I think there could be no doubt that Infected Mushroom are the most popular act in the trance scene. Erez Eizen (24) and Amit Duvdevani aka Duvdev (29) are the producers behind that name and have released four albums and countless tracks on vinyl and compilations so far. Their fifth album "I am the supervisor" is on the way ...

At the age of five Duvdev began to play the piano and joined a punk band when he was eighteen. Being in the army he discovered that there was something like trance parties and after a trip to India he finally decided to become an active part of this -producing music. Some friend introduced him to Erez.
Erez learned to play the keyboards when he was five, started doing trance tunes when he was fourteen. His first album with the band Shidapu was released in 1998. Later he also worked with "Shiva" Jörg Kessler and they were called Shiva Shidapu or Jörg on mushroom. At the age of sixteen he met Duvdev and the infected story begun. Through the years Infected Mushroom gradually gained global recognition, appearing at major parties in Brazil, Japan, Mexico and the UK as well as touring in Canada and the USA. Funny story is also that a Canadian promoter who booked them reported that tickets were sold even faster than for Paul van Dyk one month before.



Duvdev ( l. ) und Erez
[photo: BNE]



What have you done before you started to earn your money with your skills?
Erez worked in a computer store, building computers, and also worked in a music store playing a synth in the front of the store and Duvdev used to work in a plating factory.

What do you think makes your music so different to others?
We don't know what is so special or different, maybe it's the fact that we use a lot of vocals on live instruments in the tracks, we also put in influences from all kinds of music which is not that often in trance.
After all those years in trance we find that the scene is kind of the same all over, in the matter of energy from the crowd, they all love to dance and have fun. The main difference is the amount of people, in some places it's not more then 3000 and in others it's no less then 10.000.



Duvdev
[photo: BNE]



After listening to the new album, i think you and few other artists create a new style of trance, maybe we could call it trance pop. Do you think this is a way to get a bigger audience?
This is 100 per cent Infected Mushroom style, about other combinations, about someone elses music we cannot realy say anything, we don't think that if someone will make pop-trance then he will sell like Robbie Williams, far from it. We have reached a very strong level of awareness after eight years of hard work and not because we produced pop-trance as you call it ... We are only releasing our fifth album these days and we both didn't passed our 30th. So we can both say that the sky is the limit, we are both so diverse in the music we like so anything is possible, who knows what we will do in two years from now.

Where did you get your inspiration from?
We try to be inspired from different kinds that were never used in trance like ragga, and from new artist's fresh blood. The biggest thing that annoys us is the high taxes in Israel on electronic equipment.

How do you go about producing your music?
When we go to producing we only think about dancing, that people will dance to our music - and wemake the music according to this. We usually don't have an idea so we just start with the beat. The most important thing in a track is that it will make the crowd dance like crazy. The crowd is what inspires us and we want to try making something new in each album. When we see them getting wild on the dance floor we know we've done it. Mostly we use the computer to produce music, Cubase, plug-in's ..., all our gear list is featured in our website.



Infected live
[photo: BNE]



Who is the most (other) interesting artist/band in today's dance music scene? Also beside of trance?
We really like J. Views (Jonathan Dagan), we did a remix to his track "Muse breaks", he is very talented and a good friend of us, we are sure he will be big. Everyone that makes good music is our inspiration like: Dream Theatre, Metallica, Iron Maden. we are really into rock.

So that is maybe the reason that we dont hear so much downbeat by you?
Well, the last track in our new album is called "Stretched" and it's a monster downtempo track, also we will have a new chill track featured in the coming fourth part of the "Life Is..." cd series.

What is next?
We don't know yet, we just finished an album called "IM the supervisor" so its too early for us to make plans, we have a lot of shows all around the world, but we will know it in the minute when we will sit in the studio.

What advice would you give to new artists who are trying to break thru?
To make music that people can dance to, this is very important. To think about the crowd and what will work in a party and of course to be as original as you can.
www.infected-mushroom.com

taken from mushroom magazine and brought to you by liese