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An Interview With SOS

Posted By: Andrew Bilen on 29 April

With the release of Balance 013 on EQ Recordings mixed by SOS, Desyn, Omid & Demi have a busy 2008 ahead of them. We were able to catch with them in Miami during Winter Music Conference 2008 to talk about how they came together, their upcoming Balance compilation, and the rest of their plans for the year.

Progressive-Sounds: What is it exactly that brought you guys together in the first place?

Omid: Sex.
Desyn: Best answer I´ve ever heard in my life, sex.
Omid: We were sharing a girlfriend at the time...
Desyn: Seriously though guys.
Omid: OK seriously, what brought us together was just our passion and love for the music that we played, but it was more accidental. It wasn´t like a set of events that suddenly brought us together.
Desyn: It was a big accident.
Demi:We did our first gig around four years ago, and amazing as it was, we knew each other before that playing together. And then we didn´t do anything or organize anything for well over a year until the next one. And from there we just realized...
Omid: We did pick up on the fact that there´s something special here, ya know? There´s something natural that feels really good and that could really motivate all three of us and inspire us to put more focus in what we love. But at the same time we never forced it and we never said ´guys we have to do a party every month.´ It just naturally happened, and the people that came to one party wanted another party, so we were like ´lets do another,´ it was like that. Me and Des were friends for years, and when we met up with Dems we were learning to do parties, it was just a complete accident.
When we met Demi he was like a little runner boy. Then we found out he actually had a really good record collection...

Desyn: When we met Demi he was like a little runner boy. Then we found out he actually had a really good record collection...
Omid: And he actually DJed pretty well.
Desyn: So we thought, OK...

[All laughing hysterically]

Demi:They were useless at a lot of things alright, that is a pot of lies!
Desyn: There is two sides to the story. This is also the truth from another perspective.
Omid: Who you gonna believe?
One or two?
Progressive-Sounds: What is it that makes you guys work so well together? What is the X-factor behind SOS?

Desyn: We´re far more evil then any of the other groups out there.
Omid: I mean, look at the logo. There´s a snake on there, what does that tell you?
We´re dark man.
Desyn: Yeah, we´re from the true dark side.
Demi:We´re from the Sith side.
Omid: Remember, the dark side is only dark until it gets light, so we´re in preparation of becoming lighter.
Desyn: The universe is training us to become more light loving beings.
Omid: What we´re trying to say is, there´s a bit more reality in the way we are. We´re not embarassed of being silly and stupid or how we feel at the time. We don´t feel like we´ve got to act a certain way. We try to be ourselves and transcend who we are.
Desyn: We´re under no illusions that we´re working in an industry which is based around having fun and partying. We use the word ´evil´ in a joking sense, but there is an element of truth to it in a way because the industry as a whole is pretty much based around the superficial. We´re just trying to be honest and just say look, this is probably where we´ve come from and we´re trying to make some changes and do something good with what we´ve got.
Omid: It doesn´t feel like we´re making any changes by doing all these interviews but...
Desyn: But people can maybe pick up on some elements of truth out there.
Omid: Honestly, we´re not trying to sell more records.
Desyn: well we haven´t made any yet so...

[All laughing]
Progressive-Sounds: The three of you will be doing a lot of touring together for the next several months in support of your Balance CD. What do you think it will be like being together on the road for so long?

Desyn: It helps because tours are hard and tiring and when you got other people with you to encourage you when you´re feeling down, because it´s such a tough job, it really is.

Omid: You got to remember right, it´s like every gig is at a different location, and there´s three of you, all three of you got to remember to pack your bags, you have to be down on time.
Demi:That´s the best thing about it, because we´re there for eachother.
Omid: We´re teaching each other to pair together to a degree as well and to make sure if there´s one person a little bit more tired then the other, to have the other two look after him, or the other way around. We´re teaching each other to bring the balance that is required to make it successful, because if we feel good everything else follows, but if we feel like shit, shit follows.
Desyn: And we´re an open book with eachother as well. Our time together isn´t just all about music, it´s about developing each other as well. We try and teach each other stuff. We´re all different ages and regardless of age we all feel that we´ve got something to offer to each other. Learning about each other´s personalities is just as important to us as learning about each others musical tastes. We kind of coach each other and talk to each other about stuff. There´s stuff that goes on behind the scenes that people don´t see.
Omid: And it wasn´t a case of getting together to school each other. We didn´t even know we needed schooling until we got together.
Progressive-Sounds: What did you do in preparation for putting together the compilation and deciding where you wanted to go with it?

