Artist Spotlight: Deckers
You’ve built creative identities before (Bolier, BLR) and each one came with its own sound and its own world. What’s the difference this time around, and what does Deckers say about where you are as an artist right now?
For Deckers, it’s about a bit more playful and uptempo approach, as currently there’s a wave of this sound conquering the world, and having known Ben Gold / Lawton for most of my career, we decided to work on a track together, the result being this 146 bpm monster. Combined with the fact that my BLR release schedule is packed tight for the foreseeable future and we wanted this baby out before summer, I decided to create an alias for this sound, as it’s both way faster than my usual BLR output and it would confuse my fans too (as I have learned from the past) – so it’s a pretty practical but fun move for me – and I just love making music all day and all night, so adding an outlet for the faster stuff is only a logical step for me too.
‘Los Retratos’ is the very first thing the world hears from Deckers. What made you choose this as your debut track?
It just happened to be that way; as said, I have known Ben since the early days of both our careers. A couple of years back, I saw Ben for the first time in years backstage at the Luminosity Beach Festival. We decided to work on something together back then – then time just passed by but from time to time we’d talk about possible ideas, and at some point I was working on a rework of an album track I had on my very first artist album that never was launched as a single, but with this guitar melody I was very fond of, Ben asked if he could jump on it and turned this into this 146 bpm fest after which we finished the track together. As explained in the previous answer, it’s a combination of scheduling restraints, and this sound is different than what I release with my other aliases. We decided to take the Deckers angle. The Balearic and summery feel we thought would fit perfectly with the time of the year!
What do you hope people feel when they hear ‘Los Retratos’ for the first time?
Years back there was this ATB/Miss Jane version of Opus III ‘It’s A Fine Day’ (still one of my fav dance vocals ever), and my brother used to blast this one out loud on in our parents’ living room, dancing to it, on a nice, summery day, and we would be excited for the rest of the day to come, sun shining, feeling good – that’s the exact feeling I’d want people to have when they hear ‘Los Retratos’