‘I Like When You’ is the first single taken from the new EP from Swedish producers and long-time friends, Tobtok and farfetch’d. What started out as a drum and bass record and ended up packing in disco, stutter and piano-rave house, ‘I Like When You’ is a journey of a track to say the least. Removeall preconceptions of what these artists have done prior, forget platinum records, streaming counts and radio plays, ‘I Like When You’ is refreshingly experimental and the result of simply producing for the bloody fun of it. It’s arguably their most accomplished work to date.
Over six tracks, the forthcoming ‘My Friends’ EP – due for release on London-based indie Perfect Havoc in September – is a diverse and exciting body of work that spans drum and bass, filter house, stutter house, disco and French house. Heavily inspired by the new era of glitch house, Tobtok and farfetch’d go all out with technique, playing around with sampling, micro sampling live sounds, and manipulating and pitching vocals.
“The concept of the whole EP was to do something really playful and have fun”, Tobtok aka Tobias Karlsson explains, “We experimented with new ways of thinking. We tried not to think about what’s going to stream or what’s gonna go viral on TikTok, we just wanted to make music that we like.”
Tobtok has always worked in his own lane, from his early nu disco signings to highly respected French label Kitsuné – who released his only EP to date, ‘Savanna’ – to his more dancefloor-geared signings to Selected as heard on ‘My Carousel’. There have been plenty of nods to the Swede’s talents over the years, from specialist spins from Pete Tong and Zane Lowe, to being asked to curate Toolroom’s Miami Poolside compilation.
Much like their fellow countryman Tobtok, farfetch’d aka Jerry Sjödin and Johnny Bergström take influences from old-time childhood heroes and fuse the feelings of the past with today in their music, regardless of the genre or moment. Although still early on in their career, they’ve been making waves of their own with releases on Spinnin’, Axtone and Soave with feelings of happiness and love in all that they do.
Tobtok and farfetch’d, go way back to when they first bonded over their love of nu disco and French house after meeting at a student club night and have since produced together on singles for Selected and Perfect Havoc. As for this current single, Tobtok said,
“We started out with these whacky drum and bass beats on ‘I Like When You’ as we wanted to try it out and see if we could do something in this field. We failed at doing a drum and bass record, but it ended up being something unique. We experimented a lot and had a lot of fun with it.”
FOLLOW TOBTOK:
FOLLOW FARFETCH’D:
FOLLOW PERFECT HAVOC:
