Camo & Krooked: ‘Our intention was to create something diverse and special’

Austria’s biggest bass music exports are back with their debut album on Hospital Records. Cross The Line is a fourteen-track offering from Camo & Krooked and sees the duo fuse elements of d&b, dubstep and electro-house to cement their reputation as reputed bass music producers.

This is your debut album on Hospital Records – how long has it been in the making?

This album is our biggest project so far and we spent almost two years writing it. We ended up having 18 tunes, so we think there is enough for everybody on the album – for the liquid d&b heads, for the ravers, for the ones who like their music a bit deeper and even for the dubstep community.

What has been the inspiration behind the LP?

Our intention with this album was to create something really diverse and special, crossing the lines of generic d&b and getting influences from completely different genres of electronic music. We took elements from electro-house, trance, dubstep and even indie and melted them into the typical uplifting electrifying Camo & Krooked sound.

There’s a wide range of collaborations – how did they come about?

Ayah Marar, who features on two of our tunes, is just such a friendly character with an endless amount of positive energy in everyday life as on stage. We feel very lucky to have her on our productions and our live show. We got connected through our managers but once in the studio everything worked out so easy as we’ve been feeling each other’s work a lot. Our second main vocalist is TC, who became a legend in the d&b scene with his unique productions and vocal works. He’s a friend of ours and as we played him some instrumentals he was totally into the idea to get involved.

Where do you place the album, musically?

First and foremost it’s d&b which was our first love and always will be. But our musical horizon isn’t ending at 175 beats per minute – we try to cover a lot of different types of music. If we feel like doing an electro-house tune, we just do it. We have so many influences, all from total different types of music genres, but that is the most important thing if you try to find your own, unique style.

What are your thoughts on the d&b scene now?

There’s been a change in the d&b scene recently but more a bad change than a good one. Some of the biggest producers in the scene left for other music genres, especially dubstep.  A lot of d&b fans have been pretty annoyed by that but when one leaves, then there is space for somebody new. But d&b is getting more attention than ever before. Tracks are getting played on the daytime radio all around the globe, and that is a healthy thing for the scene because it brings many new people into it.

What’s next for you?

We just achieved all our recent goals with the album on Hospital Records and especially with our brand new live show which we debuted at Hospitlaity Brixton last week. We’re now taking the album on tour across the UK so next step is continuing to write new music and hopefully collaborating with interesting artists inside and outside of d&b. We’ve been working on music for computer games too so we hope to get deeper into that scene as well. It’s a whole new experience for us.

Cross The Line is out now on Hospital Records.

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