We The Savages open up about their past, success and latest hit ‘Mami’

The Swiss duo of We The Savages have been catching quite a lot of well intended attention in the world of dance music and are undoubtedly, at the helm of all the dance music arising out of their country. Comprising the energetic personas of Alex and Arik, the We The Savages duo have already showcased their versatility and creative discipline behind the production desk in their various tracks. On their ‘Indiass‘ single, the duo showcased what could best be defined as a potpourri of psy-trance laced beat-work and a progressive track structure.

What’s more is that We The Savages do not look to be parting with that signature sound of theirs. Their latest release ‘Mami‘ sees them take their sound to the next level and carefully craft it for the clubs and festivals around Europe. Following suit, after being impressed by We The Savages’ steady rise towards stardom in Europe, we took the opportunity to sit down with the duo and have a chat about their history, track success and what was their outlook towards the industry.

What first inspired you to create dance music? And who were your early influences and how did you two meet?

Actually, we began about 10 years ago with a punk-rock band. Alex was the guitarist and the singer while Arik was the bass player. We were inspired by bands like Green Day, Blink 182, Sum 41 and so on. After some years alone we met up again in high school and decided to make something together. We began mixing hip hop beats with guitars and we ended up with electronic music – a passion that we both always had. It was 2013 so this mainstream EDM wave was just catching on so our references were artists like Knife Party, Skrillex, Cyberpunkers. There should be still a set from this period on YouTube, if you want to check with what we started!

Your tracks have been backed by huge names such as David Guetta, Steve Aoki & Timmy Trumpet – how does it feel to get support from artists like that?

We achieved a big goal, considering that until last year all this looked so far. They are DJs that we listen and follow since long and it is really rewarding to see them playing our tracks. Now we see it like a starting point in our long journey. We know that the way to our dream is difficult and there are so many things to achieve before we will be where we would like to be and we are working hard for this. Our next goal is to get some releases on industry-leading labels and some good collaboration.

How do you see the future of dance music? What direction do you think the sound is heading in?

This is a cycle. What already happened will return in different forms. One year is more tech-oriented, the other year more bass-oriented, and so on. The most important thing is to create something unique that can represent you. Taking inspiration from the mainstream music can be good but it won’t work if you don’t have anything to say with your music. From our point of view having some real instruments playing in tracks and in live sets will be a big added value to the electronic music in the future.

Your latest release “Mami” is a collision of different worlds and genres – how did this track come about? What were the inspirations behind this track?

At first everything was born like a joke about all these summer/Latin hits, then we liked the idea and we decided to finish and publish it. We love the idea to produce electronic music not only with electronic instruments like synthesizers and so on but adding some real instruments like Piano or Guitars. Also the video clip is a kind of parody, it all seems a bit like a provocation to the phenomenon, growing in Switzerland (from where we come), where young people and their desire to have fun are always more oppressed and obstructed by old people.

Speaking of your recent track, it certainly differs from your previous tracks ‘Roll’n’Rock’, your remix for ‘OK’ and ‘Indiass’ which have more psy-trance influence in them. Are you heading for a change in direction or are we hearing you try out different styles in every production?

Coming from a band brings to us a big passion for every kind of music. We really love to always create something new and different. We are for sure bass-oriented, we love off-beat basses and we will always keep this particularity. Actually we are big psy-trance fans too, so we really had fun trying to mix it with our genre but we don’t want to limit our music to it.

Every country has its own distinguishing features and you hail from Switzerland. What’s the difference between Switzerland and the rest of the world?

Unluckily Switzerland is not famous for its musicians, especially in the EDM scene. This leads to an underestimation of the genre in all its aspects, such as festivals, record labels, fans and so on. There are, of course, some talented artists too and we hope that step by step we can all together transmit this passion to the people here and bring the name of Switzerland higher in the global scene.

What does the rest of 2017 and 2018 hold in store? Any hints or clues that we could get about future productions and collaborations?

We had the chance to officially remix a track with one of the biggest name in the music scene: Flo Rida. It is a track by Jean Marie, an Italian guy who asked us to put our hands on his track Basketball, featuring Flo Rida and Marta Sanchez. We are also working on other remixes while some cool names are working on our tracks. We are very happy about how the things are evolving and we are working harder and harder to reach our dream and transform our passion into an everyday-job. Let’s keep the fingers crossed!

Their latest release ‘Mami’ is available for a quick purchase here.