.

B: Electrnoic dance music. J This is the easiest and simplest characteristic. If you had asked this 4 years ago, I would have said groovy techno. But lot of things changed since then, and many new influences appeared in our music. We make everything, like house, techno, minimal.

C: Yes, it’s difficult to categorize our music and we don’t want to do it. We always make what we like irrespectively the genres. The most important thing is the trendy sound. The other depends on the labels and the audience. For example, this is our newest Recicled Loops release. It’s made almost 2 years ago, but its sound meets with the trend only now. 

What changes did you have during the last few years?

B: The recent trend changed our sounds as well. Of courset it’s not mean that we want to ape anybody. But anyhow I’d like to play groovy techno these days as well, if there aren’t releases in this style. So if I don’t  wanna play 3-4 year-old tracks, I have to follow the way showed by labels. And that’s true also for our own music. If we try to spread it, we have to find bigger labels to release them.

From that matter if you would like to hear how our music is changed, just listen our first release at Supreme Records and our newest music that will come out soon at Yoshithosi. We changed a lot.

C: Yes, every genre gets to that point once where it can’t show up new things anymore, like groovy. We made and played so much music like that, but after a while it’s boring, if you can’t find enough new music on the market. That’s why we tried to open for new styles. The most important thing  in the music is to mediate something towards the audience and be dancy.

Is it more a hobby or a job for you?

B: It’s absolutely a job, though we could do it with more intensity.:) That’s why we will make a management-change and try to concentrate on abroad.

C: This is our life. Your only chance is to be successful if you do it on 100%. Beside another full-time job it’s impossible, because it’s not like you have freetime from 6 to 8, so you make a new track. You have to do it when you got the idea, immediately!

Do you do anything else beside this?

B: I have an organizer business. I book foreign bands and djs for festivals.

C: I do only this and related things. I used to make commercials and musical stuffs for fashion and TV shows. And of course I sometimes help others.

How prolifical producers are you?

B: We don’t have problems with productiveness, only finishing. J We have many ideas and unfinished works that maybe good, but unfortunately haven’t been finished. Anyway if we count tracks, we have at least one release monthly.

C: Yes, we can say one as average. But sometimes there are a few months, when we don’t have anything and the following period 2-3 new music per a week. These breaks are useful, because we can spend more time for promotion, interviews and other things.

The Philipp Straub feat. C&B-Maximal EP is very popular. We would like to congratulate for this. What are the feedbacks?

B: Well, the only problem is it’s a typical summer music that should have been released in May, and just came out in the beginning of October. But of course we are very happy, because to release somthing at Umek’s label is a pestige thing. Feedbacks are very good: Ibiza Global radio plays it in rotation, and it’s also played by Joel Mull, Roland Klinkenberg, Lemon8, Umek and Above&Beyond.

C: Anyway it’s not sure we missed this summer, because there were many great summer tracks in this genre that are setting only next summer. We hope this track will be among them. J   

What releases are coming out in the close future?

B: Our next one is the Contrast EP with a Stephan Signore remix, coming out at the dutch Adult Records. This record’s gonna be more tight. After that comes our 2 expected releases at Deep Dish’ Yoshitoshi, though we don’t know the exact dates yet. There’s gonna be another one later on at PS Records, with remixes by Gregor Tresher and Monika Kruse, and Hot-X’ release’s coming out at Titanium Records with a remix by us.

C: A curiosity: we had some old unreleased groovy tacks, and now some labels want to release them. For example the record which is coming out at Adult contains 3 year old tracks.

Where can we hear you next? Abroad and here?

We plan a long tour on the far east at the beginning of next year, visiting Malaysia, Korea and Japan as well. In the country we are always on the road, you can check exact dates and infos on our website: www.collinsandbehnam.com, or www.myspace.com/behnamlotfi.

And we’d like to emphasize a gig in Győr, the Christmas Etiket Party, that is always a big craziness, and also the MTV new year’s eve party.  :)

MySpave: http://www.myspace.com/behnamlotfi

Web: http://www.collinsandbehnam.com/