The Mind Hackers, an electronic music production and DJ duo from Cádiz, Spain, are living proof that the Spanish underground music scene is still full of energy and innovation. With years of experience in drum and bass, breakbeat, and bass music, CaRLiNKi and Javi d Vogue are embarking on a new journey under the booking of DNBTV. In our interview, we’ll delve into their music production, explore the current state of the music scene in Spain, and discover what they have planned for the future.
We have been friends for many years and after several years disconnected from the scene, one day we sat down and thought about why not start creating a solid project. Javi was producing Future Rave and Progressive House, but it wasn’t motivation enough, He feels more complete producing underground music (drum and bass, breaks, dubstep).
Carlos was centered in mixing in parties but never leaves production, so we have a very close contact and one day we go to lunch with our families and both start to talk about productions that we started separately, and we decided to resume our project as a duo.
What we really want is to create a sound that can be heard for all the public. We try to show drum and bass to people that have never heard it and don’t know what drum and bass is. We don’t really want to be close to a subgenre. Normally, we spend a lot of time listening to music at work or at home, but we don’t listen only to electronic music genres, so we get inspired by different bands. Our sound is fresh and also dark, we can make a happy mainstage song and a sick neuro song at the same time.
At the moment, the music scene in Spain is very close to reggaeton and latin music, but,a resurgence is beginning, radios in Spain are starting to introduce a few underground songs and it looks like people are opening their minds. As you can see, some rock and pop bands are collaborating with drum and bass producers and it works perfectly. Spain is creating some of the top electronic music festivals of Europe, just see Dreambeach or Monegros Desert Festival, it moves thousands of people from everywhere, and they always have an underground stage with the top DJs of the underground genres.In the early 2000 enjoyed listening to Dance, Trance, Techno and Rave music everywhere, but it disappear with the sounds of reggaeton and electronic music has become a minority, but now all is changing, every weekend you see festivals of underground genres in every part of Spain.Breakbeat is becoming very solid again in Andalucia, and Drum and Bass is becoming the top electronic music genre over the world.
In Spain, there is a Latin music handicap that needs to be succeeded by people.The people in Spain must understand that, they must open their minds to other genres and people like us are trying hard to show that, our last release has been on the national radio last week, and some people call us to say that they heard our music. If all the producers and DJs work together, we will finally show everyone that there is more life apart from Latin music and Spanish folk.
If you see other countries in Europe, electronic music is normalized by people, but here in Spain, people still think that electronic music has close relation with drugs, and that isn’t true. You can see people involved in drugs in every genre, we love music and don’t need any drug to feel it.
We work with different software and hardware, we really enjoy the creation process, it’s like a brainstorming. When we are in the studio, we always start with an idea, we try to organize what sounds good or not for the song, and when we have what we really want, we start to structure all the different parts of the song.
We find inspiration listening to music in general, but sometimes, it’s like the light that turns on, you have a melody in your head and you try to apply it in a bassline or a lead synth. When you have transcribed the idea to a project all different parts of the song fit like a puzzle. Sometimes you are walking on the street and a melody goes to your head, so we send to each other an audio humming that melody.
We use Studio One and Logic Pro as DAW, both have very good stuff on there, and we add Serum, Vital, Sylenth or Diva, also we have analog synthesizers and we use distortion pedals used for guitars to get different styles of bass.
We’ve been very involved in electronic music for more than 20 years, and we worked in different projects, Javi has collaborated with the Synthpop/Darkwave band She Has Stigma, also lead the project Javi d Vogue, that is a very consolidated project of Future Rave, Progressive house, Melodic Techno.Carlos has a large trajectory in mixing and producing music, he has mixed with national and international artists of the underground scene, collaborating with the most important booking agencies of Spain for years. When he moved to the UK, he started to produce drum and bass and was part of different projects there. been mixing in Custard Factory (Birmingham) sharing decks with DJs like Dillinja, Lemon D, Macca UK, Jamie Dougan or Sébastien Léger.
We worked together on those years, but we don’t really have a consolidated project. When we made The Mind Hackers, we changed our mind, and we started our most important project.
It’s very difficult to know what will happen in a couple of years, but we think that we are here to stay, and The Mind Hackers actually is an emergent project. We have just started and we are getting a very good feedback from labels, social networks, friends, etc. so we want our dream to become true. Maybe we can be performing our music in big festivals like Let it Roll, Rampage, Hospitality, Liquicity, etc. and we know that DNBTV can make it. DNBTV has pleasantly surprised us by placing their trust in us, and we will always do our best. We have the opportunity to be part of the DNBTV family and that’s very important for us, they have very consolidated artists, and to be a part of the crew it’s amazing for us.
We’ve been mixing in many different places, we have been mixing in plenty of different clubs, festivals and raves all over our career, we can perform with vinyl records and we have a huge collection. We started with digital mixing but never lost connection with turntables.
When we make a live performance, we want to give people the energy we have inside, but a very important aspect it’s that we are faithful to our style. We love to see people dancing and enjoying our music.
Drum and bass scene is growing fast, and it’s getting very important over the world, producers are introducing new stuff to the genre and they are giving an extra when they put trance or orchestra elements to drum and bass songs. The evolution of the scene is like a massive community that adds members everyday, you have plenty of new emerging producers in quite different subgenres that involve more people to the scene and that’s great.
In Spain, drum and bass is in expansion, and now you see events in places that never use to be on the scene, for example, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or Ibiza, that used to be always close to genres like Techno and House, and now you can see parties that are booking artist like Chase & Status, Sub Focus, Dimension, etc.
We think that drum and bass is the most important emerging style of the current electronic scene, it’s the perfect situation to be on the wheel. We want to give advice to producers, Drum and Bass it’s the present and the future of electronic music.
Breakbeat it’s different, the breakbeat culture was the most important scene of Andalucia in the decade of 90s and 2000 and is growing fast again in the south of Spain, you can see plenty of events every weekend, but we think that breakbeat needs to be expanded to more public all over the world.
