Interview: Coyote Kisses

Electro Dub duo Coyote Kisses has been rocking events all around with their explosive, unique sound. “In a scene full of cookie cutter complextro producers and “womp womp” brosteppers, Coyote Kisses’ intrinsic musicality is more than just refreshing”. Coyote Kisses consists of  two life long friends from Lakeland, Florida. Their first big break was with their track “Acid Wolfpack”. The song hit Hype Machine’s coveted #1 spot its first day out and the rest is history. Techibeats.com was not only lucky to interview these guys but they are also playing our event TONIGHT in Los Angeles and you can ger pre sale tickets HERE. Check out the interview after the jump!

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How would you say your music has evolved from when you first started producing?

When we first started working together, we were writing vaguely emo, bit pop style electronica. It featured us singing a lot, too, something we have more or less dropped since those days. It was dance music only in the way that it had a steady beat, but it definitely wasn’t meant to be dance music in the same way we write now. We also did a few acoustic tracks, with piano and guitar. It was nice to break away from the computer every so often. 

Is being one of the top names in the up and coming DJs exciting? how has it affected your personal lives?

It’s difficult, I’d say. We’re in this odd limbo of being both known, and unknown by the general dance music world, which is in itself a difficult thing to really quantify. The main problem is that we are both starting our final year at our respective colleges, so for us this means if we want to graduate this year, we will have to chose school over music. This comes at a bad time because we feel a pressure to produce and tour in a time when we feel eyes are on us. Thankfully we have done a lot of work on a lot of tracks this summer, so we’ll be able to wrap them up with relative ease over the next semester or so.

Whats your most interesting experience you’ve had so far in the EDM industry?

I’d say it would have to be a 3 day sprint-tour that we did from Ft. Collins, CO to Kansas City, MO, to Syracuse NY. It was a new city every day as we bounded from West to East Coast. It was exciting, but not easy. In order to make our flights to the next venue, we had to get up super early every day, and since our sets were around 1 or so, we wouldn’t get to our hotel until around 3 or so.  We got about 2 – 3 hours of sleep each night and neither of us can sleep very well on planes, so by the end of the tour, it felt like we were in a state of constant physical pain, just being awake! It was a small taste of what I imagine bigger artists experience for weeks at a time, sometimes months. It was exhausting, but exhilarating.

Any tours coming up you guys are excited about? any new music you plan on releasing?

We’re doing another 3 day tour run this time we get to actually go out of the country! We’re hitting Vancouver, to Columbia, then D.C. As far as releases are concerned, we have a bunch of tracks that we’ve started, but haven’t finished. We have plans to release some new tracks at the end of August or the beginning of September if all goes according to plan.

What do you guys like to do in your spare time?

Bryce – I live right on the coast in Sarasota Florida, so sometimes I enjoy sailing small racing boats with my friends. I also play piano classically and take lessons during the school year. We’re both video game aficionados and enjoy a good rental after a long day at the studio. A personal favorite of ours is walking around for miles at 4 a.m., delving into philosophical inquiries of anything and everything. Many people would think studying the morality of the video game “Heavy Rain” for PS3 until sunrise was a waste of time, but we sure don’t.

Joe- I played a lot of sports in high school, so I still love doing things like playing tennis, throwing the football, getting the lacrosse sticks out and going to the park, etc. I spend a good amount of time at the gym because it helps me unwind and sleep better that night. I also love the beach, and though I haven’t had very much time to do it this summer, I enjoy spending entire days there hanging out and surfing.

What track, EP, or album have you guys enjoyed producing the most? why?

Tough question- each song holds it’s own special place in our hearts. Each one is a manifestation of certain emotions and sensations that comes together at a specific time to form a unique work of art. Many times, our favorite tracks go through a long phase of being thoroughly unenjoyable to work on. Banging our head against a wall to get the right things in the right place. There’s a lot of “work” when we write music. Although, like most things in life, the reward is much sweeter if you feel like you really have earned it.

What sort of programs or equipment do you find the most critical to your productions or style of music? why?

The most intrinsic technological element to our production is a program called Dropbox. Most people have heard of it and probably use it on a daily basis. It is what allows us to produce together even while being hundreds of miles apart. We have a synchronized, “Coyote Kisses” Dropbox folder, and it contains the Live project files for any songs we are currently working on. For example, if one of us were to open up a song we were working on, add something new, and save the project, the new updated version would appear on the other person’s computer almost instantly. 

I’m a firm believer that it’s not the equipment that makes the musician. I won’t be so extreme as to say that it doesn’t help you obtain that “professional sound”, but I think that most listener’s ears can hear through the production value to the the underlying music and style. There’s something intangible that you can hear in a talented musician, that just seems to be absent in one-hit wonder artists. There’s a feeling constancy and substantiality, almost a type of depth. It’s difficult to describe, but I’m sure anyone who’s interested in music knows that feeling when they find an artist with those characteristics, and it really has very little to do with their “sound quality” or the price of their synthesizers or the number of VST’s they have.

In that vein, Our style of music relies less on our equipment and more on our musical backgrounds. We have a unique team between the two of us, me being a classically trained pianist and music major and Joe having a long standing indie pop/rock background with guitar influences. It makes for a sound that neither of us could achieve on our own. It makes it more or less unpredictable in a an exciting and enjoyable way. We also sweat the details in our music, which makes for a little bit more of a defined picture of our sound,  but the downside is our tracks take a while to make.

9) who were some of your initial inspirations for electronic music? how did you get into it and how did it shape the artists you are today?

Bryce- When I was about 13 or so, a great friend of mine introduced me to a few electronic artists in the style of Aphex Twin. And for a time, the Richard D. James album was all I listened to day and night. Another artist I loved was The Flashbulb who’s in the same vein as Aphex, more melodic. He’s also the first electronic artist that I learned of that was initially a classically trained musician, like myself. I was

Joe- Admittedly, Bryce listened to a lot more Electronic music before I started. My roots were in indie rock- the first real “dancey” electronic stuff that I was really intrigued by was a group called The Tough Alliance. One song in particular, “Neo Violence,” really grabbed my attention. It had this rowdy infectious energy. That same energy is what drew me into dance music.

For more info on these guys check out their Facebook page. To see them headline tonight at the LA Exchange buy pre sale ticket HERE. if you can’t make it out to the event don’t worry you can watch the live stream of the event through this link http://www.twitch.tv/crosscountermusic

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