Techno Tuesday: Amine Edge & Dance
Techno Tuesday is a feature on Dancing Astronaut documenting the culture of underground dance music. We’ll bring you exclusive interviews, tracks, and narratives from artists within the techno, tech house, and deep house world in an effort to shed light on some of the best talent outside the world of mainstream dance music.
Amine & Edge have successfully carved out their own niche in dance music — no easy feat given the sheer amount of competing voices these days. The French pair’s patented brand of hip hop-infused house — G-house as its most commonly known — has exploded in popularity over the last few years, morphing into its own separate beast.
Meanwhile, Amine Edge & Dance have steadily evolved their project, taking it to new heights in 2014 with the launch of CUFF, their homegrown independent imprint. With a steady slew of international dates — which included a stop at this year’s Coachella — the pair continue to push their sound to new areas of the globe.
Next up for the duo is the release of their new album Past Before Future, featuring 10 unreleased singles and remixes. Ahead of the release, Amine Edge & Dance have offered a candid reflection on their career, as well as 10 of their top artists of the moment.
We Are Amine Edge & DANCE, Let us introduce ourselves… and we will be as short as possible.
We are both born and raised in Marseille (France), Amine is now living in London and DANCE is still living in Marseille.
We have been best friends for like 17 years now, Laurent (DANCE) was always a Hip Hop and R’n’B fan. Amine (Amine Edge) was always a House Music lover.
We both come from modest families and we made it here through passion before everything. 4 Years ago when we created “Amine Edge & DANCE” by accident we decided to be a duo who will do something together. Since then we tour almost every day, from 120 to 200 shows a year around the world, we still manage to make music, in hotels, on flights or in a taxi.
We use the full potential of being 2 people, Amine Edge & DANCE is a machine that never stops working. In this world if you sleep you die forgotten. The competition is hard, but we are aware of our chance, we are unique, we have charisma, we are influencers, and all this is not on purpose, it’s an honest vision of us the people admire and want to be like, or hate. But there is no strategy behind this, it’s just us.
We are victims of our success when it comes to the music we created and that we called G-House, since then it has become viral and one of the most used names that people use to describe their music. We are often affiliated with it but we do not like most of the music that comes out under this name, we truly think we are unique and this confusion was brought about by people who have no clue of what we really are. We are not a G-House duo, we are way more than that, we fight hard to be recognised as a very eclectic duo and not to be in a very specific box.
Making hits like Lost or Going To Heaven With The Goodie-Goodies or Halfway Crooks is what made us famous and in demand, but on another side we suffer from it. Our music evolves constantly, and when people keep asking you in every show to play Lost after 3 years, it’s a nightmare. Imagine playing the same song for 500 shows and pretending to be having fun doing it? People will never understand this. We love to play fresh and exciting new tracks, that’s what makes us excited to play. We want people to be happy whatever we play, being curious and happy to discover new music, but this is not the reality, now people want you to play their favourite track and if you don’t they get very disappointed, but at the same time they don’t realise that you are playing their future favourite tracks and they will ask you to play these new tracks again next year. When I (Amine) was younger I was listening to Sasha’s mixtape all the time, one day I saw him in a gig in Cannes (France) and of course I was expecting him to play all the tunes I knew he played, but he didn’t, he played tracks that I never heard before, I was shocked in a good way, the tracks and the set was so amazing, since then I promised to be like that, this is what a real DJ is supposed to do, propose new music to people. Nowadays people think DJs are a jukebox, they are not curious anymore like I was at their age. That’s pretty sad.
We learn every day, that’s why life is interesting.
We created a label called CUFF a few years ago, we gave the light to so many talented unknown (now successful) artist like Shiba San, Sirus Hood, Thee Cool Cats and many more who are grateful and we are so happy for all of them, some are not grateful but it’s like this, that’s life. We always try to give people a chance as we feel like them, in all those talented kids we see us, when nobody wanted to help us, we give these opportunities without anything in return. Our label was one of the most successful and influential label around 2010… 2 years successful residency in Sankeys Ibiza, The fastest sell out show in the history of Sankeys Manchester (not bad for a 1 year old label), selling out every shows, from Ministry Of Sound (London) to Albert Hall (Manchester) or Showcase (Paris) (Without talking about all the shows we sold out as Amine Edge & DANCE, like Green Valley in Brazil – the biggest club in the world and number one on DJ mag top 100, the boss of the club confessed to us that we sold more and faster than David Guetta, that’s kinda crazy for us). We recently played at Coachella, it was one of the dopest experience, so many different artist, so many different people in the crowd, you walk and shake hands with Akon, 10 metres later you meet Ja Rule, another metre and you see Jermaine Dupri just hanging out there… What a life haha
Now that we have recently changed our whole Management team, we are gonna do lot of important stuff, like a clothing brand, and more crazy CUFF events, more releases and a lot of new stuff for the fans.
