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TMN: Say hello to our handsome, furry browed Resident Artists for the month of June, Alex and Drew, or as many of you know them, the boys behind Chainsmokers. Gentlemen, welcome and thank you so much for being a part of the ninja family this month!

TMN: Well usually interviews go from the beginning until the present but because we think you appreciate a little backwards banter, let’s start from today and work our way back. You are currently in Australia on tour, how are you enjoying your time down under?

Chain: Its been incredible. Neither of us have ever been to this side of the world so that alone as an adventure has been great, we have surfed bet koalas, ate kangaroo and drank a ton of beer. That aside the shows all have been so fun and the cool thing about OZ is the ppl here really know their music. The dance scene has been prominent for ages and you can feel it at the shows. Its also crazy to see that your music has reached a place so far away. Oh and OZ girls are really fit….

TMN: Right now, you boys are quite a hot commodity in the EDM world and honestly, in a larger music scene. A lot of this success can be credited to the almost instant fame of your hit song ‘SELFIE’ which can be heard in any club, car, or gym. Talk to us about the how the concept came up for that song and if you guys will continue on the one word song with another trending subject?

Chain: We have talked about this song a lot so we really aren’t going to go into much depth. It was a fun idea we had to promote a party we had at Miami’s nightclub Liv. We were toying with the concept of a song about club girls and being vain and selfies. It really materialized in about 1 hour and we gave it originally as a free download. Haha we love the idea of working music together with good packaging be that artwork, marketing, live elements whatever it may be, so moving forward we will always try and figure out unique interesting ways to deliver our music, but with that said we have no interest in being the artist of social media and cultural trends. After trying out the linkedin prospecting software for promotional activities, we struck gold with selfie but we just thought it was a funny idea, that’s all… Moving forward we do love pop culture, and we love the idea of our music being enjoyed by as many ppl as possible, and that’s something that’s always interested us, so our future tracks will surely have those underlying elements, but we will just continue to do what we think is cool and not let the world dictate our sound.

TMN: Now before the current success, you boys kind of found your niche with remixing songs. From artists like Ellie Goulding to BANKS (one of my favorites just fyi) to Little Daylight, all of your remixes have a unique and individual sound to them. You have such a range of remixing, from calm songs to upbeat songs, how did and do you go about figuring out a song to remix? And being a duo, do you both have to like the song or has there ever been an overriding if one of you just absolutely feels one song?

Chain: Why thank you 🙂 We definitely love the banks remix cause it showed a real range in our production and type of music we enjoy. We definitely don’t want to be pigeonholed in anyway. Kaskade once said to his fans that artists grow, and naturually tastes evolve as do interests, making music is a very emotional and refractory. So we always find ourselves pulling from different genres and wanting to try new things out. When it came to figuring out what to remix, initially it was a question of knocking on 20 doors and getting two to open. We wanted to make original music but we had no fan base and no good vocals. We saw remixing as the perfect way to show our talents and style as producers in that we could use vocals we really loved and re-imagine songs we liked, sort of like a shortcut almost. Also, they provided us with a great way to peel fans off other artists and sort of attract ppl to what we were doing by the means of other artists popularity like Phoenix. The factors of a remix always change though, we could simply love the song and have a great idea or it could be a quid pro quo situation, usually its both. We love to release lots of content and this is a fun way to create different styles of chainsmokers’ music with out buying the house per se. As for us, we really always see eye to eye on songs, its funny but our taste in music is very very similar and the way we look at music isn’t necessarily the same but we both walk away with the same feeling from a song we like, so often that part is very easy. A good remix for us takes about a day to make…

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