Danae (NL) [Interview]

For Dane and Dana, there are few things in life better than losing yourself in the music. With this project, they seek to pay it forward from the other side of the booth.

Danae is an Amsterdam-based DJ/producer duo with a passion for spreading good vibes through progressive and hypnotic dance music. Brought together by this shared passion more than 15 years ago, Danae has since been honing their craft of musical storytelling.

With early support from Hernan Cattaneo and Nick Muir, Danae’s music delivers uplifting melodies and dark introspective grooves, spanning the full range of human emotion. This week finds the duo making their debut on Mark MacLeod's Deep Down Music with the thematic sounds of 'Devs', alongside an excellent remix from The Wash

Progressive Astronaut caught up with Danae to learn more about the release of 'Devs', their background, electronic music in the Netherlands, DJing and much more. Enjoy

Hi Dane and Dana, thanks for joining us. How has your start to the year been so far and please tell us something interesting about your day today?

Thanks for having us! Our year’s been off to an interesting start with lots of highs and lows. Luckily, we've been able to translate that into lots of new music. One of the more interesting turns has been in finding a new home here in Amsterdam. We finally lucked out and just got to visit the construction site today!

Let’s look back on the first half of the year. What is a track which has come out this year that has impressed you the most and why?

There’s so much good music coming out these days, especially in progressive. It’s a great time to be alive but on the other hand it can be difficult to find music that really stands out. One such track for both of us is ‘Reaching’ by Durante on Anjunadeep.

Durante’s been one of our biggest inspirations as a producer and this track is just everything we love in progressive. It’s a restrained slow burn with a beautiful soundscape built on top of a constant, solid bass groove. The production quality is impeccable and it just makes us want to get up and dance.

What was the music genre you discovered first before you turned to electronic music, and what made you continue with the latter?

Dana: Before I fell head over heels in love with electronic music, I was really into funk, new wave and indie rock. There’s always been a common thread of dance-oriented, bass-heavy grooves, experimental sounds and often a sort of bittersweet melancholy.

Dane: My parents are big music lovers, and I grew up with a diverse range of classics like Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones. But apparently, I've always been drawn to electronic music. My mom likes to tell the story of how I was dancing, kicking my legs in my stroller when 2 Unlimited came on in the department store, haha.

So we’re curious how Danae came to existence, please tell us how you guys met and eventually started collaborating on music? And what musical projects were involved in prior to Danae?

Danae has been a long time in the making. It all started more than 15 years ago when we met as penpals in high school. We started by writing letters back and forth and eventually we were chatting online every day.

Dana: Music was always central to our connection. We fell in love with each other sharing trance especially. We first collaborated musically as DJs at college parties in Holland when I would fly over to visit Dane.

Dane: I started producing back in 2010 initially as a hobby. I was just curious to understand how it all worked and never intended to become a pro. However, over the course of many years I did get better, and I considered putting some more serious focus on it in 2019. Around that time, Dana started taking DJ lessons and also began dabbling into Ableton. More and more of our friends started telling us things like “wow guys, you really have something here!” and that's how Danae was born!

How did growing up in the Netherlands influence your music taste and direction into the industry? Or did it all?

Dane: I grew up with the idea that electronic music was bad, had no soul, etc. I always liked a song here and there, but it took a long time before I really got into it as it felt like it was "forbidden". However, at the end of high school, my friends put on Tiësto's  In Search Of Sunrise 7 (Asia CD2) in the car ... and that was a pivotal moment. I didn't know it was possible to love music that much. Clearly, that idea I grew up with was totally false and I just knew I had to keep discovering more.

Dana: I grew up in the US which was really enriching for my musical upbringing but it initially proved difficult as I fell deeper down into the electronic music rabbit hole. The mix that changed everything for me was Armin van Buuren’s Universal Religion Chapter 3 from 2007. I felt pretty lonely in my high school but as I developed my own taste, I quickly met like-minded people from all around the world.

A successful partnership is generally based around balance and compromise; how do you manage these things within your production dynamic? And do you have different roles in the production process?

Luckily the production process between us is generally quite smooth and synergistic – that’s why we’ve pursued it to where we are today. But finding how we complement each other has been a long and gradual process. The most important thing is sharing the same vocabulary to be able to convey specific ideas and nuances to one another. It takes a lot of patience and back-and-forth conversation and iterations.

