GoldFish Talks About Going From Hotel Lobbies To A Residency in Ibiza in iEDM Exclusive Interview

To stick around in the music world, you need something unique. South African producers GoldFish have changed the game with their unique sound that is a mix of live instrumentation jazz along with dance beats and beautiful vocals we all love.

GoldFish is a producer duo made up of Dominic Peters on the keyboard and electric upright bass with David Poole on the saxophone and flute. These guys are a must-see live act. They defy genres by mixing live instruments with elements of house music, creating a non-stop dance party. 

GoldFish tour all across the world and even have a residency with David Guetta at Pacha Ibiza. iEDM got the chance to sit down with them before a show for a quick interview:

iEDM: You guys stay busy touring worldwide, which festivals are you looking forward to this year?

Dom: We are doing Camp Bisco, that's pretty cool. We've been hearing about that for a long time. We've done some amazing festivals this year. We just announced last weekend that we will be at a festival called We Are Electric. And then we're going on holiday to Greece. I'm going surfing in the Maldes. We actually just finished the new album so we've been locked either in the studio like 24/7 or on tour. So Between that and bouncing between festivals, it's been pretty intense year. So we need a little purge.

iEDM: Awesome, so you guys have a new album coming out. Tell me about that.

Dom: It's amazing.

David: Yeah I think people are going to like it. It's called Tipping the Scales to be out sometime around September, if all goes according to plan, which it doesn't always.

Dom: It mostly doesn't. *laughs*

David: We've  been working on it for quite a while so it'll be very nice to actually get it out. It's like eventually we just want to get it out there.

Dom: It's like sitting on like a huge secret.

David: Yeah, having a secret not to tell anyone else. The songs are like the secret you know.

iEDM: Is it going to be the traditional GoldFish sound?

Dom: It's actually going to be a bit of everything and stuff that throwbacks to what people know us for like the jazzy organic instrumentation stuff with house and we've also done some stuff which is more tropical. I mean we've been doing tropical before people were doing tropical years ago.

David: It's got organic instruments, it's got dance music elements. It's some good songs, we found some cool singers so yeah I think people will like it. Hopefully the world is ready for an album because that's not really the cool thing to do these days. Everybody is putting out singles once a week. 

Dom: It does feel like a lot of dance music is really disposable. I mean people have been saying it for years, but tracks have like a six week shelf life. 

David: I think that's moved up to four weeks. Hopefully we can make one that stands the test of time. 

iEDM: I want to know, how did you guys meet?

David: We met at the University of Cape Town. We were actually studying jazz. We started playing together in a four piece jazz band playing like traditional things and then we got some gigs, playing at weddings and jazz clubs.

Dom: And hotel lobbies. Lots of hotel lobby gigs. Were like the freak show.

David: But we did pretty well.

Dom: None of our friends would come to our gigs. They'd come once like "that was interesting."

David: I always loved electronic music and more popular style music as well. We were wanting to do something cool and we heard some albums which had like mixed some stuff together. 

Dom: They sampled old school jazz stuff.

David: They almost did what the old school hip-hop guys had done many years before. They looped electronic music with slow house music and lounge music. All that came together sort of late 90s, early 2000s, and we heard that stuff and were like "Wow this is awesome." We could do this. We could play all these instruments we could loop things, start to finish. We started messing around and made a few tracks and then we got a gig.

It was a guy who was a reporter in capetown, it was his birthday. He was like you guys want to come play a gig and we were like well we've never done one before. We went and did this gig and people reacted like wow this is cool guys and it was sort of all good from there. It just rolled out. The reaction was amazing. We didn't really know we were doing. We just kind of like messing around, mixing up whatever music styles we could find and whatever instruments we could play. 

Dom: I feel like honestly that's the best way though. 

David: Music has always been like and organic thing, created organically. The best rock bands were guys who met at school when they were kids and they were garage bands. Garage bands are what created many famous rock bands.

Dom: Now it's the bedrooms DJs. Yeah, it's like Flume or any of those guys. 

David: You can really tell the guys who are innovators. We have always kind of strived to be something like that, not copying and recreating doing the same thing as everyone. 

iEDM: You guys come from South Africa and you just shot your latest music video there, "Deep of the Night," what inspired that?

David: Yes the live video.

Dom: We've been playing at Kirstenbosch for many years goose gardens for about eight or nine years. If you ever come to South Africa you have to go there, its a beautiful venue. It's a world heritage site. It's right in the mountains. It's pristine, it's untouched. They've built a massive lawn area where they can have concerts that we've been doing that concert for about eight or nine years and we'd never actually filmed it properly.

Final Kid who does all the Ultra after movies, he's basically the Francis Coppola of after-movie directors, was like I am going to be in South Africa for Ultra, I could come a week early and shoot your show and we're like yeah let's do that!

It's our hometown, we don't live there anymore, but whenever we go back it's like everyone who is there knows us and has been there as part of the journey and gone through the late commissions of GoldFish. And it's also one of the few shows we ever do where kids and the parents and the grandparents will come like rage to dance music so we filmed it. I mean there's very few places in the world that kind of feeling at a show, people pull in with the picnics and drinks, everyone self-regulates and maintains. It's a good vibe.

iEDM: What can you tell me about the South Africa music scene? 

Dom: House Music is king. The end. South Africa and Africa in general has a huge house music following and we've got tons of amazing DJs smashing it worldwide, the main one being Black Coffee.

iEDM: So you guys had a residency in Ibiza, and you guys play worldwide, when was that moment when you felt like you were making it?

Dom: Have we made it? *laughs*

David: Honestly touring and being a musician is like a Pandora's box mixed with a russian doll. Every time you peel away one layer, there's another one and you're like woah how do we get there. Then the dolls keep on getting bigger.

Dom: Yes it's like a reverse russian doll meets pandoras box.

David: There's always a bigger festival to play, there's always a better slot to get, there's always getting more people to come to gigs, there's always a better song you can write.

Dom: That's what keeps us coming back.

David: And hopefully what keeps the fans coming back.

iEDM: So I have to ask, why do you call yourselves GoldFish?

David: It's 90 percent Dom's 3 second memory. I used to make fun of him when we're in the jazz band.

Dom: What do you mean used to? You still do. 

David: He's a bit better now, he's got like a 10 second memory, it's good. If it wasn't 140 characters it was gone. So that's where GoldFish came from. 

Dom: Actually one of the first gigs we ever did, some famous TV personality introduced us is Blowfish. "Ladies and gentlemen, Blowfish." We're like how did you mess that up?

iEDM: Last thing, I have a friend who calls herself your biggest fan.

David: Yes, Dom is single. *laughs*

iEDM: So I asked her if she could ask you guys one thing what would it be, and she said she wanted to know what is the craziest thing you've ever had thrown on stage?

Dom: We had a huge huge bra once.

David: Like you could probably paraglide with it. 

Dom: When we were packing up after we were like wow that's anatomically amazing.

iEDM: Perfect, she's said she has thrown goldfish crackers before. 

Dom: That has happened, she like fed us on stage.

David: Yeah, in fact we were on tour and had not had supper and I was horrendously hungry and I ate them while playing. I was smiling. Not baked though. 

Thank you David and Dom for your time and we look forward to your album this Fall! Check out GoldFish tour dates HERE and follow them on SoundCloud HERE. 

We look forward to seeing GoldFish at Moonrise Festival this August!