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Dogma 3000:
promo interview
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| Damir Ludvig and Goran Stetic met in 1993 in their hometown of Zagreb. In 1995 started working together, signed a first contract in 1996 and released their debut album Land of Utopia in 1997. Over the past three years, Dogma has toured Croatia, Italy, England, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand and Japan and played with such legendary DJs as Marc Spoon, Tonka, Tsuyoshi Suzuki and Pascal F.E.O.S. They are responsible for providing a very unique sound to the electronic music community. Besides music, they are interested in high quality healthy life, as they believe health and well being should be biggest priority in today's world. We managed to catch up with the two on a sunny day in Zagreb, Croatia to see just what they're all about. | |||
| Could you please tell us something about your musical background? | |||
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Damir:
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My first drum machine was Boss Dr. Rhythm. I believe I have used the 110% of what was there to be used on such a primitive tool. Then I started rapping on these beats and I formed a band called Diffo. After that, it was back in 1993 I had worked on another rap project called Fresh Style. I even reached number one on Croatian National Television chart with a track called Wicked at Weekend. | ||
| How did you get involved in electronic music? | |||
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Goran:
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After finishing musical school, I threw my guitar away, and started being interested in creating electronic music with computer. First it was legendary Commodore 64, then came Amiga, etc. Followed by my first synth, and presenting some of my works on Croatian Radio 101, I met Damir Ludvig, with whom I stucked until this very day. | ||
| What's the current situation on electronic dance scene in Croatia? | |||
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Damir:
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The scene is getting bigger and bigger. It's amazing how new places open and throw parties. It's also really inspiring when you're the first person to throw a party in some village far away from rush hours and city life. Two years ago the scene was going down, so we decided to get involved and formed Astralis. People got hooked to music again. That's when other organizers started throwing parties again and brought balance to the system. Today, you can have three parties in a single night. Please notice that the capital of Croatia, Zagreb has approximately one million people, so three parties in one night is really way too good. | ||
| What is a difference between parties in Croatia and the rest of the world? | |||
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Goran:
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Probably how people are dressed. In Croatia they're wearing casual clothing. No vivid fluo colours and shinny clubby clothing. The other thing is that people are not strictly oriented to go only for one type of parties. You can meet same people at minimal techno parties and trance parties. I think it's great that people are enjoying electronic music in general, not being limited with making a choice for just one type of music or parties. | ||
| What's your life philosophy? | |||
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Damir:
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Positivism, progress and belief in ourselves. I remember Phil from Return to the Source telling me I could be a Croatian Ambassador, because I always try to present my country. Sometimes I really feel that way. There was so much negativity about Croatia brought by the media over just few years of war. People still believe Croatia is a screwed up country with loads of hostile folks, which is not true. Croatia is just beautiful, with all those mountains, islands, rivers, water falls, who knows maybe one day I'll arrange Leonardo Di Caprio starring in The Croatian Beach. | ||
| What equipment do you have in your studio? | |||
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Goran:
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At the time we're working with lots of "ping" machines, with lots of tiny red and green lights. It's all about getting everything as colourful as possible. We also have a can opener and a crystal ball. Sometimes we even employ microwave, because we're not skilled enough for such a comprehensive and hi-tech tasks as boiling water for coffee or tea is. We plan to expand our equipment even further, we thought getting a decent power supply instead of a little green man spinning generator by hand would be useful. It would save us from losing important data, such as scientific calculations for developing further Einstein's theory of relativity. | ||
| How do you give a birth to your music? | |||
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Damir:
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There's really no recipe. We start fooling around with some basic sounds, rhythm bass, setting up the groove, and it all flows on its own from there. Then we arrange everything, the time and space. Sometimes we program the whole thing, sometimes we just play things live, add effects, rearrange the whole sound spectrum. | ||
| Please tell us something about your work on remixing other artists. | |||
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Goran:
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We've done several different remixes in the past, and I have to tell you, we're looking forward to do even more in the future. What I like generally about remixing, is that you're getting already some basic foundation of track. Sometimes the order of elements in a track might be totally different from original artist's idea, but hey, that's what remixing is all about it, isn't it? | ||
| What's the main difference between your previous and your new album? | |||
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Damir:
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This one's so much better. No, really. There's an obvious progress in many aspects. First of all music isn't just based on oriental music, as it was on Land of Utopia. You can hear elements of breakbeats, trip hop, dub, ragga, opera, rock and also some ethnic elements. The sound is produced in more up to date way and we had more time to do it, because we worked in our own studio, the studio we built for our own porpoises. | ||
| Are there any other interesting artists featured on your new album? | |||
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Goran:
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Yes, collaboration with producers from Australia, Japan and Israel helped us to have even more global sound. I mean, one of producers who worked with us was Gus Till, guy who does 40% of Flying Rhino Records production. He used to work with U2, INXS, Nina Hagen, Jamiroquai and Todd Terry, so there's no wonder why his production skills are on a highest level possible. I respect Gus very much and it's an honor having him on the album. | ||
| You have mentioned some Israeli producer working with you, who was it? | |||
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Damir:
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It was Har-ell Prusky. He's really famous for being one of Israeli pioneers started so-called psychedelic trance. He has released more then five albums and he's always working on something new. Har-ell's approach to music was totally different from what we expected. It was really a great experience working with him. We also had a privilege to work with Ree.K from Tokyo. I adore her drum programming. It's perfectly quantified and arranged, so different from what we do, so it was cool to have a little bit of Japanese flavor on the album. Domo arigato, Rie. | ||
| Most of your works are instrumental, but on this album you actually have vocals? | |||
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Goran:
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On When Dogma Enters My Brain we decided to have some kind of melancholic trip hopping vocal, so we asked Danijel Knezevic to help us out. He is very famous radio engineer on Radio 101, so he recorded all of Damir's vocals. Then he started improvising and told us he wants to try recording some of his vocals. He started singing like an opera singer. It was so funny, We know this guy for years and we've never expected him to sound like that. When you listen to the sound you can only visualize a fat lady singing, but it's him. | ||
| There's a track called Matrix on Dogma 3000, does it have to do anything with the movie? | |||
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Damir:
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We made this track by metamorphosing one track into another. It's similar to what we did with one track on our debut album. We followed a certain matrix, so that's where the name comes from.. | ||
| Anyway, we had a good time finishing up the album and that's the very beginning of the whole story. Now we have to do some real work. Promoting and selling the album. | |||
| Go get it, and listen to it. It will give you much more sense than just bunch of words. | |||