I recently had the great opportunity to sit down and talk with one half of one of the premier up-and-coming duos in electronic music today, Curt Heiny of Archnemesis. While he was playing a show in Richmond, VA at the Canal Club, put on by Dr. Bastard Productions, I got to know Curt and Archnemesis a little bit better, learning about their past, present, and possible future. With the recent release of their EP “Follow Me”, Archnemesis has firmly positioned their unique sound within the electronic music industry, and I personally believe have a huge future ahead of them. Curt was nice enough to take the time and sit down with me to answer some questions.
How’s your summer been so far, especially with “Follow Me” just recently being released?
The spring was pretty heavy touring up until May. Then we took all of May off, and spent May and half of June finishing the EP. We did a couple shows around the EP release, and once the EP came out we did four nights in Florida, last weekend did a few more shows, last night did Raleigh, tonight Richmond, tomorrow Big Dub…as far as following the EP, its been leading into the summer. We have two weeks in Boston, Bella Terra Festival, New Haven, and that pretty much gets into the end of August, rolling into September, where its back to heavy touring until the middle of December. As far as the summer goes, its been a little slower than normal, but that’s partly due to the fact that the EP dropped and we’ve been spacing things out.
You’ve got an extensive fall tour planned, covering a lot of the US. Are there any particular dates your more excited for?
I’m excited about all of them. I’m really looking forward to going out and playing the EP live and playing some other material that is being worked on and trying it out live. There’s no one city that’s better than another; every city is different, every crowd is different, and every night is different. That’s what makes it such an amazing thing to do; touring, going out every night, and meeting different people.
“Follow Me” was released independently by yourselves, and not on your past record label, 1320 Records. How has this been different for you as opposed to your previous releases?
I think we just decided that Archnemesis is at a point where the EP needed to be released independently. 1320 has been nothing but amazing up until this point with all the other releases, with 1320’s backing and STS9’s backing, but I feel as though Archnemesis is now at a stage where we can start releasing stuff on our own. Not that we’re anti-label by any means; if Mad Decent contacted us tomorrow, obviously I would 100% be excited to release on that label, but I just wanted to try [releasing on our own] and see how it went without a “label”.
You just recently made the announcement that Justin of Archnemesis will no longer be a part of the live performance. How do you think this will affect the live show aspect of Archnemesis?
I think that it allows me to be able to do more things that weren’t able to be done when we were playing together. I’ll miss some of the aspects of him being up there with me, but at the end of the day, I think that it opens up some other doorways, which is cool, you know? I feel like the Archnemesis sound is established enough to where I’m able to try some different stuff that wasn’t done before.
Were there specific roles that you both had on stage that you’ve had to make adjustments for now?
Yeah, I did most of the basslines, a lot of the bass sampling, triggering, stuff that I couldn’t do on the keyboard. Justin was the keys, a lot of the keyboard parts and a lot of the triggering of samples, horns, female vocals, and stuff like that. By going solo, I’m basically still doing everything that I was doing before, moving some stuff around, added some of his parts back into the “backing tracks” that are going on behind what I’m doing and moving some of his stuff over onto the pads. I’m using two laptops now, two keyboards, and two MPD sampling pads, so things are broken up differently now and I’ve had to re-learn stuff, but for the most part, adding some of his stuff back in and moving stuff around is where I’m at. I’m triggering a little bit more than normal, but still doing most of the basslines live and playing on the keys.
Will Justin still be helping with the production aspect?
He’s still helping out on the production some, and is still involved for sure. The live show is just the main area where he’s absent. He’s just focusing on home and starting a life there, which involves a lot of time spent in Charleston.
Archnemesis’ sound is very sample-heavy, with many comparisons made to Pretty Lights and the like. With that being said, have you ever considered doing something similar to Derek with composing your own sampling, production-wise or live, with local vocalists or musicians?
I think the beauty of what Archnemesis does is, similar to Derek (Pretty Lights), digging and finding really rare samples off of old soundtracks or old funk and soul records. I feel like that’s become part of the sound in general, so as many comparisons we do get to Pretty Lights, I feel that the “Follow Me” EP took a big step away from that and more towards the realm of what is Archnemesis. I don’t want to revert back to the Pretty Lights thing, where “Pretty Lights just created an album doing that and now your just following him”. So, in short answer, no, not right now. I could see maybe incorporating an MC in some live shows, or something where we could guest track somebody on a release and have them come out if we were in a close city to them; I think that would be cool. But as far as trying to do a whole album, I don’t think that’s something we would do.
I’m a huge fan of the remixes Archnemesis puts out, and a big part of that is because your able to take many different genres, from The xx, to Nicodemus, to Katy Perry and Kendrick Lamar, and put the Archnemesis spin on each. Do you have any artists in mind that you would like to remix or have any that are currently in the works?
We’re working on new material, a couple new tracks. As far as remixing stuff, that’s one of those things where there’s no set formula. Sometimes, like with the Kendrick Lamar track or the “Clique” track, those were ones where we were looking at the charts and seeing what was going to be the next banger or the next hip-hop track that was going to blow up, and at that point it’s trying to get a jump on it and trying to get up and be one of the first to roll [a remix] out. But as far as the other stuff, like The xx or Nicodemus, those were all just kind of left-field things that just seemed to work in putting the Archnemesis spin onto them. So, as far as the next remix, it depends on whats the next album to come out. I thought the Kanye album was awful, the new Jay Z album was so-so, but nothing on either of those albums were worth remixing. I know Katy Perry is having a new album come out some time…it’s just watching the charts and seeing whats going to be next. But sometimes theres just a random track that comes up that’s like “hey, that would be a cool one to do” and put the Archnemesis spin on that. But right now, with the EP just coming out, I think the time is best spent working on more Archnemesis material and trying to follow in that vein. It took a step and solidified the Archnemesis sound and we’re trying to follow up on that.
Once again, we would like to thank Curt for taking the time to talk with WRR. He proceeded to play an awesome show that night, playing classics and new material. You can listen to their newest EP “Follow Me” below and support Archnemesis music.
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