One EDM had the chance to sit down with Bruce and Kevin, one-half of Bad Royale before their debut in Clearwater Florida hottest venue; Shephard’s Beach. They discussed their first time performing at Tomorrowland, Steve Aoki’s caking throwing, and their newest venture with K-Pop. We stuck around to watch Bad Royale throw down some Caribbean Bass on the Gulf of Mexico. Check out their interview below.
One EDM -Now, How do you guys prep yourselves for before your shows? Like today, what do you do?
Bruce– He does push ups!
One EDM– That’s a good way to prep.
Kevin– Bruce took a shower and did his hair.
One EDM– Do you guys pair off in specific pairs or do you mix it up every time?
Kevin– It’s kinda whoever gets the shorter straw.
Bruce– Eventually we are trying to migrate over and bring more like three people, sometimes four depending on the show. We want of get into that whole like Major Lazer kinda live show aspect. We’ll do it our way obviously. Right now it’s just two while we are building the entire live show. Eventually, it’s getting to that point. We’re just trying to get a little more popular, I guess.
Kevin– There is no method to the madness.
One EDM– Now I heard you guys played Tomorrowland. You mentioned it before. How was that? Your first time?
Kevin– It was nuts.
Bruce– It was actually my second time. A long time ago I played but this year was absolutely out of control seeing that many people. Steve brought us on.
Adam– I know you guys have a lot of collabs with him.
Kevin– We debuted his album there. Our track was one of the lead tracks on the album so it was played there. Not for the first time, but that was the day the album dropped so it was really big to be there. Man, the amount of people.
One EDM What was it like 180,000?
Kevin– I didn’t get the time to count.
One EDM– That’s what I read. Is that like your biggest gig thus far?
Kevin– That and right after was Parookaville. I know festival size wise, Tomorrowland is bigger but I think the mainstage ws held similar.
Bruce– It was really crazy, it was cool for TL you could only see just in the front of the crowd but if you look real carefully they weren’t shining the lights on the back fields. Then you really pay attention and its just triple that.
Kevin-So its just this wall that climbs up with people. Once you get over it, you definitely have to think, like when we were waiting backstage, it was like no one fall. That was the thing, having five people on stage was hard to coordinate . So we had to talk about it beforehand and figure out. Cause TL stage looks huge but when you get down to it, the booth is made for one person. So when we got up ther, two of us jumped on the front of the decks and two of us were standing with Steve. It worked out and then the next day at Parookaville we had a whole stage in front of us
One EDM– Now, did one of you help Steve throw one of the cakes?
BR– No actually. We were on at different times, the album thing was pretty much front heavy.
Bruce– Yeah he does like his whole entire show, so particularly, I think we would’ve came out there only if one of the songs were during one of the cake throws.
One EDM– Have you seen some of his cake projectile throws?
One EDM– Yeah, I was a victim of one of those.
BR– He talked about throwing out his shoulder.
Kevin– When you think about how heavy a sheet cake is, you don’t realize it until. Its like 15 pounds. Yeah and he does like ten a show and he’s doing seven shows this weekend, so 70 cakes.
One EDM– So I guess my next question, what’s the most craziest thing you’ve seen at one of your sets?
Kevin-So this might be like a repeat answer but the craziest thing I’ve seen was actually Steve Aoki’s aim. The ability to hit people in those distances is pretty insane. That’s just a talent. You see the general people jumping fences, getting arrested but that’s a talent. Its almost every cake is a direct hit. We did NY with him right before, he had a runway for his clothing line and there he threw a bunch of cakes. That we got to see because we were on the runway with him . He just points at people and boom.
One EDM– Is there any place in specific you like playing?
Kevin– I like the Caribbean.
Bruce– Actually, Electric Zoo. I played only one year , but that was actually one of the more fun gigs that I’ve experienced. Something about New York.
One EDM– Where you both from originally?
Bruce– Me, California.
Kevin– I live in California now but originally Norway.
One EDM– So you went from metal music to EDM.
Bruce– No, metal, it went from straight trance to this. I mean that’s pretty metal in itself.
Kevin– The transition was metal.
One EDM– Now that was my next question, I know you both and Mr. Levi started off with trance, how the heck did you land here?
Kevin– We had a drunken night. It was one of those things. The trance community are kind of elitists. At the time, our understanding of other music genres outside of trance like why is this stuff making it?
