Over the last decade, Aden Forte and Josh Soon, better known by the moniker Feenixpawl, have solidified themselves as front-runners in the electronic dance world. From millions of streams, worldwide tours, a Grammy nomination, and now their very own imprint, the talented pair can truly say, they’ve done it all.
The duo’s break-out year was 2012 after their iconic collaboration with Ivan Gough and Axwell on “In My Mind”, released via Axtone Records. The chart topping single resulted in a Grammy nomination, was selected as Pete Tong’s ‘Essential New Tune’ (which is an honor in itself), and more recently, made our personal list of “RaverRafting’s Top 25 Progressive House Tracks of 2011-2013“. The pair continued down the road to success and took the next exhilarating leap by launching their own label, Eclypse Records, in 2015. Eclypse, now a sub-label under the prestigious Armada Records, allowed Feenixpawl to reach new heights in their career and release some of their best work including “Ghosts”, “Blue Sky”, “Quicksand”, and their latest piece of art, “Love Me For Life”.
RaverRafting checked in with the guys recently and discussed everything from the past – their difficult upbringings, the present – their growing imprint, and the future – their plans for the rest of the year. Being veterans in the scene, Aden and Josh gave us some valuable insight on the electronic dance music scene and had great advice to share with up-and-coming DJ’s. Check out the full exclusive interview below:
RR – Can you tell us a little bit about how Feenixpawl came to be and the meaning behind the name?
Josh – We’re both from Melbourne, and we met at a nightclub I was running, I think around 2005? Aden was a promoter for me, and one day approached me saying he wanted to be a DJ and asked for a gig. So I put him on in the back room. He didn’t have much of a crowd, but he rocked it. And we just slowly became better and better friends, and started playing back to back. Then one day said, let’s make it official and become a duo! As for the name, we wanted something that had never existed before, but has meaning to us. Aden’s middle name is Phoenix, and mine is Paul. We changed the spelling, made it a word, and it stuck!
RR – You guys have both overcome difficult upbringings, do you think that has influenced your music?
Aden – I suppose subconsciously it has, yeah. I remember being heavily into rap when I was quite young, but found it to be very aggressive in it’s lyrical content. I was looking for more positivity in my life due to everything going on around me, and dance music absolutely helped bring that into my life. We both aren’t the type of people to incorporate our negative feelings into our own music, because to us, dance music is about fun and letting go. We’ve learnt to enjoy every moment and not dwell in the past, and I think dance music is absolutely about living in the moment. We want to give people the same emotions we feel when we listen to music, and hopefully we achieve that.
RR – Now veterans in the industry, can you tell us how the electronic music scene has changed since your start?
Josh – To be honest, I find it to be quite cyclical. The fact that house is now back at the forefront of the dance music scene is awesome, but it’s also what we started out playing. To me, it’s almost like house, became electro, became progressive house, became big room, dubstep, trap, and now it’s come back around again. So many of the biggest house tunes out there right now are remakes of tracks from the early 2000s.
Aden – I also think the scene has escalated, the crowds are bigger, the festivals are bigger. People always use the cliché about the “bubble bursting” but its just growing, and dance music evolves, like it always has.
RR – If you could go back in time to when you first started, what advice would you give yourself?
Aden – A priceless piece of advice I would give myself is to ‘enjoy the journey’. As we were starting out, we were always looking into the future. Looking at what was next and how we could achieve it. There is nothing wrong with having goals and ambitions, but you really need to enjoy what you’re doing in life at that particular moment. We used to play these really great local gigs in Australia to a couple of hundred people, mostly our friends. I look back on those days and realize I didn’t really enjoy those times as much as I should have. We were always looking at the next big gig, the next festival, and how we can play to more people. I remind every young DJ we meet to enjoy those small, underground, grimey shows… they may be the most fun gigs you ever play.
RR – You’ve got an impressive roster of artists on your Eclypse label, any artist(s) you are particularly excited about that we should look out for?
Josh – We’re excited about all of them! We’ve just done two tracks with I Am Lucas out of the UK who’s producing some amazing stuff. We’ve got some tunes coming with XMulty, MIMO, Nielsan, among others. We love giving young and upcoming artists opportunities, it’s why we started the label in the first place.
RR – What influenced the decision to take your Eclypse label over to Armada?
Josh – It just felt right. They have the same vision and passion for dance music as we do and they’ve just been so supportive the whole way. Even before we signed with them, we had a really great relationship with the team there, so it was just the natural next step for us.
RR – You guys started Eclypse Radio years ago, what is the process like in selecting the tracks and the special guests mixes?
Aden – Listeners can expect to hear a broad spectrum of dance music! We play everything that we love, and really don’t conform to genres. If the track is good, it makes the show. The process can be time consuming as we do the whole show ourselves. A lot of artists use producers to help source the music and put the show together, but we listen to each and every promo, do the track selection, mix and the edit the show all by ourselves because we’re so passionate about it. You know when you listen to it you’re getting 100% of Feenixpawl and Jason Forté.
RR – On your socials, you shared that your latest single “Love Me For Life” breaks away from the norm in comparison to some of your previous work. Is there a story behind the track? Can we expect a similar sound with upcoming releases? (P.S. we love it)
Josh – Generally, I suppose we’re known for our progressive house and big room roots. But as the scene has evolved we don’t want get pigeonholed. We believe that as producers we can be versatile and make different kinds of tracks that all fit in the dance music world. So essentially with “Love Me For Life”, we worked on it with a Swedish duo named Smith & Thell, who we also collaborated with on our track “Blue Sky”. And these two just have an amazing talent for songwriting. At that point in our lives, we’d both been through some hardships relationship wise and we felt that the song really translated where we were at.
RR – What does Feenixpawl have planned for the rest of 2017?
Aden – Production and releases! Lots more songs ready to go and we really can’t wait to share them. It’s been a long road, we really decided to knuckle down over the last 12 months and just write and write and write. So hopefully as we release more and more music, people will appreciate the work we’ve put into these tunes.
RR – We like to ask one “fun” question to get to know the artist(s) a little better, when you’re not producing/touring, what do you like to do in your spare time?
Josh – Spare time is hard to come by, so when I can relax it’s usually on the couch with a glass of wine, some cartoons, or a movie. Kind of obsessed with Rick & Morty right now.
Aden – We’re both very heavily into the NBA. Some would say TOO heavily. We also spend a decent amount of time fumbling around in Fantasy Football. I have no idea what I’m doing and yet it seems to take up a lot of my spare time.
RaverRafting would like to thank Aden and Josh for taking the time to chat with us!
Connect with Feenixpawl:
https://www.facebook.com/feenixpawl
https://twitter.com/Feenixpawl
https://soundcloud.com/feenixpawl
https://www.instagram.com/feenixpawl
http://www.feenixpawl.com/
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