Roughion are a Wales-based electronic duo who are set to release their double-single ‘Target The Moon/The Acid Test‘ on 31st of July, 2020. Creating a unique club-friendly sound, they have forged their own space at the forefront of their local scene and are ready to take the world by storm. I asked them some questions about their new release and we’ve got an exclusive premiere of both tracks, check them out below:
Hi, how are you today?
All good thanks!
Tell me about your new songs, ‘Target the Moon’ and ‘The Acid Test’.
First off we’ll go with ‘Target The Moon‘. This track spawned as an instrumental, Steffan has a knack for making songs with a really long intro and as a DJ I don’t mind that, but if it’s got a long intro I always think it needs to have a purpose. With that in mind, we both came to an agreement that we wanted a sample on it and it had to be about space. We trawled the Internet for a sample and couldn’t find one until we went real deep into Youtube (after watching a fair few hours of documentaries) and found a sample of an American man from the 60s talking about the first satellite to the moon, and that’s how it was created. Unfortunately, this sample wasn’t able to be cleared and there was other music over it so we decided to transcribe the clip and get a vocalist. We looked no further than Steff’s dad. He meticulously spoke in his best presenter voice – even though he works within natural corporation stuff and gave us the sample. A bit of producer magic to make it sound like an old fashioned radio presenter and vualá, the vocals of the track were finished. Even after 2 years and a mixed and mastered version back, we were still doing some minor tweaking and adding a break after 3.2.1.0… drop, it was finally ready and we decided no more, it’s done. In April, two years after the first production session, we’re happy with the final result.
‘Acid Test‘. With any release we like to pair them – a radio-friendly one and one for our club mates; this is the one for the club. We’ve been performing and making music together for 7 years and I’ve been Deejaying for 10 so I’ve always gotta have a track that no one has and we’ve gotta club test stuff. This was played out a fair few times and taken back to the studio. We listened to a bunch of old school acid from the 90s and went to a fair few gigs and kinda just lost ourselves for a couple of nights getting the right feel and where it would be best listened to. Luckily we were playing out LOADS and at LOADS of different functions, so we played it at events, corporate ones, and festivals and we noticed it worked in some places better than others. We added the sample which again came from a documentary (Hypernormalisation by Adam Curtis if anyone wanted to know, class doco too) changed it up a bit and added it to the song in the sections where we thought it worked and tested it. First time we played this version out we had a fair few people asking us what it was and we thought, “yeah, it’s ready”.
https://soundcloud.com/roughion/the-acid-test/s-RsKwoDdfdYU?fbclid=IwAR3sHd9NU43_rxyevSQJjOI5W6LF8pjPr3PyTy_r9Z_f7nN2YwW8R8fVHd4
What are your plans beyond this release?
We’ve got a lot coming up actually, we’ve done a remix for Alun Gaffey who’s a sick disco/funk artist in the Welsh language and we changed his song ‘Croeso‘ in 2009 into acid house (obvs). We’ve also got a reaaaaaally cool edit for Diffiniad – we’ve taken their first track in 20 years and spruced it up to a really heavy and deep edit that’s already getting some really good reviews from the demo we’re sending out. We’re also working on something really different, I’ll say no more on that, but we’ve also got a DnB song/couple songs/ep we’re just keeping, as well as a garage edit. We’ve got a few things on the go… like a lot.
https://soundcloud.com/roughion/target-the-moon/s-7TvJLhKHkBu?fbclid=IwAR15H2OQgmNW7oZeVBlPsmcTgPGKHPzmv-heVY1m-q9DXZnNL-5P4DGI-u8
What was the first song you ever wrote together?
LOL me and Steffan always laugh, we tried doing house edits, I remember being in my uni house in 3rd year making an edit of ‘Set You Free‘- N Trance.
What was it like?
Absolutely awful.
What’s your local music scene like?
Our local scene in Cardiff is really good. With the Electronic scene we all end up going to the same events and when we all take it in turns in the NightCaff we all come and support each other so the DJ community is really nice.
How would you describe your music in five words?
You like party? We make party. (sorry that’s six)
Which artists do you admire?
Mostly I admire my producer mates, I’m in a good circle of friends I speak to online and we all share each other’s music. We’re all from different parts of the UK but all part of the electronic scene at different parts of progress; we play each others tracks in sets and we share music with each other. Everyone we’re around and sharing music with is working so, so, hard at the moment I admire everyones hustle. It’s really made us up our game.
What would be your dream collaboration?
Probably as we’ve been told we’re the Welsh version, it’ll be cool to collab with the Chemical Brothers.
What’s the best band/artist you have played with so far?
I honestly couldn’t tell you. Most of the gigs we’ve been doing recently have been DJ sets all night long as I love to have the longest sets possible to really grab the crowd from the first hour to the last. But probs Billy Kenny as he went from house to dnb in Ten Mill Lane when I held his only UK tour date of his last World Tour, so as you can imagine, low ceiling, packed crowd, house, into techno, into DnB it got pretty wild…
Who/What are you listening to right now?
Zefer, Turtleneck UK, MODA, Baume, Ryan Hughes, mostly uk bass, NUKG, and disco. Anything our mates send over to us. Loads of Jazz too – there’s a sick electronic artist called PORIJ I’m in love with at the moment, but also any demos I get for Afanc, there’s a lot of reaaaally good music coming out of Wales atm, have you heard of Dead Method?
Thanks for your time
Dim problem, diolch am gael ni!
