Direct from Christchurch, New Zealand, Truth are Tristan Roake and Andre Fernandez.
The duo fuse dubstep and electronic beats creating landscapes perfect for head nodding as much as a full body dance explosions.
There’s been a new arrival in the Truth camp.... how is fatherhood treating you Tristan?
So far so good! Just had a little boy to complement the four year old girl I already have kickin’ around.
You’ve recently released a new 14-track Truth album in June, ‘Hollow World’. There’s some political motivation behind the title, right?
You could say that. We always think that things should be interpreted by the listener in whatever way they want. But for us, ‘Hollow World’ is all about that idea that everything around us is hollow in a sense — people are living their lives, but it's a facade with a hollow interior, some sort of emptiness. The things you see in the media, politics, science, religion, the ‘facts’ or ‘truths’ are merely a facade. The whole world is hollow in this sense. What is going on under the surface, within the ‘Hollow World’, that's what is really interesting.
The record rolls from deep house to dubstep... do you guys actively look to create a sound when creating new music/ albums?
Sort of. There is an aesthetic the two of us enjoy listening to and aspire to. A lot of the ‘sound’ which people have identified when listening to Truth stems from the fact that it's both of us, in the studio, making music. It just has that sound because we made it. With ‘Hollow World’, we really did want to create a cohesive whole. We feel the album can and should be taken as a piece in itself, not just a collection of tracks. And one of the reasons we broke out of just doing 140bpm was to show off different sides of our sound.
There are a number of guests on the album including Joker and Flowdan; how did these collaborations come about?
Each has their own story. We met Flowdan last year at Outlook Festival in Croatia; got chatting and decided to collaborate. It took about six months of sending ideas back and forth, but when Flowdan delivered, we were beyond happy. We've been mates with Joker for a long time; Joker hit us up when he was on tour needing a place to crash in San Francisco. Our friend Taso (who also features on the album) had a dope spot in SF, so we linked them up. Naturally, we also ended up in the studio and made that track. Bijou we met online (she's Icelandic, but lives in Canada) and just traded beats and vocals. With Lelijveld we put a call out for vocalists via social media, had a ton of people get in touch. She was the strongest applicant, and it turned out she lives in the same city! Perfect.
Do you enjoy adding live vocals to the mix?
Yes of course, it's a lot of fun jamming with a MC or singer. It presents challenges of course, but can add so much to the experience. Live there's a real interaction, chopping and changing the music beneath a vocalist. In the studio, vocals can add another dimension to a recording.
Truth have also released an EP via Tempa in the last month... you guys must be producing a helluva lot of music of late?
We always produce a lot, it's what we love to do and we're blessed to be able to do it! There's always so much on the go at any one time.
Is there a normal day/ week for you guys — do you wake up and the first thing you think about is Truth?
We eat, sleep and dream Truth. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to turn off! There aren't really normal days, as touring/ gigging messes with everything (we don't have a normal working week, with the weekend off). I suppose you could say there are two ‘types’ of days for us. At home, studio etc, and then tour. Touring goes like this: wake up having had two hours sleep with hotel housekeeping staff knocking on door, taxi to airport, check in and wait for delayed flight, fly, usually transfer to a second flight, land in city of performance, straight to venue for soundcheck/ setup, quick meal/ dinner then to hotel to attempt another hour sleep, gig, party, stumble back to hotel, rinse, repeat.
Things have cooled down somewhat for the dubstep genre since it blew up globally 12-18 months ago... is the underground still mining dubstep beats, or has it morphed into a new sound?
The underground sound is having somewhat of a renaissance right now. Possibly as a result of the mainstream side of dubstep blowing up so big; there were a lot of kids who liked it but wanted to go a bit deeper. Those kids now have quite a large number within the dedicated underground heads. We've definitely noticed the sound start to diversify, lots of new producers using sounds in different ways, especially in regard to beat structure, the type of sounds and percussion, stuff like that. In many respects there has been a backlash against the mid-range dominated sound which became so prevalent a couple of years ago.
The evolution of electronic music is hard to keep up with at times... where do you see the 'tip' headed in the next 6-12 months?
Genres are becoming more and more mashed up and hard to define. So that trend is probably going to continue. But as you said, it's hard to keep up. The next ‘big thing’ is probably going to come out of the blue for 95 percent of listeners (with 5 percent stroking their chins saying "I told you so...").
You're headed across the pond to play Manifest in September... do you enjoy the trips across the Tasman to play to us Aussies?
Absolutely love it, there are typically two ‘types’ of gig we play over in Australia. Club shows and festivals and both are dope for different reasons. Particularly looking forward to getting in amongst it in the great outdoors at Manifest in September. Also, we shouldn't forget all the Kiwis who make it to Truth shows in Australia. At some shows it feels like there are more Kiwis than there are Aussies!
Social media; you have 70,000 Likes/ Soundcloud followers... does that expand your mind to think that many people are connecting with your sounds/ vibes?
If I think about it, it blows my mind to be honest. Sometimes you look at those numbers and it is just numbers and stats, because if you were to think of those types of numbers in terms of people in a room, well, you'd be talking about a stadium. Soundcloud in particular, it's people specifically looking for music they like and enjoy, so that's the perfect group to be able to interact with.
More on the fans... do you enjoy socialising/ interacting with punters, sharing the experience as one so to speak?
The two of us take different approaches, but yes, it's always good to hear from people and chat to people at gigs. Can also get a little intense at times. It can be really enjoyable just getting down after the set, and joining in on the dancefloor etc. At the end of the day we're all music lovers.
What's next for Truth?
Aside from our next few EPs which we are planning to release ourselves. We're trying to keep busy in the studio, seeing where we can take the sound following on from ‘Hollow World’. We're really into experimenting, while keeping our music recognisably ‘Truth’. So after these next 2 EPs, expect to see some new ideas flowing. We really want to expand our music into other forums such as game and film music. Our stuff is always quite dark, moody and cinematic, so this would work really well. We got a start last year, when one of our tracks (‘Devil's Hands’) was featured on ‘American Horror Story’. And have been talking to some game developers as well.
By the year 2020, how will be listening to music?
In dark, underground, basements, through huge stacks of speakers... same as we are today. Hopefully the fad of listening to everything through crappy laptop speakers, and streamed at a low bitrate will be over. We'll all be rocking wearable SubPacs, with Audeze headphones with some sort of solid state storage for our music at 96khz and 32bit.
Will vinyl outlive the digital download?
Most probably, for one thing the digital download is probably short-lived as streaming and the cloud take over. So many people already never download the music they listen to.
Truth headline Manifest which takes place September 26-28.