Omid: We never really prepare anything. We prepare what we have available, we prepare to a level where we know our tunes. But we don´t want to prepare and make it obvious exactly how we´re going to do things

Desyn: We prepared our paints, but we didn´t know what picture we were going to paint.
Omid: Or which brushes we´re going to use.
Desyn: That´s basically it. And in the preparation of paints is an incredible amount of work and three heads is... I mean, if you look at the diversity of music on the album, that´s only possible with three people, in a way. Unless you´re an absolute freak who doesn´t sleep.
Demi:Doesn´t have any friends, spends all his money on music.
Desyn: And there are DJs like that out there, but with three people the balance is a little bit easier to achieve.
Omid: We did want to maintain some kind of health level while we´re working together on that intense level. Because at times you feel like one of you needs to sleep because one of you has been working a bit too much. The other two are there to basically take over from where that persons left off. So we´ve learned a way of teaching each other the skills that we were each good at individually at the time. We´ve passed those on to each other, and we´ve all learned to do each other´s jobs. Now it´s like an extension of one head that´s become like three pairs of hands, but it´s still one head. It really feels like a greater one person.
Desyn: That´s how it´s been evolving. When we started off we were three very different people with different tastes in music and over the last four years we´ve taught each other in many ways about different sounds, vibes, and feelings. And now we´ve almost come together at putting one sound out.
Omid: There´s a lot of trust there, ya know. Me personally, I never feel like I´m worried about what Demi or Desyn´s going to play and I hope they feel the same way about me. It´s a case of just having that trust for each other and just being able to know that it´s an extension of yourself for them to be playing that record or playing their music without disturbing your frequency range.
Progressive-Sounds: One choice on the Balance 013 tracklisting that caught my eye was the use of The Cure´s "Lullabye" to close disc one and then open disc two with a remixed version. How did that come about?

Desyn: To answer your question about ending one disc with the original and starting the next, that just naturally came together, that´s how the pieces fell. We didn´t plan at all to do that.
Demi:It made sense. As soon as it happened it made sense.
Desyn: It sounded perfect.
Omid: We have to also give a bit of respect here to Pig & Dan who actually did the remix.
Demi:Everyone seems to think it´s [us].
Omid: Robert Smith overlooked the project to see if he would license the track. He´s very touchy about his tracks being on certain compilations. So for him to have been into the idea of us using one of his tracks was really cool.
Desyn: Yeah, he had to approve it personally.
Omid: But he still hasn´t heard Pig & Dan´s mix, so we´re waiting to see what he´s got to say about that.
Desyn: We kind of snuck that one on there.
Omid: We pretended we were only going to use his version but we actually also used Pig & Dan´s version, did a little bit of an edit to it too.
Demi:I think it was Pig & Dan´s version that actually led to us using the original as well.
Progressive-Sounds: With all the track edits you did for the Balance CD, do you ever see yourselves moving into the production realm as a trio?

Demi:The Balance CD has been a platform for a whole bunch of ideas.
Desyn: We don´t know what´s next and our whole ethos from the beginning has not ever been to plan anything, and just see what comes our way naturally.
Omid: For us, anything we do is as if it´s the last thing we´re going to do. Whether its Desyn doing his Balance, or its been my album, or us doing a Balance together. Everything we do we put as much love and as much energy into it as if it might be the last thing we ever do.

The next stage for us is maybe not using other people´s music as much, but maybe blending other people´s music with our own ideas and with our own music that we want to start creating from the inspiration we´ve had from everyone´s music. We´ve had these few years of listening to everyone else´s music, being able to select it in the way we want to represent [it]. And now it´s an opportunity for us to maybe have a go at representing those kinds of records, made from our angle and our perspective. It might be a complete disaster but we´re willing to give it a try. We´re also willing not to make any promises, and just go with the flow.
Progressive-Sounds: Where are you currently at with balancing between the use of digital music and vinyl records? Do you still use vinyl?

Demi:We´re buying vinyl as much as we used to, and a lot of the stuff does get ripped onto the computer.
Desyn: We just rip the vinyl to CD, and we play it off of CDs. it´s just an easier medium to [travel with].
Omid: We do like the sound of vinyl, there´s a warmth about vinyl.
Desyn: There´s a lot of vinyl stuff on the Balance CD.
Omid: We´d like to see vinyl back in production more.
Desyn: To me, I haven´t seen any less amount of vinyl out there in the shops. People have gone bust but there´s still 500 releases being released a week on vinyl like it was 5 years ago.
Progressive-Sounds: The three of you are involved in several of your own labels such as SexOnWax and Alternative Route. Could you tell us a bit about any upcoming releases or projects on any of those labels?

Omid: We´ve kind of made an umbrella to put all of our labels under the same roof to a degree. But we are kind of against working too hard on certain things for the sake of it. The label is only there as a foundation for us to be able to release music that we´re excited about or the music we make ourselves.
Desyn: We´re not militant about having one release a month. When something amazing crosses our ears and the opportunity is there to release it and the artist needs an outlet, we work it. And I think we´ve got four or five really amazing things coming out on SexOnWax. One of them is on the album, one of my favorite tracks and I think the same for the guys. DJ Fritzo´s "Pimms by the Pool" on CD one is just the most incredible 80s, oriental, timeless sounding track. It´s purely instrumental, the kind of track that with a vocal would be massive. That´s one of the things coming out on SexOnWax.
Progressive-Sounds: How would you describe the overall sound and feel of your Balance 013 compilation?

Demi:It´s baby-making stuff.
Desyn: He said it.
Omid: Pretty much spot on. It´s music to allow your sperm to be as active as possible. It´s also music for a woman to be as fertile as possible. Listen to the SOS CD and hopefully your fertile grounds will evolve.