PANTyRAiD Bring Back The Party On Debut Album “The Sauce”
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Electronic music has seen its fair share of genre trends over the years. There was the big-room trance boom of the late 90’s, Chillout and tribal house fads in the early part of this decade and most recently we’ve been bombarded with electro, minimal and now dubstep. It’s all added up to help make the scene more diverse than ever and artists are now embracing more “genre-less” production styles like never before. Enter PANTyRAiD, the latest signing out of Adam Freeland’s exceptional Marine Parade camp, who on their debut album, The Sauce, are breaking down boundaries all their own.
“Genres are so over and we kinda created a new thing,” said Marty Folb, who is better known as “Marty Party,” one-half of the dynamic duo alongside production partner, Josh Mayer, AKA “Ooah.” “The PANTyRAiD sound is definitely all about crossing over genres.”
Their trademark tunes fuses elements from dubstep, hip-hop, grime and glitch into a sonic stew that bubbles over and takes the listener on an aural odyssey than shakes the ass and shuffles the feet.
Much like the criss-crossing of their tracks, PANTyRAiD’s own productions must travel across the country before becoming a reality because the South African-born Marty now resides in Williamsburg, New York and John in Los Angeles. However, the two have fully embraced the digital studio movement of today and collaborate primarily through the Internet for their productions.
“We’re fortunate enough to be part of a new paradigm in music production,” Marty explained.
Everything is digital now, so we use the Internet, we have all the same tool sets, instruments, plug-ins at our respective studios anyway, so it’s still a very collaborative environment.
Through this unique form of collaboration, the two have blended their own solo production styles into the perfect blend to create The Sauce.
“I’m very much a lover of hip-hop and booty-shaking beats,” Marty told us. “When I get down with Josh, he’s very much more of a melodic guy, a glitch guy, and adding in some smoothness here. We both worked on the basslines and we love bass but we didn’t want that to be the only element in the songs.”
Each track on The Sauce seeps through the speakers with a different BPM and sound. There’s the opening number, “Crunkalicious,” which is just as its name suggests and comes compete with a cheeky sample from Jim Jones’ ubiquitous “We Fly High.”
“You’re actually the first person I’ve told this to but I wrote that song in Costa Rica when I was traveling,” Marty said. “I just started to experiment and was looking for some one-shots to use because I’m a huge hip-hop fan and that was always one of my favorites.”
When Marty combines with Josh though, it’s when PANTyRAiD really takes off, which is captured perfectly on the track “Enter The Machine,” which sees the duo keep Marty’s hip-hop love intact but also throws in Josh’s glitched-out production techniques.
“We wrote a couple of songs in Brooklyn and when I hear that track, I know we wrote it together,” Marty explained. “It’s great when we are in the studio together, so for the next album I think we’re gonna try and write together more.”
It’s hearing PANTyRAiD live that takes things to another dimension though. This is far from the manic energy or drum & bass, pulsating house and trance rhythms or booming breakbeats. This slower, more hip-hop oriented groove is certainly slower but no less aggressive.
“I have a particular kind of DJ style where I have tons of my tracks, tons of PANTyRAiD tracks but than I keep a bank of one-shots and a capellas on hand all the time,” Marty told us.
So there’s multiple one-shots, crunky things, samples and other tracks and other beats which creates an energy that just keeps it going. It’s a real mish-mash of psychedelic crunk and you never know what we’re gonna throw at you. You could be listening to the most beautiful song in the world and then out of nowhere comes Lil’ John!
As for being the latest signing on the mighty Marine Parade label, Marty is thrilled to be a part of the family.
“I’ve always been a fan of Adam’s DJ style and I would run into him socially and we slowly grew a friendship,” Marty recalled. “One year we went to Burning Man together and then I played him our music on the way up and he came to see me DJ there and by the time we got back he was like ‘You guys are the next big thing!’”
Marty paused for a moment before he broke out in laughter. “He was always like ‘There’s no way you can get a crowd of people dancing at 77 BPM’ and I was like, ‘You wanna bet?’”
There’s already been talk of a “big-deal US tour” to help spread The Sauce. Marty couldn’t be more excited about the band’s future prospects and promised, “Screw the systems, screw the genres, screw what everyone else is doing, this is what we want to hear and whatever gigs we do, they’ll be taken on as a story or an evolution and not just club tracks.”
For now, pick up a copy of The Sauce and experience an album that is not afraid to break down the walls and blur genres. Plus, it’s got one of the best album covers we’ve seen in years and truly sums up the sound of the band.
“It took awhile to get right but we finally found something sexy, yet dirty that matches our music and the album will take you somewhere else,“ Marty promised. “There’s tracks to start your night with and there’s tracks to end your nights with and that’s the beauty of the album.”
For our ears, grime has never sounded so good.
Delicious!