Robosonic Interview: Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye and a young Mos Def

Image: Robosonic

Friday 7th February marks the start of Underground & Friends bringing their Manchester honed approach to house music over to Liverpool, where they will take residence in Haus Warehouse. The party is headlined by Danish house music wunderkind Finnebassen, who will be joined by German duo Robosonic, the irrepressible funkateers behind 2012's still fresh smash 'Worst love' (watch the video below).

That was the breakthrough moment for the producers who had been bubbling on the Belrin underground for a while, with the OFF Recordings artists bringing their fun focused grooves to a wider audience thereafter. Ahead of the show we were offered the opportunity to speak with them, and being the curious types we are, we went for it. read what the boys had to say below...

For those who maybe unfamiliar with Robosonic, could you introduce yourselves and what you are about?

Hi fellas, we’re Robosonic, aka Sacha Robotti and Cord Henning Labuhn, DJs and producers currently based in Berlin Germany. We have an none dogmatic approach towards electronic music and love to play our tracks out on the dancefloor!

So how did you two first meet? At what point did you start making music and djing together?

In 2004-2005, a common friend of ours introduced us; soon after, we started making music together and realized we had to come up with a common project name. We started out as “Robosono”, then “Robosonic The Hedgehog” – then only “Robosonic” for our first original release.

It’s a word creation out of both Sacha Robotti’s and Cord’s DJ names. Cord was playing and releasing under the name “Schall” (which means “sound” or “sonic” in German)… Robo + Sonic.

You're playing in Liverpool soon. what experience have you got of the city and are you looking forward to the show?

We haven’t been to Liverpool before, so you can imagine how excited we are to visit the city where the Beatles hail from!

Where else have you got gigs cropping up?

In the next few months, we will be on tour to celebrate the fifth birthday of Off Recordings, so for that we are heading to Paris, Bucharest, London, Zurich, Dubai and some more places where you’ll find us DJing.

You're both based in Berlin, a city we constantly hear about due to it's impact upon global music. how much is your location of benefit to you in creating electronic music?

We grew up here as an electronic music combo, so yes the city probably has had a big impact on us. It has helped being exposed to a lot of different artists living here or moving here to produce and play, in terms of exchanging ideas with our friends and building up a network and infrastructure of other artists.

But also in terms of Berlin being home to so many clubs! This means that we had the chance to play out and hone our skills as club DJs - weekend after weekend, for years.

Could you imagine yourselves living anywhere else?

Oh definitely. Especially in the wintertime, when we’d rather be in the Caribbean to chill and make music!

What productions news can you let us know about?

We have a track coming out soon on the 5 years OFF Recordings record (stream above), it’s another collaboration with our friends MAT.JOE. Also, we’ll play out a new production of ours for the very first time in Liverpool - it’s our interpretation of Eddie Amador’s classic 'House Music' record. We can’t tell you yet when this is coming out but we’re convinced it will be a sure shot in our sets over the next year!

Finally… we’re currently working on an album! This will be the second one, seven years after our debut album Sturm und Drang that we self-released. We grew in many fields but the roots are still the same. So it’s exciting to define the sound we would like to hear on a Robosonic LP over the next years!

And finally, the two have you are enlisted tomorrow to make a none dance music album. You can work with three vocallists and two other producers, dead or alive. who would you pick and what would the record come out sounding like?

We might go for Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye and a young Mos Def or the everlasting Q-Tip. Hanging out in the studio with Quincy Jones and Rick Rubin to elevate and learn how to handle the situation. Oh boy, there's no women in here? What about Aretha Franklin, the Lauryn Hill we liked or maybe Toto la Mompesina to think a little outside the box?

Being around Chilly Gonzales could be fun and highly inspring. We also really want Sixto Rodriguez as a singer and songwriter, too! A record made with those artists would consist of something like 8 songs and 8 transitions, no hidden track. Obviously the sound would be future retro, hopefully future classic! 

Looking into what Festivals to do this summer? We are too. Keep your finger on the festival pulse at our special section right here.

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