teshno

last year saw the rise of the w&l stable, a proliferation of sultry after-hours house, and a much needed injection of humour into the oh-so-serious world of underground electronica.

then, boston duo elyte and cnyce aka soul clap took things a step further: side jobs as corporate djs meant the pair had to play more accessible, well known music for the masses which, in turn, fed back into their ‘proper’ dj sets.

now, here they are, aligned with w&l and a bootleg friendly sub-label, w&l black, knocking out cheeky re-edits of everyone from r kelly to fleetwood mac to whitney houston and weaving them into sets of seductive house and techno with soul and funk. the result is a warmness in your heart, an itching in your feet, and a smile on your face. now, what can possibly be wrong with that?

(one more thing – snag yourself a free soul clap: it’s a 3 tracker of rnb remixes they have done over the past year, and it gives you an apt intro to the playful pair. find it on the (excellent) soulclap website.)

tell us about your musical ship of dopeness? where does it come from, where is it going, what fuels it?

it’s actually a musical spaceship. it was made in china and it’s going to yo mama’s house. it runs on the power of schwartz. duh!

so, finally i can ask…what is e-funk? where did it come from, what influenced it, where’s it going?

the best way to describe e-funk is to to imagine lee curtiss invited nate dogg and george clinton for a steam at the marcy hotel. it’s basically the next step in the tradition of funk, first there was p-funk, then there was g-funk, now there’s e-funk. can you dig?

is there are a special dance to accompany e-funk music? if not, would you like to set one for the record?

the most popular e-funk dance is the air-hump.

yeh. the first e-funk ep will probably be a collaboration between us and gadi mizrahi. he got the e-funk and so do lee curtiss & lee foss. dam-funk created an e-funk anthem with “searching for funk’s future”, but he don’t really know yet.

tell us about the edits and bootlegs you do, how do they come about – how do you know they won’t sound cheesy/how do you pick your subjects? from fleetwood mac to r kelly (if that r kelly edit i’ve heard is yours) that’s quite a range!

well as we’ve said before, it’s a matter of divine intervention, we don’t really pick them, they pick us. a lot of them are tracks we’ve loved for a long time and played a bunch so we know they work. about the r kelly one, it is ours and it’s forthcoming on our new w+l black ep, which continues on our current rnb theme.

you guys clearly know your apples and you’ve been schooled by various masters – maybe in monasteries high in the nepalese mountains, who knows? – how important is a sense of history for any dj/producer?

the most important!

i understand you used to do corporate gigs… that’s popular in the us isn’t it? do you still do them? what are they like?

yeh, we’ve done a bunch of corporate gigs over the years and still do quite a few. it’s fun to play in unexpected places and we get great reactions, like dancing babies and old people doing the foxtrot. i don’t know if you can say it’s popular in the us, but we’ve found it’s a great way for clients to up their cool factor and for us to expose the music to an audience that would never hear it otherwise.

your sets and productions are playful, sexy, soulful house if you ask me… was that influenced by those corporate gigs at all? i imagine early underground resistance tracks wouldn’t have gone down well…

our sets now are a culmination of every gig we’ve ever done. since 1997 we’ve been playing all styles of music, it’s the only way to survive as a professional dj in boston. for a long time we tried to keep our pop and underground sides separate, but we’ve found that just being ourselves makes us better in both worlds. the bottom line is that we probably never would have started making edits if it wasn’t for the corporate gigs. love light & conscious were staples in our macy’s repertoire, long before they were released to the world.

just like the sun rotates in orbit, do you think house music goes in circles? why is that if so?

“come on, daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles
the way that bobby brown is just ampin like michael
its all expected, things are for the lookin
if you got the money, soul clap’s for the booking”

you guys are all over the internet… what the fuck would we do if someone turned it off?

honestly even though our success has relied so much on skype and our blog, an analog vinyl utopia would probably be a better place to live. we’re tired of looking at screens.

what makes you happiest?

baileys on the rocks as well as…
cnyce: bunny rabbits.
e-heavy: a good book and a fireplace.

question from simon baker… how was leeds? i heard you didn’t want to leave…..!

people in leeds are a bunch of nutters, chris evers saved our lives and gav paul is the funniest man alive. more shout outs to the d.o.t.b. boys, foz and his bird , char and burnski, sascha, mikey and of course ste robets and vicki you poo heads.

check out some more tracks, cheeky edits and sets over on the soul clap soundcloud page.