Mario & Vidis: An album makes you rethink what you’ve been doing

“Mario always says we were making this album for three years – from the very start of our partnership,” comments Vidis from his base in Vilnius, Lithuania, “But in my opinion we were making separate tracks or remixes first and only came up with an idea of the album later.”

In 2007 Marijus Adomaitis teamed up with Vidmantas Cepkauskas to form Mario & Vidis – Lithuania’s most prominent house music duo in recent times.

Their first production effort, a remix for Atjazz and Robert Owens’ Love Someone caught the eye of tastemakers such as Gilles Peterson and Pete Tong.

But 2011 saw the duo cement their reputation as ones to watch. Remixes and releases on a variety of labels from across the globe have brought them to releasing to their debut album, Changed.

“The album was made from mid-spring to mid-autumn 2010 with a creative peak in July 2010 – only then did we come up with an idea of a double CD,” says Vidis. “We made a decision to re-arrange and update all the older tracks.”

This process produced an excess of tracks for just one CD.

“But the idea of a second CD happened naturally,” Vidis points out. “We faced the challenge that it didn’t sound as smooth as we wanted – combining 3-5 minute long electronic songs with 7-8 minute long instrumental house tracks didn’t really work.”

The duo thought about extending versions of vocal tracks and editing the instrumental ones to shorter album versions.

“But this didn’t seem to be the best solution either. Why sacrifice the natural growth and development of long house tracks or overextend the song form of the vocal ones?,” Vidis asks. “In the meantime we continued working and producing new material and at some point realised we had enough music for two CDs.”

They split the album in two: vocal and easy listening material and then purely instrumental dancefloor tracks.

“Doing it this way presented a wider spectrum of our music tastes, studio abilities and made a bold statement too.”

The album is influenced from a variety of sounds the pair have been listening to for the past 15 years; from classical to jazz, soul, new jazz and neo soul, to drum & bass, house and techno, “Even movie and computer game soundtracks,” he adds.

They both wanted their debut offering to be presented as a collection of work instead of a mix of tracks thrown together.

“An album makes you sit down and rethink what you’ve been doing over the last few years and what you want to say with it because it’s obviously a benchmark in your musical career – it’s a serious document.”

And a highlight throughout the process?

“Mother loves all of her babies,” he says, laughing, “It’s an album best summed up by 1000 sleepless nights, 1000 cans of Pepsi, two CDs of craftsmanship, synergy and imagination.”

Changed is out now

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