A few weeks ago, fresh house DJ’s and producers Lucas & Steve got to perform at one of the biggest festivals in Europe, The Island of Freedom ‘Sziget’! These guys have scored many hits during last year, such as ‘Do It 2Nite’, ‘Fearless’, ‘You And I Know’ and many more, while their newest single got released last week. It already scored very high at the charts and it’s a remix of the famous tune of Laurent Wolf called ‘Calinda’! Their journey started about a year ago and they have much more to show us.
RaverRafting got the opportunity to interview Lucas & Steve on Sziget, where they tell us everything about their starting and professional experiences. They talk about their past, dreams for the future, how their music career started and more interesting and hilarious stories you gotta hear! You can find all of it below in this extended interview.
How long will you be staying here on the festival?
We’re here staying only for tonight. Tomorrow we have to perform at Castle of love in Kerkrade, in the south of the Netherlands. So we actually don’t have that much time here, but we’re still going to have a party!
Have you ever been to Sziget before?
We never went to the festival. Steven: I have been on the island when I was in high school, but not on the fest itself. Everybody said it was the best one. We went there three weeks before it started, on a trip to Budapest and Prague, which was really cool! Everybody told me I definitely had to go to Sziget when I would have time for it and now we are performing here ourselves!
Would you like to experience Sziget like a real visitor once?
Lucas: Yes, of course! But we have to be realistic, that’s probably not going to happen. Now we’re here we can take a look and walk around a bit, but it’s too late for us to camp here. A few years ago, we went to fests for partying and to see the artists, but now we actually perform ourselves! In the end, that’s much more fun for us than to walk around on a fest and watch the other artists.
So you went to multiple festivals?
Steven: I went to a lot of festivals, but I was a bit younger back then. When I got older, we already got the opportunity to perform ourselves. So I went to a couple of fests, but I don’t think I gained the same experience as you have.
When did you start working as a duo?
Lucas: We’re an official duo for 5 years now! Two years earlier we started performing together once in a while, but after that we didn’t perform solo anymore.
Steven: We know each other for way too long J since primary school, that’s 12 years now. Lucas is 2 years older than I and you know how it goes in primary school, the old kids don’t hang around with the younger ones.
Lucas: I didn’t think Steven was cool enough for me.
Steven: And now you should check us out in the studio!
Lukas: I think he’s totally awesome [laughter]. No, we’re joking, but we didn’t actually hang out that much. Sometimes, because we both knew the other one was also DJing, but after a while we started performing together. For fun at first, on graduation parties, but our career as a duo really started with a DJ contest in (Dutch city) Maastricht.
Steven: I was 15/16 years old and I decided to join a DJ contest. Lucas was part of the jury, because he performed there occasionally. I won the contest that night and Lucas asked me if I would like to perform with him some time. That’s how it started!
What was the moment you became more famous?
We started with releasing tracks on smaller labels and when time passed, we got recognized and more people started listening to our music and got involved. Last year we produced a remake of a single produced by Red Carpet, called ‘Alright’. We produced that remix with another artist, named Nothing But Funk, and we started without big expectations. Our agency back then, knew Red Carpet from the original single and we asked them to send our remix to him. He instantly wanted to release the remix and let it become the 2014 version of ‘Alright’. Around six months later it got released and in two weeks it was a number one hit in the house charts, Beatport. That went really fast and it remained in the charts for two weeks.
Although we didn’t expect much of ‘Alright’, it was the first record of which we thought, this could possibly become a hit. You could hear the famous tune of the original single in it and after working many hours with the remix, we still loved it and that’s very rare. You produce many songs and with most of them you change your mind after two weeks, but that was definitely not the case with this one.
After a while we produced a remix of the single ‘Everybody Be Somebody’ and from that moment on, everything went very fast. After ‘Alright’ the artist Ruffneck from ‘Everybody Be Somebody’ came to us, with the question if we could make the same kind of remix of his single and we didn’t hesitate about saying yes! We made something totally different than with ‘Alright’, but he loved it. That was a proud moment for us, a bucket list moment!
We thought it was amazing that ‘Everybody Be Somebody’ was also well received with the public. It was in the top 10 of the house charts for 10 days and you don’t see that very often with beginning DJ’s, so it was a big deal for us. Many people started pulling at us and we didn’t really know which decisions to make, it was all very new. That was the moment Spinnin’ Records contacted us. They wanted to talk about our work and that’s a moment probably every DJ dreams of. It’s the biggest dance label in the world and that was our most important future based decision of that time. Especially if we take a look at what it has brought us up till now. Your music has to strike, but you also have to discover a way to bring it out there and to look at your public, which Spinnin’ really helps us with. We thought a lot about the decision to join them, about the negotiations and the contract, but it has worked out better than we could hope for. We wouldn’t be here at Sziget, if it wasn’t for Spinnin’ Records.
