Audio: Amine Edge & DANCE demonstrate their hip-hop infused take on house

Amine Edge & DANCE grew up in Marseille, and this upbringing has had a surprisingly big impact on the pair’s music. The Southern French city has long been a hub for the country’s booming hip-hop scene, a sound that’s easy to trace in the pair’s bass-heavy house records. The pair started making music after discovering electronic royalty acts like Frankie Knuckles and Aphex Twin, bringing a four-four slant to the beats and basslines of a genre they already identified with. Their tracks can be found on a number of respected labels, though most often they release via their own imprint, CUFF. It’s a style of music primed for the dancefloor, and it’s taken them to great heights: their upcoming Farringdon date with us follows dates as far flung as Detroit, Dubai and Seoul, while their upcoming releases include signings with the likes of Desolat. They recorded a mix for us in anticipation for next weekend, introducing the style of Marseille house we can expect to hear during their debut. Download: Amine Edge & DANCE Forms Promo Mix Did you have a theme in mind for the mix? Not at all, we just went with the flow and starting playing some tracks we love at the moment. Where do you typically find most of the music you play? Approximately 95% of it comes from promos we receive directly to our email. People wouldn’t normally necessarily associate Marseille with electronic music. How did you first get into the scene? Amine Edge: I learned most of my music knowledge from German TV through the 90s. Between the ages 10 and 13 I would sneak into the living room when my whole family was asleep to watch electronic video clips and DJs. I was really curious and those shows were very underground and diverse, so I got into many different types of music at the same time, from Goldie to Aphex Twin, Armand Van Helden to Joey Beltram, Orbital to The Future Sound of London, and many more. DANCE: I was 100% hip-hop and R&B when I was younger, until Amine made me a house compilation. I fell in love with it. Were there any other artists you’d say you were greatly influenced by? Frankie Knuckles and Masters At Work through to The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. You recently collaborated with Billy Kenny for a release on This Ain’t Bristol – how did you first meet each other? Most of the time such meetings start by email or social media for us, then we met a few times and became friends. We decided to do a collab after spending a few days together in Fiji Island, and here we are. Do you have any big plans for the rest of the summer you can tell us about? We have a bunch of releases coming this year: 2 EPs on Sola including one with Mat.Joe, an EP on Desolat at the end of the year, a few EPs on Defected, and a few collabs with some friends and producers we love like Clyde P, Tim Baresko, Prok & Fitch. For gigs, our calendar is pretty full until February, including South America, Asia, and many places we’ve never visited before.