AMINE EDGE: Top 5 Artists Right Now
Medeew, Chick Luv Us and Sergio Diaz:
Julien & Anthony (Chicks Luv Us) are my good friends from Marseille, I met them a few years ago when I found them a spot to do their beach party in Marseille as I knew some people. Then we decided to do it together, that was our first collab, since then they are part of CUFF as they are my favorite DJ’s resident at Spartacus Club in Marseille. I always loved their music, so one day I asked them to open for use in all the CUFF shows. They are amazing.
Same for Medeew who is more a solo artist. We did a track together a long time ago called “Hip Hop Tenor” in dedication of the death of Nate Dogg.
Sergio Diaz is the voice, we love his voice so much, he is dope as fuck. We gonna come with lot of collabs with him.
Elomak:
It’s one of the amazing artist i discovered, when I heard his track “Perrier Menthe” I was in shock, I tried to reach him but it was impossible, dead social page, he doesn’t give a shit about socials, and one day a friend found the contact haha, then I signed an amazing EP from him that’s coming out this week finally.
Aphex Twin:
One of my biggest heroes of all time, and i’m not one of these guy who only listens twice Window Licker, nah I know and love everything about this dude, I think its “On” and “Donkey Rhubarb” who makes me love his music, then I was too curious to let it like this, “Come To Daddy” was a shock, “Rubber Johnny” was one of my favorite all time video clip, all his work with Chris Cunningham was mind blowing, I dream to meet them like a teenager want to meet Rihanna haha.
Armand Van Helden:
I think Armand is the number one reason why I’m DJ, And I told him when I met him in the Bahamas for Holy Ship, Then MK introduced us properly by text, I tried many times to collab with him without success, how sad? His LP “Old School Junkie” was a revelation for me, especially the track “Mecca Toast” I think I have the entire record collection of Armand at home.
DJ Deeon:
The real godfather of Ghetto House, when i was kid he influenced me with tracks like “Da Dik Suk”, at this time I didn’t speak one word of english, when I started to speak english I listened to it again and I was laughing so loud haha, I still play this track sometimes and people are laughing and are loving it, this tune is fresh and has never been equalled, it’s like a new fresh song. Of course I do play all the tracks from Deeon and have all his record collection and all the Dance Mania records also, I’m a big fan since I was a kid, I can’t believe we are now friends and do music together, we are gonna release some sick stuff this year.
DANCE: Top 5 Artists Right Now
Bryson Tiller : Nobody knew this guy something like 6 months ago. He’s an R&B singer & songwriter, he came out with his free album TRAPSOUL. He’s produced by Timbaland, Gravez, Sango etc… I still listen to his album every day, it’s just too good.
Majid Jordan : These 2 guys are so talented, Majid (the singer) has a very smooth voice and always finds amazing melodies & hooks. Jordan the producer is an impressive multi instrumentalist. They are so young but so good at the same time. Can’t stop listening to them all the time.
dvsn : it’s also a duo like Majid Jordan, they are on OVO too. There is the producer Nineteen85 and the singer that i don’t even know his name. They are kind of mysterious. Their album « Sept. 5th » is one of my favorite albums of all time. To be honest I’m listening to it while I’m writing this interview.
Young Thug : Right now he’s my favorite rapper. He always does the same kind of track but it’s actually always different. I don’t know how he can do that. I really think he’s a genius. His Mixtapes Slime Season 1,2 & 3 are all so so good. Also his album Barter 6 is already a classic for me.
Wondagurl : She’s a young hip hop producer from Toronto, she did some beats for Drake, Young Thug, Travis Scott etc… For me she’s the number 1 right now. I can’t describe how amazing she is. She always has the best drum kits, the best bassline and the way she edits some samples is too much!! I’m so impressed every time i listen a new beat made by her.