Sub 6

Interview with Ohad (23) and Golan Aharony (30)

Author: Avi Nivi
Date: Jul 1, 2005
Views: 4836

Sub 6 are ambitious musicians from Israel. With their album „Who Needs Love Songs“ they substantiate that their musical comprehension exceeds the cliché of isratrance.

Who are you - your real names, real jobs and how did you get started with Trance?

Our names are Ohad Aharoni (23) and Golan Aharony (30). We live and work in a small city called Herzlia. It's in the center of Israel, close to Tel Aviv. Music production is our only occupation at the moment.
We always were into music. (Ohad is a drummer and guitar player, Golan sings and plays the bass guitar). We started going to trance parties in Israel in the early-mid 90s, long before we started to think about making trance music. We were playing together in a rock band at this time and were not familiar with computers, but we were sure that making trance music was much easier than writing a song. After we bought our first computer we found out that we were wrong. We worked for two years `till we released our first track on a trance compilation in 2002.



Sub 6 - live
[photo: Hommega]



Please tell us a bit more about your new album, how did you work on it and how long did it take to finish?

We started working on the album in early 2003. Each one of us has a studio of his own. We made the tracks in both studios. Sometimes we worked separately, but we did the final mixdowns of all tracks together. We also recorded a song with singer Michele Adamson and a ragga-muffin M.C. called Jahnathan - it was great fun doing that. The original planned release date was September 2003 but we delayed it because a lot of our music was out on the net. We wanted the album to be fresh, so everytime a track was on the net we released it on a compilation. At the end, it was a good promotion for the album.

Your style of music is different to the typical Israeli trance. It is strongly influenced by pop and electro styles and you use a lot of vocals. Why? Can you explain it?

We would like to see ourselves as musicians and producers, not only as djs and trance artists. Trance music is what we like at the moment, but we have a rich background of other styles of music from punk and metal to classic rock, techno, and house music. We are involved in other (non trance) projects and we don't think that we gonna make trance forever.
We have a problem to define our style, we can only say that it's very close to progressive house and classic techno sometimes. We do vocal tracks, because we think that vocals are missing in trance music and it has a great effect on the trance dance floor. People love it for the same reason they love the guitar tracks. It reminds them to the music they used to hear before they were into trance. Well, pop has the best sound production. We started to listen to it just to act as referee in the studio. After some time we realized that we really can enjoy it!



Sub 6 (Ohad & Golan) - live
[photo: Hommega]



Do you think your album will be accepted in other scenes, too?

Some of the tracks on the album can be played at lower tempos (in house clubs and on commercial parties). Track four on the album (a 122 bpm song) is in the charts of the Israeli mainstream radio. The album is also printed on vinyl so house and progressive djs can play it. We don't have to much expectations. This is our first album and for now we are happy just from the reaction of the trance scene.

Did you ever see the psy-trance scene crossing over into mainstream?

Well, the sound of psy-trance is not too accepted by most of the mainstream music listeners, but in some specific cases it can happen. We think that the vocals are the key to it. As we said before, we really believe in lyrics in trance music. Classic psy-trance never will be mainstream. Most of the trance artists don't really think about getting to mainstream audience and if it doesn´t change then the scene will stay underground.

Do you think mainstream exposure is good to what you do?
Yes. When it comes to mainstream you expose to a lot of people, and that is one of our goals as artists. We really want to get the feedbacks from other audiences.

How long does it take you to write a track and what is the most important thing to you?

It changes from track to track. Usually it takes more than three weeks. Sometimes even more. In some cases we finish the track, play it several times on parties and open it again to finish it then.
There are a few important things for us about a track. The bassline has to be phat and clear, the rythm section has to be uniqe in some ways and the general groove of the track has to be „tight“.

You have a strong live presentation with real drums and samplers. Can you tell me about that?

In our live act we use electronic drums connected to the battery sampler (software by Native Instruments) and a Roland sp808 realtime sampler. We try to make the live act more interesting and we always play the tracks a bit different for the live act. We always prepare the live act before performing - sampler and synth presets, electronic drums and in the future we are going to use a live microphone for vocals.

Where did you already perform? What was your craziest show?

We already performed in Japan, UK, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, France, Portugal, Mexico and Brasil.
Our craziest show was in Brasil in 2003 at the Solaris dance festival. It was a 3500 people event and it was one of our first big shows. We have been a bit nervous before, because it was too hot to dance (it was at noon). Anyway, five minutes before starting the show the sky was filled with clouds, and it even started to rain a bit. People went mad - it was crazy.

What are your influences? Which artists inspire you?

We are inspired by too many artists. We can name a few: Leftfield, Massive Attack, Air, Pink Floyd, and trance artists like Electric Tease, The Antidote, GMS, Space Cat, Juvenile, Wrecked Machines, Panick, Deedrah, Domestic and many more ... We also are strongly inspired by a lot of Israeli Hebrew artists.

How do you get along together? You are brothers ...

Most of the time we spend together is while we travel. At home we have two studios and we work on ideas alone to complete them together afterwords.
The fact that we are brothers is basically a good thing - we have the same style and we hardly disagree about the music itself. But sometimes we have big disagreements about other stuff wich is a normal thing between brothers.

SUB6 equipment list
• Novation K-station /
• Korg MS-2000 / EA-1
• Roland SPD-S / MP600 / SP-808 and RSM90 Monitors
• Tascam M-2524 Console
• Lexicon LXP15
• Behringer Intelligate
• Drawmer punchgate MX40
• AKG C4000b MIC
• TLAudio5051 valve processor
• DynauDIO BM15 Monitors
• 2xPCamd2.4
• MOTU 2408-mk3
• RME hammerfall dsp multiface
• MOTU midi Fastlane
• Nuendo 2 + VST Plug Ins
• Cubase SX+ VST Plug Ins



Sub 6 (Ohad (l.) & Golan Aharony)
[photo: Hommega]





taken from mushroom magazine and brought to you by liese


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