Lazersonic & Zak Frost
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Biografía
- Lazersonic & Zak Frost “A cosmic treat of epic proportions” – DJ Magazine “You can almost feel the first sunrays of the day gently warming your face” – iDJ Magazine "Wow… One of my favourite records" - Tiga "So damn good" - Duke Dumont ..‘Ships that pass in the night’ is the perfect cliché to sum up Lazersonic and Zak Frost’s seeming inability over a decade-and-a-half to actually meet each other. Going to the same clubs, being part of the same scene and even sharing some of the same friends, the duo were seemingly destined to meet, but after 15 years of living parallel lives, perhaps that should read destined never to meet? “When I was 15, there were maybe 10 places that everyone went to for the kind of music we liked - the meccas like Club UK or Megatripolis; there was a scene where everyone used to go,” says Lazersonic (aka Irfan Nathoo). “It was a much smaller, more unified scene.” Yet in spite of their shared musical heritage, Zak Frost (yes, that’s his real name) and Irfan’s paths didn’t fully cross until they were finally brought together at Scotland’s T In The Park festival. “We were both playing at the same series of festivals and kept hearing about each other - the organiser kept saying to him, ‘You should meet Zak’ and to me, ‘You should meet Irfan’,” says Zak. “Then we met and started chatting and it just came from that.” And so contact was finally made and a creative partnership was sealed. Whether there was thunderclap or other ominous sign when this happened is unclear, but one thing is certain, the musical alchemy of Irfan and Zak’s ideas was something amazing. This was evidenced immediately by their first joint effort, ‘Aquaplane’, the arpeggiated, richly warm arm-raiser that was snapped up by no less than Tiga’s Turbo Recordings and has been giving goosebumps to everyone within earshot ever since its release in 2009. “‘Aquaplane’ was us finding our sound and that basically cemented the relationship, because for us that was the most magical piece and it just happened,” says Irfan. “We got the sound and the arps right and just had this jam. I think we recorded about 100 hours of synth jams and different sounds and we knew something was really good.” Zak says, “The most magical moment for me was finishing the track off, knowing it was the final mix and driving down to the countryside. It was very early morning in the middle of the summer and as I drove down this tiny little country lane through the most beautiful valley I put ‘Aquaplane’ on. The sun was coming up with mist everywhere and it was the perfect soundtrack’. That experience, and a comment from Tiga, were to shape the sound of Lazersonic & Zak Frost thereafter. “I sent it to Tiga saying, ‘Thought you might like this track we just finished - it’s just an 808 with some analogue arpeggios and perfect for 5am.’ He replied saying, ‘Love it but it’s not 5am – it’s got 7am written all over it,’ and that was the birth of the whole 7am idea for us.” The soothing of that all-night-dancing ache by the sun as it flickers its way over the horizon is captured perfectly in the warmth and depth of Zak and Irfan’s sound. “If it doesn’t work in that sort of situation then it’s not right. You’re still dancing but not massively rushing. You’re still happy but happy in a kind of mysterious way,” explains Zak before Irfan adds. “Rather than being forced to dance by a really heavy beat, which is great too, we’ve just gone for this tripped out after hours feel.” While they share such a similar musical schooling and reference points ranging from Plastikman to Aphex Twin to Orbital, the duo’s differences also add extra layers and influence to their sound. With Irfan’s more urban grounding – his production credits include Riz MC and Busta Rhymes – and Zak’s underground DJing background – which include running celebrated noughties London club night Nodisko – they both bring different elements to the table. “Our DJ experiences have been quite different,” says Zak, with Irfan adding, “Which has been a credit to the project. Zak knows the clubs and clubworld better than me and I’ve got that slightly more commercial edge, which is brought into the melodies and stuff like that. Not that I don’t love and do play long techno sets but I’ve done a lot of West End stuff and he’s done a lot more of the credible international club circuit and that’s been invaluable in the arrangement of the music.” Dance music’s long and rich history has proved that producing soulful machine-made music isn’t an easy feat but time after time, release after release, Lazersonic & Zak Frost manage to achieve it. From the serotonin-soaked strains of ‘Aquaplane’ to the wide-open, bubbling analogue electronics of follow-up ‘Thermionic’; from the trippy psychedelia of ‘Levels’ to their deep and dubby take on Bookashade’s ‘Regenerate’; Irfan and Zak successfully inject emotion, spirit and neck-hair-raising, floor-pleasing melodic hooks into each track. This knack of