LAMP Weekly Mix #264 feat. Love & Logic

MusicWeekly Mix

Jan 24

This week we welcome Love & Logic, the co-owners for SOUP NYC. We are big fans of what the label has been up to lately and after having premiered a few of their releases last year it is great to have them put together a mix for us. Chris Love and AB Logic regulars as DJ's in their respective communities for over two decades, came together several years back to form Love & Logic. If you live in New York and listen to house music then you are surely familiar with this duo and their ability to get a dance floor into a frenzy. They are also know for throwing some of the best parties that NYC has to offer under the SOUP brand. We have some more from them for you to dive into down below and will hopefully have a tracklist to update soon. Enjoy.PZB: Hi Love & Logic! Thank you for contributing to our weekly mix series. Our regular readers and listeners will have noticed this past year on LAMP a couple of premiers we shared from the label you run called SOUP NYC. We have really been enjoying the music coming from the label. The two of you along with the rest of the Soup family have really been on a roll as of late. We are really excited to have you with us this week. Can you give our listeners an idea of what they can expect from your mix? Love & Logic: Yes yes! We are happy to be a part of your mix series. For this one we decided to approach it just like we would a club set. It features some of our favorite cuts from the last 6 months mixed in the aggressive way that we are known for in the club. There’s some unreleased SOUP stuff on there in addition to some of our favorite cuts our label releases recently. We had a lot of fun mixing this and think we definitely captured the energy of our SOUP club nights.PZB: The two of you have been at it now for about a decade but individually have been contributing to the NYC house scene for much longer than that. I would love to hear more about your individual careers and how your paths crossed leading to the creation of Love & Logic. L&L: Chris Love’s been a major player in the US House Music scene since the beginning. In addition to founding the SOUP parties, Chris also founded Stuck On Earth; the company behind many of NYC’s largest and most successful events over the last two decades. As a DJ, Chris has been active since the early rave days and held residencies at the legendary Limelight and Roxy nightclubs early in his career. I (AB Logic) have been a regular face on east coast DJ lineups since the late 90’s. I was previously known for being ½ of the Hoodfellas production duo. We released music on Derrick Carter's Classic Music Company, Hudd Traxx, Guesthouse, Greenskeepers, Sampled, and Smoke City Music, just to name a few. I was also co-owner and A&R of the Smoke City Music vinyl record label before its closing in 2013. Chris & I met when I was hanging at one of his parties in NYC. He brought me in to play a few of his club nights and we quickly realized we had a similar approach to DJ’ing and to the music business. Our partnership with SOUP formed shortly after.PZB: How would you describe SOUP as a label to someone you just met on the street?L&L: As a label we strive to release music that captures the vibe of NYC underground club nights. SOUP is an acronym for Supporting Our Underground Properly. We strive to capture the gritty, underground vibes that existed in NYC clubs since the early days and is still happening today. We search for creative, forward thinking music that is dance floor driven and sounds new and fresh will still drawing from the influence of early dance music.PZB: I think it would be fair to say you both have been fairly instrumental over the years in the NYC house music scene. Your group has been putting together some great events over the years and is continuing on very strong. Please tell us more about how the SOUP’s growth over the years. L&L: SOUP was originally one of Stuck On Earth’s offshoot brands in the 90’s. Chris restarted it in the mid 2000’s as a small party in Manhattans Lower East side. I (AB logic) joined Chris shortly after and we quickly grew the event brand by booking international talent we loved. We built a strong brand following from the ground up. We went from the small Lower East side venue Stay Lounge, to NYC’s Sullivan Room, to Cielo, to Output/Panther Room. A few years back we decided the musical label was a big part of the next step for us. Chris “Zenbi” Porter is a longtime friend of mine and became a partner with us on the label. He brought years of record label and A&R experience with him. Chris Love & I, Chris Porter, head A&R Chris Patrick, and art director Lady Cherelle have all been instrumental in the labels growth. PZB: If your out in NYC here is the next SOUP night click the flyer for more infoPZB: Love & Logic have made quick headway through the seemingly endless sea of producers and DJ’s out there. What would be a piece of advice you would give someone just starting out that is trying to make a career in music production/ DJing? L&L: Be original and stick to who you are as an artist instead of letting current trends dictate your direction. This music originally came from artists pushing creative boundaries and not just mimicking what is