Dane has an engineering background and is a much more technical producer with the patience and ear for the audio engineering side of things. Dana brings the more natural feel for music, especially for the arrangement. We both play essential roles in the process, and we couldn't do it if we weren't doing it together.

Working as a duo is an interesting dynamic. Do you guys share a studio where all the sessions are together or do you produce separately and pass files back and forth? And if you have done both, what do you prefer and why?

We live together and share the same studio so our production process is generally in the same space together. Sometimes we really sit down together and work on a track from the start but more often Dane starts with a concept. Then Dana sits with the arrangement and we go back and forth.

Take us through a typical day when you’re not traveling, what does a day in your life look like?

We both have full-time jobs outside of music. Dane’s a data engineer and Dana’s an economist so we both spend most of our day behind our computers crunching numbers. After work, we joke that we move from ‘bad screen’ to ‘good screen ’ to work on music stuff together. In between we both enjoy a nice bike ride and cooking a good spicy stir fry for dinner.

You have a new single ‘Devs’ out now on Mark MacLeod’s Deep Down Music. Please tell us a bit about the track and how it showcases your current sound?

DEVS is the first track that we built around a sample – a haunting Gregorian chant supported by an entrancing drone. We wanted to bring out the organic singing with lots of reverb in contrast with stark, artificial sounds. We really like the spacious, colder sounds like you’d hear on Jeremy Olander’s label Vivrant and we experimented with that over a steady solid bass and percussion groove.

The inspiration for the track came from the FX series ‘Devs’ and I think you’ve done a beautiful job. What was it about the main themes from the soundtrack and also the series itself that made you want to create a track around it?

Dane: Thank you! The original that we sampled plays at the start of the show and it immediately sent shivers down my spine. The harmonies are almost other-worldly. I don't know what is said, but the words reached deeper parts of my being. If music touches you like that, you have to take note. We were barely 20 seconds into the first episode but I paused it and said to Dana: “we need to turn this into a progressive house track!”, with the intention to can recreate this feeling for people on the dancefloor.

Let our readers inside your studio for a moment, what is your current setup and what studio tools are featured heavily in your recent productions and more specifically your ‘Devs’ single?

We primarily use software, working in Ableton Live. Our favorite plugins are Diva, VintageVerb, Supermassive, Decapitator and Portal, featured in DEVS. We also use the Push which was a central part of our creative process. Once we had the key sounds and loops, we spent some time jamming with them on the Push and recording to make the arrangement.

There is also a great remix from The Wash, how involved were you in the selection process and why was The Wash a good fit for this track?

We weren’t involved in the process of selecting The Wash at all – not until he texted us directly ‘Guess who I’m doing a remix for’.

It couldn’t have gone better though. The Wash is a great inspiration for us and we’ve become really close friends over the past year. He's our mentor and he played an essential role in that final push to establish ourselves as artists. Thank you, Clemens, we really couldn’t have done it without you! It was just by chance that Mark invited him to remix our track.

Sound-wise that was also a brilliant choice. The Wash has such a distinctly club-oriented sound, driven by tribal percussion. Our original is a bit deeper and a The Wash treatment is just what the remix needed.

This is your first release on Deep Down Music, what made the label a good home for this particular track?

We love the passion for the music and community behind the label. Our values really align with Mark and Deep Down’s and we’ve been trying to find a fit for the label for awhile now. As soon as we made DEVS, which is a bit deeper and more introspective and spiritual, we knew Deep Down would be the perfect home.

You guys also operate as a DJ duo and have played at Shelter of Hearts in Amsterdam and Komorebi in Sweden. So, how would you describe your approach to DJing? And how do you function as a duo while DJing?

We love DJing together. Our approach is very laid-back and cooperative. We typically spend a lot of time preparing our music but once we get behind the decks, especially in front of a crowd, we like to go with the flow.

Our priority is always building connections. We connect with the dancefloor to feel what the flow of the set should be and what turn it should take.

We like to DJ with 4 decks so that we can keep loops going and keep that progressive train chugging. This is especially important as we really like to throw some curve balls in our sets and extra loops help keep that coherent.

Dane: Dana is a brilliant musical storyteller and she never ceases to impress me. It's such a privilege to get to share the decks with her.

Can you tell me a bit about how your work as a DJ duo has influenced your view of music, your way of listening to tracks, and also, your work as producers?