creating a humanising warmth within a sonic environment that many other render sterile is maintained throughout debut album, ‘Adventures In Stereo Vol. 1’. Quite how they manage this is a mystery, but it seems their passionate commitment to detail and love of imperfect analogue equipment may offer at least a partial explanation. “The studio I’ve been building over the years has always been from an analogue point of view so I’ve always started off with 808s, 303s and 101s and I’ve come from a techno background and then I use the computer to enhance it all, says Irfan. “I just find the source should be generated from something that’s alive, especially as the whole vibe of this album is an organic experience and it gives you more dynamics and the mistakes and the odd timings – that’s where the magic happens.” Zak continues, “You get all those weird quirks out an old bit of gear and often one of those quirks is the bit of magic that you then expand into something further. You don’t get that with digital stuff. It is what it is really: sterile basically. “When we did the first single we never thought we’d write an album but then we thought about it. We’d both done stuff in the past and we didn’t really have any interest in doing a reasonable track, signing it to a label, getting three remixes, then doing another one. We want to try to transcend that and do something a bit more timeless. If we’d just done a load of random tracks we wouldn’t have that feeling of something special we’d created. It might do well at the time but it’s not got the longevity.” Irfan adds, “It’s a major achievement, doing an electronic album that we’re massively chuffed with and we can just listen to instead of just servicing the dancefloor. You take pleasure in the soundscape and the journey.” The end result is an uncategorisable yet coherent and complete album that takes the listener through a variety of moods and emotions, with a finely struck balance between that 7am feel and the pull of the dancefloor. “Our biggest problem is that we don’t fit into any of the obvious pigeonholes and dance music has become so compartmentalised because the media need it to be,” says Zak. “It’s so big now they have to separate it up like that and we don’t really fit.” “See, I just like to call it techno but you’re not allowed to,” Irfan interjects. “That’s what we both came up with, it’s just fucking techno! 4/4 driven, completely electronic, it’s got elements of dub, disco, God knows it’s everywhere but it’s techno!” Zak explains that this is why they decided to set up their own label, AIS Recordings, and release the album themselves. “All our friends in the industry that heard it and loved it said, ‘Well, this track would be perfect for Get Physical, this track would be perfect for Sunday Best, etc. But that’s not what we’re interested in doing, splitting it up all over the place.” Irfan says, “No one’s going to care about it as much as we will. We’re not going to be slack on our own shit. If something needs to be done or we need to put more input or more time into something else we’re just going to do it because it’s important to us.” That same care and attention goes into Irfan and Zak’s monthly ‘Adventures In Stereo’ radio show which goes out on FM and online radio stations in more than 20 countries. “It takes two or three days to do each show” laughs Zak. “We really struggle to find new music that we love actually, so that’s why we like mixing new releases with older stuff, cutting it all up and editing it. It makes it harder but we think it makes it better as well in the end.” With the album primed to follow the global success of their radio show and singles to date, what happens next in the Lazersonic & Zak Frost story? “We really want to play more sunrise festival sets at big outdoor events in the small hours of the morning,” says Zak. “And we’d like to have another album for next summer if we can.” Irfan reveals, “The next phase is to get out of the studio and start taking it live and start building the show. The full show will be developed for the following summer, a whole two-hour DJ slash live extravaganza with visuals. It’s going to take a year to build up the visuals and dive into the 3D world of Adventures In Stereo. Who knows where it’s going to go?” One thing’s for certain, Lazersonic & Zak Frost’s ‘adventures’ are going to be well worth following. Watch this space. Ian Roullier̸ADVENTURES IN STEREO (UK) * Lazersonic & Zak Frost "Stars" original + vocal edit + instrumental - release date 20.06.11 * Lazersonic & Zak Frost "Adventures in Stereo Vol. 1" LP - release date 11.07.11 GET PHYSICAL MUSIC (GERMANY) * Booka Shade "Regenerate" - Lazersonic & Zak Frost Remix (2011) TURBO RECORDINGS (CANADA) * Lazersonic & Zak Frost “Aquaplane” original + remixes by WIlliams and Unit 4 (TMV-005, 2009) GOMMA (GERMANY) * Lazersonic & Zak Frost "Thermionic" - Gomma Dance Tracks Vol. 3 LP EYE INDUSTRIES (UK) * Lazersonic & Zak Frost “Levels” feat. Ali Love
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