currently popular. House and Techno is meant to be forward thinking music. We notice that the artists who stand out the most are the ones that have created their own lanes musically and created their own style trends instead of following them.PZB: For our producer nerds out there (I’m one of them haha) tell us a little about your studio set up please. What is your DAW of choice, are there any plug-ins or hardware you have that you can’t live with out?L&L: Our recent studio focus has been on our our new Mob Gnarley Hip House project that we’ve formed with Chris Love, myself, Chris Patrick, and rapper Born I music. We rock with Ableton and use Novation Bass Station II and Diva by u-he pretty heavily. Also loads of samples!PZB: As a solo producer I am find myself interested in the aspects of making music with a partner. Obviously collaboration is an important aspect of the music making process but how do you come up with a concept and see it through to a finished track? I would imagine your thought process is a little different when you have to consider another persons opinion on the final product.L&L: It’s definitely a challenge and is one of the reasons we’ve prob not been as prolific as we’d like to be haha. The biggest hurdle, like you touched on is 100% us all agreeing that a track is DONE. We usually play our “work in progress” records out in the club several times before we call them complete. Once we’ve played the most recent “final version” enough times that we’re all used to it it becomes DONE haha. PZB: Your work spans multiple decades and you have been an integral part of the scene in NYC. What are some of the biggest changes that you’ve witnessed over that period of time that have helped the scene grow? What would you like to see continue to change or develop in the future to help it progress forward in positive way? L&L: It’s actually been a melancholy time in NYC in a way as many of our staple institutions like Output, Cielo, and more have shut their doors at the end of 2018. The past 5 years were been filled with big changes in the music scene. Super large outfits have been booking the bigger artists at inflated fees and eating all the mid-sized and smaller operations. Many of today's young club-goers want to attend massive events with festival like production in pop up locations over nightclubs. It’s kind of the same as how Amazon has eaten all the small business and even basically are even driving larger shopping malls out of business. While all of this is going on, the neighborhoods where our clubs are located are being developed at super rapid speeds basically pricing out clubs for more lucrative real estate projects. There's more money to be made by erecting high rise buildings on the lots where the clubs are. The sad part about it all is it was the same artistic types that took all the risks and basically made the neighborhoods attractive for people to start moving into to begin with that are being pushed out. With all that said underground dance music heads are a resilient bunch, and here in NYC people always seem to find a way to adapt to change. We are excited to be a part of the ride and to see what direction NYC nightlife goes next.PZB: When you sit down to make a track, what are some initial things you always do before getting started? Do you usually have something already in mind before you set out to start crafting the song?L&L: We spent the majority of the past 6 months of studio sessions on our new Mob Gnarly Hip House project. All of the new stuff began with an idea of a “theme” for the record. We usually start out with some basic beats and basslines and send them off to our vocalists Born I Music who writes some hooks, verses, etc based on the theme we set out for. He sends us all the vocal parts and we build the tracks up from there.PZB: What is your favorite thing to listen to when you want to get away from all the house and tech stuff? L&L: (AB Logic) for me its Hip Hop! I’ve always been a lifelong Hop Hop fan. (Chris Love) – For me its rock & roll. I don’t think there’s been a good concert that came to town in the past year that I wasn’t at. I’m a big Pink Floyd/Roger Waters fan.PZB: Is there anything else coming up in your world that we should know or you want to tell us about that we should be keeping an eye/ ear out for? L&L: Our Mobb Gnarley Hip House project! We have some big heat on the way! It’s a new group featuring myself, Chris Love, Born I Music, and Chris Patrick. It’s fun, original, interesting, and aimed straight at the dance floor haha! We’ve also got a new event series called ”A Rave New World” here in NYC with our good friends from the Rvdiovctive crew. We kick it off this Friday night at 101 in Brooklyn. When electronic music was first taking shape in the late 80s and early 90s, artists would play a variety of music under one roof. In today’s age, club nights have become more specific, mainly focusing on one sound or genre. “A Rave New World” pays homage to our dance music roots, bringing together diverse sounds, people, and culture for a night of unified freedom and expression of self. PZB: Thank you so much for your time and the incredible mix you put together. Please keep us posted on future releases and we would love to see you in Los Angeles soon.