CS EXCLUSIVE | Bordertown
Over the past couple of years, UK duo Bordertown have been swiftly making their mark, with big releases on Nurvous Records, Tough Love's Get Twisted, and Love & Other — not to mention this years breakout single All This Before, which saw massive support from the biggest names in the game and a bevy of ace remixes. Hailing from Bristol / London, Luke and Ricky have a got a well-versed and finely tuned style to match their UK roots. We recently got together with them for a chat and asked if they'd put together a mix for us, so today we're bringing you an excellent hour-long run of some choice cuts by their favourite artists, plus the very first listen of their brand new original What!. Get into all below and enjoy!
Track List •
Bodhi - Brawd Braxton - 21 Days Icarus - Ride This Train (Icarus Basement Remix) Weiss - Get Em Funk Sante & Sidney Charles - Blade Sick Elektrik - That's Right Disciples - Mastermind Leftwing & Kody - Carnival Hot Since 82 - Veins Pirupa - Bring Me Back CamelPhat - Constellations NVOY - All Night Bordertown - What! Dusky - Squeezer Bontan - Reality Stardust - Music Sounds Better With You (Greco Remix) Serge Devant & Damiano + Camille Safiya - Fearing Love Toto - Africa (Bordertown Dub) Maribou State - Wallflower (Lane 8 Remix) George Fitzgerald feat. Boxed In - Full Circle
Interview •
Caveman Sound: To get started, tell us a bit about the vibe of this mix.
Bordertown: It’s an insight to our personal taste in house music, which is scarily very similar to each other! There’s cuts from some of our favourite producers George FitzGerald, Bodhi and Maribou State as well as big new tech house records from Hot Since 82, Leftwing & Kody and Sick Electrik.
CS: How would you describe Bordertown’s sound?
BT: Electronic house music with big basslines, without being too cheesy or too underground!
CS: All This Before is one track that’s been particularly massive for you guys this year, can you speak a bit about how that came together and its success?
BT: All This Before has probably been the most stressful and successful track we've worked on! It started as an idea about 2 1/2 years ago, we put the Whitney vocal over it and fell in love with it straight away. From then we developed it more and more, put together some wicked remixes together and had some huge support! Hopefully it will be a record that features in DJs sets for years to come.
CS: You’ve also released a string of excellent remixes, how does your approach differ when creating a remix vs. an original?
BT: Depends really, a lot of the time with a remix we try to build a new track out of the stems, other times we use templates from some of our original tracks. It’s always fun working on remixes or bootlegs and we definitely find them easier to finalise over original tracks like most producers.
CS: Most memorable show you’ve played so far?
BT: All of them! A few that stand out would be Lightbox and Ministry of Sound in London, also Motion in Bristol which was crazy!
CS: Speaking of sets, can you give us three essential tracks that never leave your bag?
BT: Our edit of ‘The Streets - Has It Come To This’ goes off every time! We always drop a few classics... ‘Celeda & Danny Tenaglia - Music is the Answer’ being one of them and also ‘Huxley - Let It Go (Eats Everything Refuse)’ is a big one for us.
CS: You guys have definitely got a well-versed style, which is no surprise given the long history and embrace of dance music in the UK. Where do you draw inspiration from?
BT: We’re into loads of things from old, weird and wonderful tracks - not sure that reflects our style but it definitely helps with the creative process when you're not listening to too much of the same thing. The house/bass scenes of London and Bristol definitely play a part.
CS: Who are some fellow artists we should be on the lookout for right now?
BT: NVOY are cool, also CamelPhat and Sick Elektrik are worth checking out.
CS: All time favourite movie soundtrack?
BT: Luke: Shawshank Redemption, that ish gives me goosebumps haha. Ricky: For me it would have to be a childhood classic, Carlito’s Way the nightclub scenes are legendary!
CS: Lastly, what have you got in the works over the coming months and through the New Year?
BT: We’ve just dropped a new track with this mix called ‘What!’ so we’re going to let that breathe for a while. There’s a remix for Mendoza’s Love Druggie dropping soon then we’ll have another EP out in the new year - watch this space!
Cheers to the boys for joining us on this one. Connect with Bordertown on socials below to keep up-to-date.