Interview: D’Angello & Francis and HIDDN discuss future collaborations & more

One of the fastest rising duos in the electronic music industry, D’Angello & Francis continue to prove their worth through stellar productions released through one of the industry’s most prominent labels, Smash The House. The pair were recently mentioned by Bassjackers in the DJ Mag top 100 feature as breakthrough artists, yet another testament to their talent. Belgian producer/DJ HIDDN has also been making waves in the scene, having also been named as a breakthrough artist in the DJ Mag Top 100 feature, but this time by MATTN. With a release via Spinnin’ Records set to drop within the next few weeks, he too has a promising future ahead. We caught up with D’Angello & Francis and HIDDN to talk about their plans for the future and working with leading artists.

D’ANGELLO & FRANCIS

How do you feel about being mentioned as breakthrough artists in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs feature?

We didn’t expect Bassjackers to shout out to us. They’ve worked with so many artists in their career, so it’s a great honor they mentioned us. We did do a massive collab with them on Smash The House, called ‘All Aboard’ and we just finished a new one, so in that way it make sense. We are very happy with these tracks and it’s nice to have their ongoing support.

Having worked so closely with Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike throughout your careers, are you planning to continue working with them in the future?

Sure, we have a lot of new tracks lined up for their label. And we always send our finished tracks to them to get their feedback first. They really like the style we produce and most of the time you will find a track of ours in their set. That’s why we also decided to work on a track together. We are very excited about that one!

Your latest track ‘Victorum’ received a great deal of support, what was your inspiration behind the track?

Yeah we did get good support on that track! The break melody is actually based on an old trance record from the late 90s. We just worked from there on. Made the melody much more powerful, put our own vocals on it and worked out a massive drop. Fire!

Your past releases are incredibly diverse, do you enjoy experimenting with new styles?

We did a lot of side-projects and some ghost-producing before this, so we have very diverse producing skills. We always experiment with new styles or do things that haven’t been done before.

What’s next for you, what’s coming up?

Music-wise we have our collab ‘The Flight’ with Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike & Bassjackers that’s coming up. We are finishing a lot of new tracks in the studio these days. We kind of took a step back from touring during the last months, to get all our music finished. So we can release a lot more new stuff in 2019! Besides that we are kicking off 2019 with a Billboard China tour in the first weeks of January.

Check out the moment D’Angello & Francis joined Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike on stage below.

HIDDN

How do you feel about being mentioned as a breakthrough artist in DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs feature?

I feel very happy for that. It’s always a pleasure to get recognition from big names like MATTN. This inspires me to work hard and go further.

In all of your releases this year you’ve shown a signature style, are you planning to continue with the same style or diversify more into 2019?

The first year was more doing collabs for me with such artists like Dimitri Vegas, MATTN, Yves V, Juicy M but in 2019 I would like to start releasing more my own sound and have my musical identity.

Do you have any new releases in the pipeline that you can tell us about?

I have another release coming the 25th January again on Spinnin’ Records.

What was the inspiration behind ‘My Way’?

For ‘My Way’, the lyrics inspired me a lot and we wanted to bring a fresh club drop sound to the beautiful breaks.

Check out the official music video for ‘My Way’ below.