Loefah is one of the earliest supporters of your tracks, having plugged them in early 2011 on his Rinse shows. How did the connection come about, and what did it feel like gaining such great support not only from him but from the likes of Mary Anne Hobbs and Jackmaster so quickly? “It’s been about a year since we finished our first tracks, and we didn’t really know who to send them to. We just chose DJs that we were fans of, like Loefah or Mary Anne Hobbs, and also Boddika and 2562. Although they had never heard of us, they played our songs – we were quite surprised at first but it allowed us to gain credit and to write more songs that we could put out later. This kind of support was really important because it’s through them that DJs like Jackmaster got in touch and we ended up signing with Numbers and Saigon.”

From listening to a lot of Rinse FM shows it seems like your tracks lend themselves quite easily for an MC to work over. Has working with vocalists on a full length track crossed your minds yet, and if so is there anyone in particular you’d like to work with? “As you’ve probably noticed, we add bits of sentences ourselves that are pretty incomprehensible to our songs, and for now we’d like to keep playing with that and continue in that direction. We’ve never really written a beat while thinking about having an MC over it, but all the better if the MCs are comfortable with our songs. We’ll see in the future, but for now we’re not really thinking about doing tracks in that direction.”

You have five releases out that in total consist ten tracks, but you haven’t done any remixes yet. What’s your point of view when it comes to remixes?  “We have had more and more requests, but we do not want to do them at the moment. We like the idea of remixes a lot as long if we’re free to do a personal interpretation. We’re working on our first official remix right now, with more information on that coming very soon. We do however like to hear remixes of our own songs, and Audio Culture will release a 12” with remixes of our tracks in the future. It’s very nice to hear a new version of a song that you wrote.” Speaking of Audio Culture I wanted to ask what was coming out on say label. When will the 12” come out? “The release has got three tracks titled “Model”, “Belle” and “Let Me See”. It should be available on the fourth of June!” 

How do you two work together as a pair when it comes to producing? “We write together and separately. We see each other a few times a week in the studio to see how tracks are progressing, what directions they’re taking, and how we should construct it. As we both have our own specializations we work alone frequently too but still in the same studio, so it ends up almost always occupied. Gilles is more the person who mixes and builds the tracks, where Yoann will sample and write ideas of loops that are reworked together. We put in our ideas and work them together so it’s an ideal collaboration.” And what’s your approach when you do a DJ set together? “Tricky question, as we decided that one of us will take care of it and we won’t mix together that often anymore. Let’s say that I’m more in charge of the mix part, although we always review the mix together and Gilles brings tunes to it as well.” Do you have a live set, or is it mostly DJing at this point? “We’re just doing DJ sets for the moment but one day we may go live if we feel the need to do so but we prefer to focus on just writing tunes in the studio at the moment.”

Coming from Belgium, how is the music scene there? “We’re between London and Berlin which is audible in our productions. Belgium is a nice country to live in, but not particularly ideal for music. There’s not many clubs, labels, management and you have to do a lot by yourself here, although there is definitely talent here, like Locked Groove among others.” Are you finding that there are more and more musicians there, or do they all move away to London/Berlin when they have the chance? “For example, Peter Van Hoesen left for Berlin, ARP101 alias Alix Perez left for London. For now, we don’t feel the need to leave Belgium for a city that’s full of musicians, our studio and our friends are here and we’re continuing to work like this. We surely have less opportunity to meet people, but that maybe gives us more independence with what we write. And besides, the internet allows us to do many things anyway.”