DJing has had such a huge impact on our relationship with music. Most importantly, it’s given us the tools and experience to put into words or music what was previously just subconscious feel.

Production-wise, DJing has given us a less-is-more mentality. From both sides of the booth, we believe restraint is always the best and we’ve developed more emphasis on groove than big melodies or breakdowns. We also like to keep our mix clean with plenty of space for creative layering while DJing.

Essentially: it’s not just about the standalone track but how it can be mixed with other tracks and the role it serves in a DJ set.

Being active as DJ/producers, we have entered a self-reinforcing cycle where we keep hearing more and more dimensions to music. That allows us to improve our art, and as we improve our art, we learn to be better listeners again. It's an extremely rewarding process.

How much prep do you put into the tracks you choose to play?

It’s impossible to quantify the amount of prep we put into the tracks we choose to play. Selecting music is a constant, ongoing process.

Organizing our library is the biggest, most demanding task. Since we’re two people who generally like to go with the flow, it’s important that music is filed logically and we’re both on the same page with what’s there

It's a neverending – and very fun – process. Then to prepare a specific set or gig, we usually spend time discussing together what story we want to tell and what kind of energy we anticipate. Then we shortlist specific tracks that we try to play. We usually end up with 2-3x the duration of the set worth of music pre-selected. Sometimes though, if the situation asks for it, we may still go back to our greater library for a specific track.

Current Top Five tracks in your sets?

Miss Melera – Jade [Balance]

Michael A – Reverse [Genesis]

ZEHV – 2x4 [Modern Agenda]

Francesco Pico – State of the Wave (K Loveski Remix) [Magnitude]

Mike Griego ft HYBOID – Hypnotize [Afterglow]

If you could set up an event with a line-up of five artists of your choice, who would you book and what set times would you ascribe to the artists?

We love to discover new music and it would be amazing to have such an opportunity to curate a night for our community. A night where they may newly discover brilliant artists that they perhaps haven't heard before.

1. MOLØ: few artists can immediately wrap a crowd around their finger like MOLØ. Building effortlessly from ambient techno to progressive, her storytelling is so encapsulating – a perfect way to leave the real world behind and strap on for the event.
2. HANA & Durante: These 2 lovely people are already bigger outside the Netherlands, but here they seem to be completely unknown. We love their positive flavor of progressive, which is completely different from the sounds we're used to hearing at the events that are organized here.
3. PROFF B2B Volen Sentir: we love artists with strong presences that really connect with the audience. This feeling when Proff and Volen Sentir play live is just unreal. Their command of the decks feels like a plain extension of their bodies and minds and the need to dance is just infectious.
4. Mike Griego: With energy running high and any inhibitions left gone, we’d bring on Mike Griego. His productions have consistently stood out as the most inspiring and creative productions to us in the past few years. Big bass heavy grooves and playful soundscapes would be perfect to let absolutely loose to.
5. Brian Cid: While a lot of people here have definitely heard his music, only few have had the privilege to listen to (and watch – iykyk) him perform. Hearing Brian Cid live is a deep, meditative experience. Your brainwaves synchronize to the music, the tribal percussion reaching deeper levels of your being. When you wake up a new person, you ask yourself: "what was that?!”.

If you are not DJing, producing or socializing at clubs, where do we find you? And doing what?

Dane: I'm a big nerd and like to play around with home automation. Setting up lights and sensors, making my own smart thermostat, etc. In a way it's not so different from nerding with music! I'm just having fun playing around, and the result is something that makes my life just a little bit better.

Dana: You’d probably find me in the kitchen, experimenting with different cuisines like Indonesian or Israeli – most likely working with chili peppers. Food is such a beautiful thing and perhaps right next to music for bringing people together.

If you were not a DJ/Producer what do you think you’d be doing with your life? (Something not music related)

Maybe some kind of set-building like light art projects to contribute to events/festivals. While our community is centered around music, it's really about the people and we want to invest in that…community building isn’t per se music related 😀

What’s something people do not know about you?

We're also into psytrance. We would love to – tastefully - bring some elements of psytrance into progressive for a truly unique twist.

What can we look forward to from Danae for the rest of 2024? Any releases or gigs you are looking forward to?

We’re most looking forward to our debut at Amsterdam Dance Event this October!

'Devs' is available now via Deep Down Music: https://tinyurl.com/5xup393a