Mitch DodgeQ: Hey guys, thanks for speaking with us! Congrats on the new EP ‘SEEDS II’. You’ve been producing together for a while, but you only started to release music in 2023. Why was now the time? Was it just a case that the music was ready or were there other factors at play?
Scott: We wanted to take our time to write a good number of tracks first of all. When we started writing and producing together in early 2021 we must have made nearly 20 of them in that first year. And we were keen to not be too quick to just release the first five things we did as we wanted to give the music, and the way we made it, a chance to evolve a bit and find our own sound and voice before putting anything out there. We were trying lots of things out, different styles, just having fun. And while we enjoyed all of the stuff we made perhaps not all of it would’ve been able to hang together and make cohesive sounding EPs.
By giving ourselves that breathing space and no deadline we were just able to keep creating until we had a big pile of work there and we could go back and select what we felt were the strongest tracks and the ones that would work and flow next to each other as part of an EP release.
Q: Do you think Covid was part of what pushed you to work together as Protection alongside your other projects?
Scott: For sure! Iain and I have been friends for a very long time but we’d never actually made music together and that always seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity. During lockdown we’d be texting quite intensely, talking about music and sharing electronic tracks we’d been discovering and getting into.
On top of that, we’d both been working separately in our own studios during Covid, just trying to make music for ourselves, and we’d both found that we were in the same position of coming up with lots of ideas but somehow not quite knowing what to do to get them finished.
I’d suggested to Iain, well, hey, if we’re both struggling to finish things maybe we help could each other out, I’ll help you finish an idea and you can help me finish one of mine. And it sort of started after that conversation, just sharing little ideas over the internet and letting the other person have free rein to edit, add to and just dream up new versions of that idea until we had what we felt like was a finished piece. It was fun, we did one track, then another, decided we were enjoying it and before we knew it we had a whole folder full of them.
Q: What do you think is the best thing about working together, and what is a bit trickier when it comes to collaborating?
Scott: It’s been such a new process, working on the tracks on our own in our separate studios. I’ve really enjoyed the freedom to spend a day or three or four just messing about and trying things out, without the worry of the other person being in the room and getting bored watching me play with a drum machine for four hours! And it’s also such a pleasure when the other person has been away working on an idea and you get the text with the link to what they’ve just done and you get to hear a whole new evolution of the thing you’ve been working on. It’s like every pass is a little surprise and that’s been a lovely thing.
I think in our other projects when we’ve written as part of more traditional band structures we’ve both been used to writing with our collaborators together in the room. That style of writing is equally great and we enjoy it very much, it’s how we both grew up making music in bands. But this is just a different approach and it feels new and equally rewarding in its own way. It affords us both a lot of space to dream.
Q: Do you both have a favourite track each on the EP? Scott, we read that Thirst Shrine was a favourite of the moment at least for you?
Scott: I think Thirst Shrine is still perhaps my favourite at the moment, I just love how that turned out. I love the pace of it, the energy of the vocal chop and really proud of the bass we achieved on it. But I also really love Back There too. That was one of the earlier tracks Iain and I worked on. I remember him sending me a version back one Sunday afternoon and it was really close to what the finished one became, it was the first time in the collaboration that I’d got goosebumps listening to something we’d made and it felt like a special moment. So that track still has a special place in my heart too.
Iain: I think my favourite from the EP is probably On Love. In terms of the music that we have made together so far it has the most explosive energy about it, there are musical references to and samples from the 90s rave sound but also I think very current and futuristic elements woven in there too. It still sounds weird and fresh to me even after having heard it so many times.
Q: Have you got a bunch of works in progress for SEEDS III?
Iain: Well yeah we do have a bunch of stuff in various forms of completion. There’s one song that we both really want to put out on the next release which is pretty far away from the beat driven stuff that we have released so far. But we shall see – everything could change if something comes up and we end up following another rabbit-hole.
Q: How do you find electronic music compares as a form of expression to bands/live music in that form?
Iain: That’s a big question! Also it’s sort of a tough one to answer because with certain artists there are already many points of contact and overlap between the two worlds. But if we are talking about purely electronic vs traditional bands then I do think those performances can be radically different. One obvious difference is that shows by bands tend to be pretty song orientated and lyric forward which electronic music doesn’t tend to be. Also a song is sort of its own little world that you dip into, hear what it has to say and then move on after 4 minutes or so. Obviously these songs are purposefully strung together for a certain kind of flow within a setlist but with electronic music, whole hours of music can seamlessly blend together and be woven into forms that take you on a much longer trip. Also live electronic music has its roots in club culture more than band music (pop/rock or whatever) which can be more egocentric or focused on the artist in certain ways whereas in a club, the focus is more communal rather than necessarily focused on the Superstar DJ – although that is not so much the case any more I suppose!
‘SEEDS II’ is out now!