Brendan Mills & Joey Stux caught up with us recently during a One EDM exclusive interview. Read on for more details about these artists.
Interview: Brand Mills and Joey Stux
Welcome to One EDM, both! Having a good start to your summer season?
Thanks for having us! It’s definitely set to be my busiest season yet. I have just returned home from a sun kissed DJ Sax set out in Bordeaux and straight back out the door again taking ‘I Like it’ to fill the airways of Lake Garda, Italy. I work on a lot of events and it’s amazing the love there is for summery house vibes married up with some live Sax – especially this time of year!
‘I Like it’ definitely seems to be gaining some good traction with over 40,000 streams on Spotify in the first two weeks and support already received from the likes of Lost Frequencies, Don Diablo and Oliver Heldens.
Congratulation on your Ocean EP, is this the first time you’ve both worked together?
Thank you! Yes, it’s the first time we have worked together and hopefully not the last. Joey is such an amazingly talented producer and I just love his summery, tropical vibes. I first came across Joey’s sound when I heard his remix of Calvin’s ‘One Kiss’ (definitely worth a check out!) and I just knew straight away I wanted to do a collab on a track with him.
How long was the project in planning & production?
So earlier in the year Joey liked one of my Instagram videos performing Mr Klingande’s Legendary ‘Jubel’. I already knew of Joey’s sound because of his remixes so thought I’d reach out to see if he was interested in a collab and as you can imagine I was delighted to hear that he was game. We started to talk about the style / sound we wanted to go for and within a few days I was in the studio recording the live parts. By mid April ‘I Like It’ was born!
Did you get some physical studio time together, or did you work remotely?
So Joey is based in Sunny Sicily and I am based in not-so-sunny Maidstone 😂 so we worked remotely on this one (although we are definitely going to hook up in the studio in the future). Once we had agreed an action plan I jumped in the studio and started to record all of the live instrument parts – for this one namely vocals, acoustic guitar and sax. I sent these across to Joey along with the outline of a beat (which ended up being the second track on the single ‘Ocean’) to see what he thought.
Joey took the live parts but then completely re created the beat / piano / bass which really brought through his signature tropical sound on I Like it. Every time he sent snippets back through it was just endless ear candy because he just can’t seem to do anything wrong! I like it was sounding so fresh and different from Ocean that we decided to go with two completely different versions. I have always approached music from an instrumental perspective with my Sax background so have immense respect for Joey’s ridiculous production skills.
You’ve each established yourselves as artists in your own right, in your mind what’s your biggest achievement to date?
My Little Boy, Oscar-Forest! 😎 …But from a music perspective I think ‘I Like it’ has to be right up there. It’s gaining some really good traction on both club and radio level and it’s certainly bringing the bookings in already with a summer schedule Europe Wide.
Previous successes for me include writing / producing an upfront dance-chart breaking record with legendary Kelli-Leigh (You Make Me Feel Alive) who subsequently went on to have 2 x Number 1’s both sides of the Atlantic.
If you could describe your signature sounds in two words, what would they be?
SaxHouse (two merged into one!)
What’s your touring/live schedule like, currently both?
Nuts. This summer is insanely busy averaging 3 – 4 dates every week. Quite a few dates in Italy (so will need to hook up with Joey!). For me these are a lot of private bookings that come in on the back of my tracks but I would love to get some more festival / club slots. Any bookers out there who want some live DJ Sax hit me up!
Any plans for a further collaboration?
I’ve got some ideas I’d like to discuss with Joey but he doesn’t know about them yet! I was playing around with Drakes ‘Hotline Bling’ the other day on my Sax and thought a tropical remix on this could work really nicely.
We’ve certainly become good mates through this process and definitely planning to hook up later in the year so I’m sure this isn’t the last of the Mills-Stux duo!
And finally, what’s next for you each across the remainder of the summer?
Gigs, gigs, gigs! Sun, sun, sun! Beer, beer, beer! (Well, some ones gotta do it!)
Check out ’I Like It’ below!
