D'Angello & Francis Take Flight [Exclusive Interview]

D'Angello & Francis Take Flight

9/16/2019

Before D'Angello & Francis, there was Club 45 and Rockstars who got their first big break on Spinnin' Records/Tiger Records from their rendition of "Stars on 45". Afterwards, they joined forces under the Rockstarz project "in the quest to rock the electronic dance world."

After forming the D'Angello & Francis project to the smashing success of songs like "All Aboard," "Raveheart" and "Victorum," They've have teamed up once again with Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and Bassjackers for "The Flight" which is out now on Smash The House. Read more about the creative process behind the track and the duo's history in our exclusive interview below!

Congratulations on your latest release with Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and Bassjackers! Can you walk us through the creation of this song?
Thank you! We worked with Bassjackers for the first time in 2016 on 'All Aboard' which was released in 2017 as a Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike edit on their label Smash The House. Dimitri & Mike also highly supported the track worldwide and came up with a very cool crowd control addition that made the crowd put their 'lights up and lights down' on the breakdown. Every since then, we knew we had to come up with an even stronger follow-up, so we decided to 'take the plane' this time.

On 'All Aboard,' you can hear many real train sounds like horns, switching rails, grinding wheels. And the breakdown is a like a train that's speeding up until the drop hits. We also wanted to keep the crowd control idea for the follow-up track. So we quickly came up with the idea to have safety instructions that would tell the crowd to put their hands up in the sky and wave from left to right to the sound of plane propellers speeding up.

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A post shared by D'Angello & Francis (@dangelloandfrancis) on Jan 13, 2019 at 8:20pm PST

All of your tracks have such an anthemic quality to them. How do you go about finding the right melodies that are simple enough to hum along too while being original enough to stand out?
Sometimes it's a really long quest to create the right melody on a specific track and even when you think you found it, it's best to let it rest for a few days and listen to it again. I think all of our tracks have had easily five or more different versions of the melodies until it was just right.

We hear a lot of demos and most of the melodies are not original or strong enough. It takes a lot of persistence to creating good melodies and sounds.

What have been some of your stand-out moments of your careers thus far? At what point did you think to yourselves, "I've really accomplished something here."?
Although we've only started 'D'Angello & Francis' three years ago, we have been making music together for more than twelve years. The first track we made was an instant bomb. We took it to the clubs the same night that we finished it and the DJs and the people loved it immediately. The day after we send it to Spinnin' Records, made a phone call with the label-boss himself and we had a deal! Something that would not be so easy to do these days...

Even though it's a small thing when you look back on it, that's kind of the start of our music career. But it's been a long ride and it's only recently that some of the top DJs and artist in the world are showing interest in our music.

Having played on some of the biggest stages in the world including Tomorrowland, what have been the most memorable experiences you've had?
One of the first big things was playing at the City Parade in our home country. A huge parade of dance trucks going through the city. We played for twelve hours on the opening truck till sunset for 100,000 party people. Amazing!

One of the last big things was our appearance on the Tomorrowland mainstage during Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike's set. Presenting 'The Flight' on such an iconic event and stage is unbelievable.

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A post shared by D'Angello & Francis (@dangelloandfrancis) on Jul 23, 2019 at 9:02am PDT

Outside of music, what do you both enjoy doing with your free time?
Being in the studio has always been our hobby and what we would do in our 'free time', that hasn't changed. Every free gap in the schedule goes to the studio. Besides that we are either sleeping, eating, or hanging out with friends and family.

Looking to the future, where are you hoping to take the D'Angello & Francis project next?
We've got a lot of new music waiting and some of them are a bit different than what we've been doing so far. We want to develop our own sound as an artist step by step and give something different to the people than what they already know. We've got a lot of plans!