#INTERVIEW VELD presents Dzeko & Torres

Toronto duo Dzeko & Torres have come a long way since their first EP “Hey” in 2012. The duo have been touring around the world and recently performed at Tomorrowland, Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC), Ultra, and VELD.

After teaming up with Tiësto for a remix of John Martin’s “Anywhere For You” Julian Dzeko and Luis Torres have been rising up on the Beatport charts. With other hit songs such as “Alarm” and recently released “Air ft. Delaney Jane” the duo is bound to be the next big thing in the EDM scene. We caught up with the duo at VELD Music Festival to chat about EDM, and  how they go The Xtra Mile. Read/watch our interview below!

You’re back in Toronto now, how do you feel?
Luis: It’s pretty cool to be back in Toronto. When you just played a bunch of festivals across Europe and South America . I mean, the hometown crowd is always the best crowd right?

Just going off that, you played EDC,  Tomorrowland, Ultra, etc.. How would you say the crowd differs between Canada and different countries?
Julian: Well, the crowd here in Toronto is really good. Same with Europe too. Europe and North America, they’re both really good. But I think like with Toronto, it’s a lot better even for us too cause we’re from here. I think people go extra hard when we play.

L : I agree, and we kind of have more freedom in Toronto because there’s a scene for everything in Toronto. Like we’ve played hip-hop in the middle of our set today because we know that works in Toronto. You don’t have the freedom to do that in the other cities, since it’s Toronto and everybody kind of likes anything here.. it works.

You guys started DJing because of Tiësto correct?
J : Yeah exactly

L: I started DJing first, and after I saw him play I got inspired to DJing.

Now you’re working with him. What was the process behind that?
L : I mean it just kind of happened. It progressed over the years, like he started playing our music and we met people who knew him, who introduced us to him and over time we just became good friends. And now we work on a daily basis with him, so it’s awesome

When  did you first start DJing? Around 2012?
L: Well that’s when we first appeared in the scene, but we been DJing since like 2008. Our first Beatport release was actually in 2009. It was a long time ago.

So going off that, it’s been a couple years since you first started DJing. EDM has been growing a lot. What difference do you see from when it first started to now?
J : I think it’s a great thing. The amount of people that are interested in it, or either if it’s athletes, celebrities, actors, and now you see so many of them at EDM festivals, Vegas and all that kind of stuff. I think it;s good, a lot of people may disagree. The EDM scene has grown, from like what it was 10 years ago till now. A lot of people are saying how it’s so mainstream and stuff, but I think when people say something went mainstream, it just means it got a lot bigger. If Justin Bieber is doing  a song with Diplo and Skrillex, you know what, big deal. Justin Bieber’s talented , he can sing, he can write. So having a guy like Justin Bieber, in my opinion is the biggest artist in the world, on a EDM song, so many other people who never heard of it. Regular people listen to Justin Bieber, it’s not even just girls, people in their 18-50, like mothers and stuff. They hear the EDM song and they see who Jack U is and they search them up.

L : Basically what he’s saying is it introduces it to a whole new scene who have never discovered it, but the underground stays intact. Like if people want to listen to the underground stuff, they still have it, and it’s funny because the underground stuff keeps getting bigger and bigger. So I mean the underground people who are hating on the main stream, there’s really no point in that. Because it’s just feeding their own scene, even the underground scenes getting way bigger than it was. We use to listen to techno, like six or seven years ago and we use to go to parties with like 200 people. Those parties now have like 4000 people. It’s growing everywhere so it’s amazing.

So when it comes to Festivals, what’s most important to you? The music, interaction with fans?J: Yeah well the thing is a lot of times our friends will be playing, so we’ll go watch.

What about discovering new artists?
L:  Yeah it’s always great to go and see guys you heard tracks from. I mean we’ll play tracks from people we don’t know very well and if we see that they’re on the same line up as us, we’ll go check them out and see what they’re playing. It’s always cool, I mean this might kind of sound like cheating but to go watch their shows and kind of pick up on stuff they’re doing and introduce them to your own show. For example, when we use to go see guys like Showtek , their crowd interaction is unbelievable. So we tried to incorporate a lot of that in our sets recently, especially in festival sets because they interact so well with their crowd and the vibe is so extreme the whole way through. It inspires us to do the same kind of thing.

We’re all about The Xtra Mile. How do you guys go The Xtra Mile.
L: That’s a good one. I don’t know. I think in terms of going The Xtra Mile in music , I know that we’ll basically use the same sound set for about six months, then we’ll kind of scrap that sound set after six months and go in a completely different kinds of sounds or our productions are always kind of progressing. I guess that’s how we go The Xtra Mile because there’s guys who have been producing the exact same song for you know three years, and we’re not about that at all. Like our sounds are always progressing, like the stuff that we were putting out six months ago is completely different from the stuff that we’re going to be putting out six months from now. It’s a very different thing, we’re always trying to change it up.

J : Yeah, he basically said it.

Any final words?
L : I mean fans in Toronto, that was crazy. VELD was insane, thank you guys so much for coming out. In terms of fans in the world, we’re going to do a lot of brand new music coming out over the next six or seven months, especially some tracks we really feel like is going to be our biggest songs. So really look out for that and stay in touch with us on our social media.

Watch the interview below!

Check out Dzeko & Torres single for “Air” below!