Bruce– But also, at the same time the music… Like I respect the dubstep movement, complexity and all that. It’s actually amazing. But when it came down to musicality, I didn’t get it yet. Granted, I came from hardcore music so why didn’t I get that. I got introduced to Above and Beyond and Pendulum at the same time. Now when I look back at my past I think, why didn’t I actually get it. I guess because I was diving into melodic stuff so I understood that more. When Major Lazer came out, Jack U, I said this is actually sick. I get it, its party music.
Kevin– So it started with a drunken night and we were like screw it lets just make trap. Let’s see what happens. Turned into us making a couple of demos and long story short, running Diplo down and giving him the demos.
One EDM– I read that somewhere, stalking.
Kevin– EDC that year for us was 2015, Electro Diplo Carnival.
One EDM– What goes into the making of a track?
Kevin– Definitely music. It started out with an Iphone. We were making noises with our mouths and different parts of our body, to figure out how to do this. Now that we are at a higher level, there’s studio writing sessions with singers and songwriters. Production sessions are mostly in our house. Some songs can take days, some can take a couple of months.
Bruce– When it comes to instrumentals and stuff we can usually pop out one every two days. Usually it’s not a fully finished track, just a broad idea. Then we send it off to a singer.
Kevin– Some are made to help further your career, gearing towards radio or club hits; those you don’t pop out in a day.
One EDM– If you can go B2B with any DJ dead or alive who would it be?
Bruce– Rob Swire would actually be pretty cool, he’d probably criticize me.
One EDM– Now I know you both live in Cali so; Biggie or Tupac?
Kevin– I’m afraid to answer.
Bruce– That’s a politically loaded question.
BR-Tupac.
Bruce– Legit, Biggie is absolutely amazing.
One EDM– What is each person’s strength, do you focus on producing, some of you tour more, or run the business side of it.
Bruce– Manly me Maor and Kevin do a lot of the production. Elias is still kind of catching up with production right now because he didn’t start off in music. He came from the social media side. He does have a really good ear for music.
**phone rings**
Bruce to Kevin– Oh it’s protein time.
**All laugh**
One EDM– How do you decide on how to pick music for a set; your own versus other people, BR remixes.
Kevin– It depends on the shows.
Bruce– If it’s a festival we want to play a majority of our stuff, that’s the type of music we make; festival music. When it comes to clubs; they’re a great place to test out new music.
Kevin– We like to keep a lot of the music our own, so a lot of the times you’ll hear a hip hop vocal on top of one of our instrumentals.
One EDM– It’s most of the genre now; EDM as a whole, then you have the sub genres but a lot of people do that now. A lot of people don’t play their own stuff.
Kevin– We try to keep it the opposite. When people come to see us, we want it that they are coming because it’s our music.
Bruce– When we first started, we only played our own music.
Kevin– Our first gig we played as Bad Royale it was 100% our own music and we somehow played for an hour and a half.
One EDM– Who would be your favorite person to tour with?
Kevin– We’d love to play with Valentino.
Bruce– You know who would be fun; Must Die and Zomboy.
One EDM– Where are you trying to focus your musical direction? More radio, festival, friendly?
Kevin– Well because there’s four of us, it allows us to be super diverse. We are starting on a lot of radio stuff now because we are on Polydor but we know our fans come from the bass background so we’re doing a lot of the Caribbean bass. We’ve been doing a lot of international work with Caribbean acts.We’re trying to get into the J-pop K-pop, India. Whoever we can really get to and work with. We just finished a track with a Korean rapper. We learned from going to the Caribbean there’s a lot of talent you don’t hear. It’s great to collab with those people because they’re not used to the “call my manager” It’s a lot of fun, eye opening, enlightening. They also work differently.
After the interview, One EDM got to hang out and do a round with Bad Royale. Before they went on, Bruce asked what style they should start off the set with; house and some bass was our answer. The set was exactly that and more, the crowd definitely enjoyed the tunes. After their set we were able to grab some tacos and play darts with the guys. As you might be able to tell from the interview the guys were very down to earth and cool to be around, a breath of fresh air in a genre rife with big personalities and twitter feuds. Thanks again to all possible to make this happen. Make sure to catch the other half of Bad Royale with Henry Fong August 23rd at Pizza and Champagne @ Tier Nightclub in Orlando Florida. Get your tickets here
