Slogun & iOh
Origin: None
Standing at the forefront of the new generation in Drum & Bass, Slogun & iOh are making serious waves with their upfront, new school sound. Hailing from the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, these young Junglist upstarts have used their massive basslines and catchy hooks to quickly establish themselves as two of the top new DnB producers in the game.
Releasing their first records on Faust & Shortee’s Heavy Artillery Recordings, their original tunes have repeatedly climbed the Beatport singles charts and gained the attention of the global Drum & Bass community. The pair has several major official remixes under their belt for artists such as Manufactured Superstars, Dirtyphonics, Eva Simmons, and many more across genres. In the fall of 2012, they took the grand prize for Insomniac’s Discovery Project: Nocturnal Wonderland, earning them a release on Interscope Records and a successful closing timeslot at Nocturnal. Since then, word has spread far and wide about the bass devastation that they bring with them wherever they go. Their music has received DJ support from many major names in the EDM world, including Krewella, Dirtyphonics, Crissy Criss, AK1200, John B, DJ Rap, Random Movement and many more. With no slowing down in sight, Slogun & iOh are set to change what everyone thinks about American Drum & Bass.
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We are two young junglists hell-bent on shaking up the DnB scene and bringing the music we love to a level never seen before. We’ve travelled the spectrum of modern music in our quest to find the perfect beat, and we hope it shows in our tunes. Designed to lift your spirits as well as your feet, our melodic take on Drum & Bass travels the entire emotional gamut without ever sacrificing the energy that made us both fall in love with the genre in the first place. For is, our music is the expression of all of life’s excitement, passion, rage, fear, anticipation, and joy all set to the funkiest backbeat you could possibly imagine.
Interview
Home Town: The San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, CA
Currently Living: Same
Origin Of Name: Slogun: Rather than decide on a new concept, we kept our original names and combined them as a duo. I picked “Slogun” because it was an interesting play on words that could be interpreted in different ways, but mainly because it sounded cooler than anything I’d thought of before. Ioh: In my teenage years I was given the name Ioh from the moon “Io.” My friends always said I was a small ball of energy, which is what “io” was meant to describe, a small moon with energy. I just threw an H in the end and the name stuck with me ever since.
Weapon of Choice: Logic Pro, LFO Tool (because we use it religiously) and, of course, beer and pizza!
Source of Power: punk rock, metal, reggae, house, trip hop, downtempo, underground hip-hop, dub, and all forms of drum & bass
How does what you do for a living affect you on a day-to-day basis?
If we’re not at work at our day jobs or spending time with our girlfriends, then we are probably either working on music or doing something related to our music career. It’s like a whole other job that you have to work at for years and years before you really get anywhere. Thankfully, we both have amazing friends, family and significant others who fully support what we do and are with us all the way.
How, if at all, does listening to music figure into your creative process?
Listening to music is a huge part of our creative process. We get inspiration from all types of music, from drum & bass to other styles like dub, reggae, house, even trance. You have to start somewhere, and hearing new sounds is one of the key starting points for inspiration. Whether it’s a chord progression that you like or a synth sound that you need to have, trying to replicate what you hear is essential because in the end you will have a new sound/riff in your arsenal. And you will likely have two or three new sounds that you made during the process that you can now call your own.
If we pressed Shuffle on your iPod while you went to the bathroom, what would you be embarrassed to come back to us listening to?
Probably one of our really early tunes, and maybe some cheesy hip-hop or hardcore.
What gets you excited when you think about the future of electronic music and club culture?
Seeing the explosion in popularity of electronic music culture over the last few years is extremely exciting, because of all the potential for growth in the future. While there are good things to be said of underground club culture, mainstream acceptance really helps an art form expand and grown (just look at rock n roll and hip-hop; if either one had stayed strictly underground and unknown, we probably would never have heard of The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, Public Enemy or Run DMC, for example).
We would love to see electronic music culture in this country become something like what it has become in the UK, where rave culture is no longer a major topic of controversy, but has become more-or-less accepted and integrated into their overall national culture (house, trance, electro, dubstep and even drum & bass are all represented on FM radio and on the pop charts, alongside typical mainstream music).
When you look at electronic music and the surrounding culture, what worries you about the future?
There have been a couple of troubling trends that have emerged since “EDM” became a buzzword and began taking over America. Even though the word itself is pretty benign and descriptive, all forms of electronic music are now being lumped together with this umbrella term, as if they are one monolithic style or movement. In reality there is great diversity within electronic music, and especially so within each individual genre itself. Nowadays when you listen to the radio or watch TV in this country, what you’re hearing is not so much real “EDM” as it is pop/rap music with some stereotypical EDM elements added here and there for the “cool” factor. You rarely ever hear any of the massive tunes that rock dancefloors worldwide in the mainstream American media. Hopefully electronic music culture will continue to grow in popularity without totally sacrificing its integrity.
What do you remember about your first DJ gig?
Slogun: My first DJ gig was at a college party in Santa Barbara, CA. I was playing from a 2nd-story balcony to a pretty decent-sized crowd of rowdy UCSB students below. I was extremely nervous, but eventually got comfortable as I realized that I wasn’t trainwrecking on the decks. As I was about to do a dramatic double-drop at the end of my set, I accidentally knocked the master fader on the mixer down as I was throwing my hands in the hair, so the tunes dropped at about half the volume to finish it out. Embarrassing!
iOh: My first DJ performance was at an underground mini rave in Northridge. It was back in 2010. I was just learning how to use the decks but had already been producing so I wanted to introduce my music at the time. I remember it like it was yesterday, most of the crowd had never heard that type of music I was playing and they went wild! I remember thinking to myself, “I need to make this a career!” It was a very memorable experience for me because it opened up the DJ doors. It wasn’t too long after when I started DJing at our local bass music night “Level Up” where I met Slogun. I can honestly say it was one of my favorite gigs!
What advice would you offer someone thinking about entering the Discovery Project competition?
When you’re working on your entry for the Discovery Project, it’s important first and foremost to be confident in your skills and ready to make something that will stand out amongst the crowd of entries. At the same time, it’s key that you work from the heart and express who you are as an artist, rather than trying to copy whatever the hottest sound is at the moment. We were really stoked to see the Discovery Project open its doors to artists from so many diverse backgrounds within “EDM,” so use this as a chance to show your individuality, it will most likely pay off in the end.
Winning Track:
Winning Mix:
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