Donkong Join Us In The Dojo With New EP [TMN Interview]

DONKONG
No Boy ft. Agent Lexie & Zorro (PREVIEW)

Distance is meaningless if you’re willing to make things work. Despite distance, Donkong was born. The duo comes out of Germany with unique dance-hall style influenced tracks that aren’t what you would expect to be coming out of Europe.

Donkong’s most recent project shares this sound. The No Boy EP features two singles, each with their own distinct sounds that show off the duo’s ability to be diverse. Upon listening to the EP, we had Donkong come join us in the dojo so we could get to know them and their recent EP a little bit better. Now, you get to enjoy all of these goodies for yoruself, so stream the title track preview while you read through our questions with Thomas and Joe.

TMN: Thanks for joining us, guys! Congratulations on your “No Boy” EP. How did the idea for this one come about?

THOMAS: Thank you very much. No Boy started as collaboration with our friend Zorro. He did percussion and I built the main synth that sounds so much like a brass sample that we could have saved some time on by just picking a brass sound. Nevertheless it was our first attempt to do Breakbeat. Same with Ammunition – we tried to combine a more traditional dancehall vibe with bass sounds. We’re quite experimental and always try to do things we haven’t done before.

TMN: You’re known for your innovative, genre-inclusive sound which seems to span a wide variety of musical influences. How did you both work to hone the “Donkong” sound?

THOMAS: We’re constantly discussing it and over the time there seem to be certain sounds that reappear. We still think the variety of what we do is too big. So we recently decided to do no more DNB… we have a DNB song coming after No Boy. What a coincidence.

TMN: Can you tell us a little about how you started making music together?

JOE: We live 500km apart from each other. The first time we got together in the studio and wrote “Jawz”, Thomas got sick. So he ended up on my couch and we Skyped every other hour to talk about the song and new ideas. Even though our first session was kind of a mess, Jawz turned out to be one of our best and original tunes so far.

TMN: What’s the scene like in Germany? Does the music go down a treat?

The scene is very small and that is also why we had a hard time playing gigs over the last years. Electro and Dubstep went down hill and suddenly all the cool parties disappeared. Then Hip-hop DJs started playing Trap, so no need for extra Trap parties. Germany is Techno land and everything that’s electronic but not Techno seems to be „not cool“ enough on the big scale. This seems to be slightly changing right now. Hopefully we and our friends can help with that.

TMN: So tell us a bit about how you found the process of making this body of work. Did you find that the inspiration flowed as soon as you hit the studio? Or was it tricky to pinpoint the specific sound for this one?

THOMAS: I guess it’s more about what we avoided to do with these songs. We don’t wanted them to have a typical club arrangement. Hopefully it makes a big difference for normal listeners. The sound is a combination of elements we also use in other songs, but we tend to build new sounds that act similar instead of re-using the old ones. Very often you start with an idea to make something specific and end up with a completely different song. Luckily these two ended up like what we had in mind, but it was a very long journey which took us over a year.

TMN: You’ve teamed up with Feral Is Kinky, Agent Lexie and Zorro for the EP. How did you all end up working together?

THOMAS: Like I said, „No Boy“ started with being in the studio with Zorro and having the basic idea for it. Then I met Lexie on one of Marten Hørgers‘ legendary BBQs, played her some beats and later on, while being pregnant, she recorded the vocals for it.

JOE: We haven’t met Feral in person yet, but she was working with some friends of us (Symbiz). Her style and voice was very unique, so we contacted her and asked her if she likes to work with us – sometimes it’s that easy.

TMN: You’re known for your excellent remixing skills (reworking tracks for the likes of Major Lazer, Krafty Kuts, Hudson Mohawke and TNGHT). If you could pick any artist, who would be top of your remix list?

Normally you want to remix a song that you think lacks something- or at least doesn’t fit your set. So it’s hard to pick an artist, because the people we admire tend to do very good songs, so our job gets a lot harder. Most of the time a remix that just takes the original to another tempo is quite boring. It probably would be something very different from our style, something with vocals preferably.

TMN: Can you tell us a fun fact about the Donkong project that fans may not necessarily have guessed?

The biggest fun fact is that we’re actually two people. Most of the time people think Donkong is one person.

TMN: What’s next for Donkong? Do you have any more musical treats for us in store this year?

There’s a lot to come. There will be some more free treats in the next weeks. A VIP mix of our single „Brilliant“ and a song with Marten Hørger. And we will bring more own original stuff as soon as possible. Stay tuned!