Why is Sziget such an awesome festival to perform?
We came up with a list of places we really would like to perform in the future and Sziget was definitely one of the spots! The festival is very popular in the Netherlands, which is pretty special, because it’s a total different country. UK Dreamfields is also a bucket-list spot, for example. We are performing there at the end of the month. Our colleagues know it and we know it, but if you tell your friends you have to perform at Sziget, everyone knows what you’re talking about, because it’s very famous in our birth country. We don’t know why, but it is! Many of our old class mates walk around on Sziget right now. They’re staying here every year and now we’re performing here ourselves. That’s why we think Sziget is special on our list. It’s also a great honor to perform before Alesso and after the Bassjackers. Alesso also performed after us in Ibiza and Portugal a while ago, it’s fun to see each other more often when traveling around the world.
May I ask which other festivals are on your bucket list?
Ultra is definitely on it. That’s a fest probably every DJ wants to play. Tomorrowland is also on it, although the location in Belgium is almost around the corner, so it seems a bit less spectacular than Ultra for us. There are also some local DJ’s performing there, which makes it a bit more natural, but those two are definitely on our list. Furthermore, we will perform at San Dance festival in Dubai in December, which we’re really excited about and Sensation of course, that’s one of the classics and it would be an honor.
Which is the biggest festival you have performed on, up till now?
Expofacic in Portugal. There were around 17.000 people there, that was a real smasher!
Are you guys still nervous sometimes, before going on stage?
Not that much anymore, but sometimes in a healthy way. That’s more excitement I guess, which is normal. Standing in front of a crowd of 17.000 people and getting the opportunity to entertain them with your music is pretty exciting. You shouldn’t think too much before a show. We really enjoy being on stage, we have a lot of fun and therefore, you get used to the crowd. It remains exciting, you are full of energy, but the tension gets less and you get used to the amount of people. Every time you’re in front of a bigger crowd than you’re used to it’s exciting.
Have you experienced some bloopers on stage?
Yes, of course. You can pull the wrong fader and then you have to get it back up as soon as possible. Or your hand slips and you accidentally press the play button.. It happens. Not very often, but it does. I’m sure we’re not the only ones, it’s a thing for DJ’s. You can even find YouTube videos about it and also about how people solve it. If you accidentally press something it’s a blooper, but making mistakes is human. It’s part of the dance scene we’re in and there’s a possibility that one of those mistakes will show up at YouTube some time, but it’s not a scandal. Luckily it doesn’t happen that often.
What’s the worst thing that could happen while performing?
The worst thing would be that the night gets ruined irretrievable. I saw an example on YouTube a while ago, where someone from the crowd climbed on stage, pulled the DJ booth and everything fell down with him. Everything was broken. Then you can’t save the evening and this is horrible for the crowd and the DJ himself, even though it’s not his fault. A power outage would also be really bad. You’re looking forward to a performance and people who are there to watch you do that as well. If it fails in any possible way, it’s bad, but it’s part of being a DJ. If everything is ruined and can’t be saved for the crowd anymore, that’s the worst thing that could happen.
You probably took a look at the Line-up, which act do you prefer the most?
We actually really wanted to see Major Lazer, but we had to skip it unfortunately. We think Alesso is also really awesome, we’ve seen him a couple of times now. Sziget always has an insane line-up and again this year, it’s ridiculously diverse. We will take a walk on the island later on, see where we end up. Make some nice pics 🙂 and build a party! Luckily we don’t have to get up that early, we can even make the breakfast buffet!
What’s your favorite music genre? Is it also the music you produce yourselves?
Yes, definitely! We also like to spin tech house, it has a lot of groove and a good vibe, but it’s a different variant from what we usually produce. This is a lot of future house, more trop than groove. When we listen to music, we have a very diverse taste. Well produced, popular commercial music on the radio and from the Top 40 is also included. There’s a lot of music in that chart that is really well-thought of. We like to listen to that and to think of how they produced it and why it’s so popular. Chris Brown or Pitbull for example, we listen to it as musicians and try to figure out how it’s produced, why it’s a hit, why people like it, and so on. Sometimes we like a random song on the radio, we show it to each other and we are going to discuss how it’s produced together. That’s a favorite activity of us. Furthermore we like to listen to classical music, it’s really nice to listen to.
