A trio of brothers and best friends, Jean Paul Makhlouf, Alex Makhlouf and Samuel Frisch compose the group known as “Cash Cash”. Cash Cash has made their presence known since their single “Take Me Home” featuring Bebe Rexha blew up over the summer with airtime on Protocol Radio and Clublife with Tiesto, just to name a few.
Since the release of their “Overtime” EP the group has been touring the nation with Krewella as well as headlining their own shows. We were able to talk with J.P. Makhlouf and got the low down of how the group went from touring with headlining bands of Warped Tour to DJ’s headlining Electric Daisy Carnival and Ultra. As well on some insight into the recording of “Take Me Home” and their current EP.
Being a group made up of brothers and best friends, what is it like to make music together? Does it make work easier or more difficult?
Alex and I are like the Oasis brothers. There are definitely times where we want to rip each others eyes out but that’s how the best shit gets made. Do things get thrown at each other sometimes? Yes, but at the end of the day we’ve been doing this together since we were kids and always come out on top. Sam is the calm neutral one and brings a good voice of reason to any situation. The three of us have a great dynamic together. Sam and I have been best friends since 3rd grade and he’s like our third” brotha from another motha!” I couldn’t see myself making music with anyone else.
You’ve gone from touring with bands like Metro Station to touring with DJs such as Krewella, what influenced the change?
It was a really slow evolution. We’ve always been an electronic act since the very beginning. Our music was always based around synths, electronic drums, and track production. We’ve also been doing official remixes since we first started this back in ’08, that helped us build a name in the club scene. We slowly dropped the guitars, live drums, and stripped it down to being a straight electronic group. We’ve been producing, recording, mixing, & mastering all our own music from the very beginning so it just made sense. We were always this producer group that was trying to find our best outlet. We finally did and it’s awesome.
Do you think you lost a lot of fans after making such a drastic switch?
Not at all because I don’t think it was that drastic. If you look at the evolution of our group it makes sense. Each release took us deeper into electronic music. We started doing features on our second album and would use less guitar on each release. Then we really dove in deep with our song “Michael Jackson” which we released on Spinnin Records. We did some growing up and so did our fans. We were 17 when we started this and our fans were even younger. I remember seeing Skrillex a few years back and we both come from the same background, a lot of people don’t know he was in a band as well, anyways I was at his show at Webster Hall in 2011 and I remember tweeting something like “The scene’s not dead the kids just got older” and that’s the truth. People are listening to different stuff now and want to dance! It’s refreshing! I saw a sea of people dancing their assess off at that Skrillex show that were probably head banging at warped tour 3 years before.
Now you’re signed to Big Beat Records, whose roster includes Skrillex, Martin Solveig, Knife Party, and Flux Pavilion; what was your initial reaction?
We felt so proud signing to label with such an amazing talented roster. We’re huge Chromeo and Skrillex fans and to see our name next to theirs feels awesome. Aside from that, Big Beat Records is the dopest label on the planet. We’ve been through majors and indies in the past and have never been happier on a label. They are a team of people that truly love what they do and it shows with their success. They understand our project more than anyone we’ve even worked with and have some big plans for 2014!
You helped produce Krewella’s latest hit “Live for the Night”, how was it working with the group?
Working with Krewella was an awesome experience. They are some of the nicest people we know. We first linked up with them last year when remixing “Alive.” The remix did so well in the community that they wanted to do an actual song together! So when they were in NYC we got together and hit it off really well, which led us to produce & co-write “Live For The Night” with them. We would send tracks to each other via email and do revisions over the phone. It was a great process.
The success of your current single “Take Me Home” has been incredible, how long did it take to work on the track?
“Take Me Home” came together really quickly actually. It was one of those songs that we didn’t have to force. Two days max and it was done. Bebe is such a talented artist and was a pleasure to work with. We definitely want to do more with her in the future. We just released an acoustic video of it, which shows a whole different side to the song.
It’s a fresh sounding EP. We tried some new stuff with it and are very proud of the way it turned out. There’s a good balance between electronic breaks and pop hooks. We did this really cool thing with kid gang vocals in Overtime, Satellites, & Kiss The Sky. It kinda connected those 3 songs. The female vocals on Take Me Home, Here and Now, & Hideaway brought those three together. It made for a very cohesive EP that we are really excited about.
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Be sure to catch Cash Cash at these upcoming dates!
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