Marlon Flohr and Ralph Van Hilst of Bassjackers are known for their hard-hitting style. They speak to Shrabasti Mallik about playing alongside Teisto and doing remixes for artistes like Rihanna and Moby
Marlon Flohr and Ralph Van Hilst knew each other since they were in high school. What brought them closer was their love and passion for music. “Ralph was always producing music on computer” and Marlon started Djing in 2006. They shot to fame in 2011 with their track Mush Mush. They call themselves Bassjackers and they were in India to perform at MTV Bloc Party in Mumbai.
Talking about their hard-hitting style of music, Marlon said, “What we do is we play high energy. Not only our music is high energy but our sets too. We mix a little faster and keep the energy flowing and that’s how we produce our music. We want to have high energy, climaxes and big drops. We want people to jump and go crazy.”
India has always embraced them and their music and what they like is that “people here are warm and really crazy about music. It is really good to be back and we are really looking forward to return soon.”
While Marlon is the one always touring, Ralph is more of a producer. “So when I’m touring, Ralph works in the studio, full time. When I come back to the Netherlands, for a week or two week tops, I spend my time in the studio lending a DJ ear to what Ralph produced and perhaps give some pointers, change some stuffs or arrange. That helps us wrap up a project.
You need the producer ear and you need the DJ ear. I have the DJ ear and sometimes he’ll ask me, ‘Do you like this or thisIJ’ I’m like, ‘I don’t hear the difference.’ He listens like a producer, which is why he’s more of the producer and I’m the DJ. That’s what we are. That’s Bassjackers. And when I’m on stage, it’s still Bassjackers. We’re together because what you hear is the end result of him producing and me playing,” explained Marlon.
Bassjackers has done a lot of remixes for artistes like Rihanna, Moby and played alongside Tiesto. Marlon shared, “We’re big fans of Phoenix — we toured with them on the Future Tour and that was pretty amazing. Tiesto is the one that gave us a bit of breakthrough in 2011.
When he invited us to play at his residency in Ibiza, which is still one of our most memorable gigs, it was a big milestone for us. We also had a lot of fun working with Showtek and Dyro in the studio. There are many artistes we would like to work and collaborate with in future.”
Apart from the sounds that they produce, they listen to a lot of different music. While Marlon is a fan of hip-hop and rock, Ralph listens to a bit of rock music as well. “There’s not a direct influence of all these on our music but when you listen to a lot of music and go back into your studio it subconsciously gives you inspiration,” said Marlon.
Up next is a lot of really interesting stuff lined for Bassjackers. “We are looking forward to many collaborations. Our collaboration with Afrojack was released on April 13. We’re also working on a lot of other stuff, remixes for some talented people and a cool solo track, but as always, that is still secret. We can say that the next track will be out by the end of May, and it’s going to be something really special,” said Marlon.