Vicetone Share Insight On 'Elements EP' & Avicii Tribute Track in iEDM Interview

Vicetone is an electronic Dutch duo who have been sharing their love for dance music since age 15. Reuben and Victor would spend hours making mixes of mutually beloved producers like Armin van Buuren, Paul van Dyk, and Eric Prydz.

The two found their high-energy progressive, big room sound and since have had over 42 millions Spotify streams and played stages at festivals like EDC and Ultra. They just released their latest EP, Elements and break genres featuring live instruments and showing their sonic depth.

In this exclusive interview, they share their creative process, talk about the story behind Elements and insight on their Avicii tribute track, "South Beach." 

iEDM: You guys have your new EP coming out next Friday. What are you most excited about on this four track release?

Victor: The thing I'm most excited about is we finally have an EP that has so many different types of different styles of our style. That's why we called it the Elements EP. I think there's something for everyone there. Everyone who loves our sound, we have a pretty wide variety of songs the last two or three years, and the reason we call it Elements was to sort of show case the type of music that we love. Some songs are a little slower, like "Fences". Some have a lot of organic instruments like "Something Strange", which is mostly based on guitars, pianos, and orchestration. Then, we have a beachy song like "Home" where it's very relaxed. Finally, we have "Feels Like" which is sort of the style of music we started with and still very much love. The high energy house music that has worked so well in the clubs.

Victor: It's just fun to have, every song is different, and that's what makes Elements an exciting project for us.

iEDM: That's awesome. Yeah, I love that name.

iEDM: So you guys are working on an iEDM Radio Mix. Tell me your process about selecting tracks for mix?

Victor: What we want to put in a mix, especially for a radio show like you have, it needs to be a mixture between what we play live in the clubs. We still are very melodic, and it's still a style you can listen to when you're chilling or working out or studying. It's king of a mixture between every reason why you would listen to music. It's either raving in the club, or just chilling, or working out, we want to put everything in there. It's only music that we made or that we really like to play ourselves. That's kind of the selection.

It's like a representation of our sound mixed with other songs as well.

iEDM: So I love your guys track "South Beach" that you guys released in honor of Avicii, and now has over 2,000,000 plays on Spotify. And I read somewhere that that was one of the first tracks that you guys ever produced together. Is that true?

Reuben: Yes, that's true. When we started out, we started out with a lot of remixes. That's how we started producing and learning everything. After that we started to make first couple of instrumental songs that were originals. I think "South Beach" was the fifth track we've ever made.

iEDM: Wow. Inspiring. 

Reuben: Yeah, it's definitely one of the first few tracks that we've ever made. When Avicii passed, we had to search for it because it's a project we had shelved for years and honestly forgot about.

Which happens a lot. Most of the time we have a ton of ideas lying around, a ton of track ideas, and you can only get to so much. When we heard the news a couple weeks later, we were searching for it, found it, and just decided to keep as much as the original song, and mix it properly. Our mixing has increased dramatically over the course of six years, of course.

We made the mix more modern, we made it sound good. But the core sound is still in tact. The core sound that you hear is still very much the same as it used to be back when we started it. That was our goal, it had to sound relevant to that time.

Otherwise it wouldn't be authentic. And we really feel that this was an authentic tribute because the reason we shelved it in the first place was because we didn't want to sound too much like Avicii.

iEDM: Yeah it's a great tribute. I love that.

Reuben: Yeah. That's why it sounds very similar, and I'm really glad that people can appreciate the style that he mastered and it's a style that we still love so much.

iEDM: You guys did your 2019 countdown in Montreal. What club was that at?

Reuben: That was at New City Gas.

Victor: New City Gas in Montreal. Yeah, that was incredible. Incredible shows. We always have the best shows there. Montreal's a really special crowd.

iEDM: You guys have played a lot of other major clubs across North America like Echo Stage and Stereo Live. What have been some of your favorite places to play?

Reuben: Oh, I mean, so many. Exchange LA is always really fun, so is Academy there. We played a really cool show in San Francisco, too at Ruby Skye. Audio. Temple in San Francisco recently has been incredible.

We played a few clubs during Miami music week. Too list them all is gonna take long time, but America is the home of some of the best night clubs that we've ever played, so it's always a great time for us to be here.

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What an EPIC way to start 2019!!! #Montreal

A post shared by Vicetone (@vicetone) on Jan 1, 2019 at 8:42am PST

iEDM: How did you two first meet? 

Victor: Yeah, so we met when we were in high school. I think we were both 15, and the start of a new year. The class system works a little bit different in Holland compared to I know you guys have Juniors and Seniors and Sophomores and whatever. I don't know really how that all works, but we just have class one to six, and you start class on when you're 13, 12 and then you end class six when you're 18, 17, and then you're done. So we met in class four which is when we were 15. We immediately became friends and bonded over music and video games and sports. It was really effortless, but the biggest factor is we had the same music taste. After a couple years, we started making music together, and here we are now.

iEDM: You guys have had some very big moments in your career like releases on Monstercat and placing on the DJ Top 100. What have been some of the standout moments that you felt like your hard work as producers were finally paying off?

Reuben: When you stand in front of a crowd of thousands of people, or in a festival a lot of thousands, and people are singing along with your music or just going absolutely mental to your own music. That's just the best feeling in the world. It gives you the idea of all those hours and days and weeks and months that we spend in the studio actually has an effect on the real world. Because it's easy to just get lost inside our own studio rooms and your release it on the internet but once you're playing it out you get that visual, that real reaction like hey people actually listen to this, they know this, they know the words to the lyrics, they know the songs. That's always a really special feeling.

Stand out moments: when we played main stage at multiple festivals, like Asia for example. A lot of stuff. When we sell out shows, it's just an amazing feeling. New City Gas has a lot of highlights for us, that's definitely our favorite club in the world. Some of the most memorable moments were in New City Gas but also a lot of big festivals. It's hard to pick, we're just very grateful that we get reactions from the crowd when we play our music. It's the best feeling.

iEDM: Yeah, you guys have played Ultra Miami and also Ultra Croatia and some other festivals. What's on your festival bucket list that you really want to play?

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Going on tour soon, where do you want to see us?!

A post shared by Vicetone (@vicetone) on Mar 7, 2019 at 9:00am PST

Victor: We'd like to go back to Ultra, Tomorrowland. We'd love to do EDC. Coachella would be nice. We'd love to play all the festivals basically.

Everyone is different, the feeling, and set up, and the crowd, too. Electric Love was a really good one. There's tons of festivals that we still would really love to come back to.

iEDM: Is there anything else that you would like to tell your fans?

Reuben: Thank you guys for all your support and we really hope you like the Elements EP. We want to thank you for doing the interview and supporting our music as well. We're really excited to see the reactions to the Elements EP, and we hope that we will hear from everyone what their favorite song is, their favorite Element if you will. Thank you! 

Thank you Vicetone for taking the time to chat with us! We love the Elements EP and new iEDM Radio Mix! Stay up to date with new releases from Vicetone on their Soundcloud HERE.

Every Sunday, we premier a brand new mix from your favorite artists! Check out more iEDM Radio Mixes HERE.

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