BLOGGER INTERVIEW 001: TRUANTS
This week, we were fortunate enough to catch an interview with our friends who are currently sitting at the top of the blogosphere; Truants. Not only did they talk to us about insomnia and learning English from Diplo, they left a seriously impressive mixtape, just for us! AO-AO spoke to Immy and Sin from Truants:
1. Truants is regarded as a top blog from both producers, DJs and bloggers! What’s your recipe for success? Immy:
Our heart is in it! Positivity is good. We’re not taking ourselves too seriously and most of us are insomniacs which works to stay in touch with people who live on the other side of the world!
Sin: I thinked our continued insomnia can sometimes cause halluncinations, but that’s when we have our best ideas and question formulations. So it’s all good in the end.
2. How did Truants form?
Immy: I’ve been writing for whack blogs funded by the Government since my twelfth, a project to get kids to stay off the street. I kind of missed writing so I started a blog named Saints Don’t Cry last year where I wrote articles on how people should stop whining about laptop DJ’s and listen to Rihanna instead. I got one of my friends involved, whom I had just started a DJ project with called Truants. I figured we could as well rename the blog to that because it sounds better! I found a couple of talented cats who were up to join the team and we took it from there.
3. Your writers are based across the globe, what benefits does this bring and where in the world would you say had the strongest scene?
Sin: If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s probably that with a good internet connection, location hardly matters for anyone anymore. As for where we’re at, Holland can be frustrating because the crowds tend to be weird and rude (they can’t shut up at any kind of gig!) but on the other hand, Amsterdam is a city that artists never skip on their Europe tours. So in that aspect, it’s great that we always have the oppurtunity to see anyone.
Immy: I think Berlin is the place where it’s at. It’s the only city left where artists can still do what they want without the government getting in their way. Obviously the French are still killing the game, too.
4. Your Dutch, but you write in better English than most bloggers! How has that happened?
Sin: I was raised with English and three other languages so it kind of came naturally for me. Sometimes I can only think of a word in Tamil or something, but I could always just write in Tamil anyway and claim it was an M.I.A quote.
Immy: I’m heavily inspired by the Twitter page of Diplo. He is a true linguistic and his often dazzling formulations blow me away. I take notes of them when going through my TweetDeck, and by doing this I learn something new every day.
5. Which DJ’s/Producers and artists are you getting excited about this year?
Sin: I’m always excited for everything Institubes. It’s really the baddest label in Europe right now, boom!
Immy: Jokes aside, I think Art Nouveau have a lot in store in the future. These two guys are really talented and I forsee a bright and musically injected future. Next to that, I think the combination of Marcus Price and Carli is going to destruct dancefloors. Milt Mortez knows how to produce too, Chaos In The CBD, Club Cheval and Mele.
Sin: Egyptrixx, Tony Senghore and NGUZU are definately exciting for me. I’ve also been digging a lot of Kingdom, Ikonika, Clouds, 12th Plane and Mondkopf lately. I was also super stoked for Four Tet and Flying Lotus this year and I’m so glad that neither have disappointed in the least. Cosmogramma needs a crown.
Immy: We’ve added a mixtape to give you a taste what’s exciting to us right now! It has old and new tracks and kind of reflects what we’ve been jamming to recently.
6. The Truancy Mixtapes are really taking off right now, what’s been your favourite so far and any names we should look out for in the future?
Immy: Brodinski is the one you should look out for in the future, as well as Neoteric, Harvard Bass, Mumdance, Bobmo, Lorcan Mak, DeathFace, Femme En Fourrure and Manara. This might take a while but all these names are settled.
Sin: My faves were the mixtapes by Guillaume Berg (so gangsta!) and Kenton Slash Demon (super suave). They both totally killed it.
Immy: It hurts me to answer this question because I liked all of them so far, but I might have listened to the one by NGUZUNGUZU a lot of times.
Sin: Haha, me too! To be honest, Ride by Ciara needs to be the ending for every good mix out there.
7. What would you say the aim of Truants was?
Immy: To stop the violence that is posting illegal tracks in 320 Kbps on the internet without saying a word about the release.
Sin: Seriously, single link blog posts are the Newspeak of the music blogosphere. We thought it was time for a change and we crowned ourselves the Winston Smiths of electronica.
Immy: Viva la revolucion!
8. Which other blogs are you tipping for world domination?
Immy: Aye oh, Aye oh! That blog is wilde!
Sin: I consider the Erol Alkan Forum my Oh No They Didn’t of the blogosphere. Bitchiness and everything!
Immy: Kidcity is killing it right now! Fluokids are the past, the present and the future and I like reading through the Mixpak Records blog! I like Vegas On Acid although I have no idea what they’re saying! Good blog.
9. What’s been your personal highlight since founding Truants?
Immy: This is going to sound cheesy but I didn’t know our writers Sin, Tom, Louis and Riccardo at all before we started the blog and by now I’m in love with the four of them!
Sin: Yeah, it’s been crazy and lovely to meet new people that are so much on the same wave-length. Immy and me are kind of like the same person, it’s getting creepy. As for experiences with working for the blog - I would probably say interviewing Jackson.
Immy: Interview-wise it has to be Jackson for me too! He played us a song on the piano! Or Brodinski, because it was our first ever interview and he’s actually a native Dutch speaker. That was surprising.
10. We see you guys spreading on the net, what lays in the future for Truants?
Immy: Me and my Dutch chicks are kind of borderline depressed with our current location and need a break from the Dam but we’re onto doing a club night named after the blog, featuring some of the artists we write about. We also just want to break houses, roofs and glasses with our UC-33’s ourselves.
Sin: Aside from obvious world domination, the blog a fun and productive way of doing what we love, and we just wanna keep doing our thing the way we are now.
Immy: Wise words!