Lucas: I also really like techno, the really rough ones, Len Faki, that kind of stuff.
Where does the inspiration to produce your music come from?
Like we said, we like to listen to a lot of music genres, so we get our inspiration from several things and translate that into our own sound. When we were little, we listened a lot to Daft Punk of course. Nowadays a lot of 90s house, that’s amazing! You will hear multiple genres, such as old disco, soul and more, in our music I guess. In every single out there you hear some piano, especially in 90s house and we think that’s a very beautiful instrument. It sounds warm and colorful, it works and we think it’s very cool. We don’t know a specific artist we gain inspiration from. We really like a couple of artists very much. You know, the classics; Daft Punk, Michael Jackson and so on, but if we take a look at the artists of nowadays, we admire so many of them. Oliver Heldens, Don Diablo and many more. When we talk about inspiration, we keep it diverse and we turn that in our own sound.
Do you guys have a hero to look up to?
It’s hard to tell, we don’t have one hero in particular. When we were young, we knew certain artists we wanted to be like when we got older, such as Tiësto. I think every DJ knows the feeling, but for now we don’t know. We created our own sound and we want to go further with that. You can look up to someone for multiple reasons, for example because his music sounds amazing, but also for his social media. We admire Don Diablo for that at the moment. We really respect that, but is he our hero? No, because we try to do our own thing and that’s what we’re here for.
I listened and reviewed a couple of your newest tracks lately. Can you both express yourself in your songs?
Yes, very much. That’s always the case with our own productions and especially with our new ones. We’ve never released a record we were not completely satisfied with. People criticize our work and we give each other feedback as well in the studio. Eventually we always agree on the end product, something that includes both of our opinions and expressions and this always works out for us. We don’t agree upon anything, but that’s not how it’s supposed to go. If you always agree upon everything, you could just as well go solo. That’s one of the biggest advantages of being a duo, besides that it’s a lot of fun! We both have our different ways of looking at music, but not too different. We still agree with each other and that’s why it works out. We have so much fun together, we laugh a lot and have our own private jokes everywhere, but we can also be serious. Sometimes one of us works really hard on something, but if the other doesn’t like it, we throw it away and we search for something we both agree on. It’s frustrating sometimes, but it works.
Do you guys still have some dreams to chase or are you already living it?
We are moving forward, but we’re not there yet! Although we’re also really happy and satisfied with what we’ve accomplished so far. Many things worked out a lot faster than we thought it would and we’re really grateful for that. Sometimes people in our hometown ask us, ‘You guys really made it, right?’, but what is the definition of making it, really? Are you successful if you have a lot of money? That’s not the point for us at all. If we take a look at our lives right now, we get the opportunity to travel the world with our own produced music and get to show it to everyone. In that way, we think we’ve achieved what we dreamed of. A lot of people have jobs they really hate and we can definitely say we love our jobs and we worked hard to accomplish what we have. We have a busy schedule, we’re both very motivated, convinced that it will all work out and we have a lot of ambition to really go through with showing what we got!
Do you have something special prepared for tonight, here on Sziget?
We sure have! Our newest single ‘Calinda’, a remake of the classic song of Laurent Wolf. It’s out on Spinnin’ Deep and the supports are already there. We shared a preview on socials before and that went crazy! It was really awesome. The first preview is the most exciting moment. You show something you have been working on for a very long time, to your crowd, people who listen to your music. It’s the most exciting and also vulnerable moment. Your heart and soul are put in the record and your crowd can make it or hate it. The moment that it strikes, is just amazing. We have tested it with the public a couple of times now and it really works out well! We’re really excited people already know it, it’s great! We see people look at each other, saying “This is Calinda!”, that’s awesome. We time our records and our own ones even more. We discuss the moment with each other, we wait for it, we put it in and hope it’s going to strike! Those moments are very special.
Check out ‘Calinda’ on Beatport Pro:
https://pro.beatport.com/release/calinda-2k15/1595368
Connect with Lucas & Steve:
https://www.facebook.com/LucasAndSteve
https://soundcloud.com/lucasandsteve
https://twitter.com/lucasandsteve
Share On
![Lucas & Steve Talk About Their Last Tour, Future Plans And More [Exlusive Interview Part 2]](https://whiteraverraft.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/LucasSteve.jpg)
![Take A Journey To ‘The Island Of Freedom, Sziget’ [Festival Lineup And 2015 Preview]](https://whiteraverraft.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/sziget2.jpg)
