Coming out of Hannover (Germany) and London (UK), Maximono is a fresh new house music duo that is making their mark with a one-of-a-kind, natural good vibes sound. With releases on Dirtybird, CUFF and their very own newly founded record label This Ain’t Bristol, Maximono is killing it at every level in the scene right now. They’ve successfully brought over their distinctive sound design that merge influences of bass, hip hop, jungle and more to generate an original, groovy blend of sounds that will have you dancing all night long.
We got a chance to sit down with This Ain’t Bristol co-founders in Miami recently to discuss their plans for the upcoming year and speak about artist influences that have helped them get to where they are today.
Check it out below, and enjoy!
How do you guys like Miami like Miami so far?
Maximono: We’re very happy to be to representing the label here in Miami. We’ve got our two parties with Perfect Driver, and we are playing alongside some of the Dirtybird crew at the Dirtybird B2B Throwdown.
You guys are really making your mark in the house music scene right now. What is the story behind the inception of the record label?
Maximono: The label was founded in Hannover, Germany about a year ago. Some people think the name is a diss against Bristol, but it isn’t at all. Bristol is actually the partner city of Hannover and it has been a massive influence for the label and our personal music careers being one of the hot spots for bassline dominated electronic club bringing up music acts like Massive Attack, Roni Size, Tricky, DJ Die & DJ Krust.
No one over here really knows this but the label actually comes from an event-type thing – it’s like a party turned record label. We haven’t been anywhere without Ardalan, to be honest, he has been a major influence for us. Billy Kenny has really been another huge influence for us as we have been playing his music at our parties every night. From the start, we had always said the first international DJ we have to book must be Billy Kenny.
So this is where Billy Kenny officially came into the mix?
Maximono: Yeah so we brought Billy Kenny over to play at one of our first nights and he fell in love with the city and people and instantly moved over. After a couple of days we said let’s just do a label. We decided we were going to put out a couple tracks for free, that was the main idea. And then we signed a couple other remixes and soon enough put out two or three compilations, so from there on it has just progressed. It’s a little funny though, because we see people wearing our t-shirts and stuff. We can’t believe it how the brand seems to be working out, so we’re gonna keep going with it.
You have described This Ain’t Bristol to be a catalyst for Good Vibes House. How do you feel this label stands apart from other current house music labels?
Maximono: I’m really happy with it because I think a big part of it is that a lot of labels come and go throughout the years, but This Ain’t Bristol has such a big influence in the sense that they release so much good music and everyone wants to play it all the time. It has gradually increased its influence in a really natural way, which is pretty cool. For me, there is a lot of bass music, there is a whole lot of UK garage, but I really support everything these guys do with the label with house music.
We just don’t take anything too seriously with the label. We kinda just put out whatever it is that we like, from the artists we like, including Ardalan and Billy Kenny. That’s what it has been all about for us with the Maximono stuff. We haven’t been in the house scene for ages or anything; before, we had been playing drum n bass for 10 or 15 years.
Which tracks under the label have been the most prominent as This Ain’t Bristol continues to expand?
Maximono: We’ve been playing “Work Me” and “Ron Dat” by Billy Kenny for the last couple months, and it doesn’t really matter where we play it – it always goes off on the dance floor. They were originally meant to be released on another label, so when we were informed that we would be able to release them on This Ain’t Bristol, we were so excited. Looking at the back catalogue we’d say Ardalan’s Remix of “I Eat Beats“ by Billy Kenny was a big game changer for us. Beatport selected us as best upcoming house label 2015 mainly because of that release.
In terms of new releases via This Ain’t Bristol, what can you tell us without giving too much away?
Maximono: We’re very very excited about the forthcoming releases. Especially the next one as it’s a 22-track Various Artists album selected by us personally. It’s the continuation of our Selections series and is called Maximono Selections, containing only exclusive and unreleased tracks like we always had in that series. It will feature many of our favorite acts like Jaded, Taiki Nulight, Marc Spence, Worthy, Clyde P, Harry Judda, Fake Blood, Bruno Furlan and many more amongst some crazy new talents. We spent around 4 months to get this album together so we’re super excited to finally unleash this monster.
After the album we won’t slow down as we have some big artist EPs coming up next by acts like Cause & Effect, Jaded, Lowsteppa & Bot, ourselves and many more, so 2016 should be a great second year for us.
And as far as 2016 is concerned, what are you guys especially looking forward to both with This Ain’t Bristol and your own project?
Maximono: We’ve got a lot of stuff happening back in Europe. Here in America, we want to try to make a bit more of a run. It looks like we’re having a tour later this year over here, with some of the Dirtybird guys. We just love being out here, such good vibes. They’re good people and they really do support us well. We’re all just listening to good music and collaborating and having fun with it!
That concludes our interview, but we’d like to thank Maximono very much for their time!