Wyllys: You guys started playing music because of your equal love for drum and bass and jungle. How did you guys wind up doing four-on-the-floor?
Clay Parnell: The impetus for us playing together came from the promoter from the Zen Festival. He knew we were both huge D+B heads and excelled at playing in that rhythm pattern. However both of us listen to and love all kinds of EDM and we both loved house. Plus as we got playing we realized the crowd was going to need a break from the jungle beats as much as we would need the rest. In recent years we’ve definitely been exploring more of the four-on-the-floor approach to things but none of our tracks are ever going to be straight house or breaks or what have you. They’ll all have a BioDiesel twist to them. :laughs:
Wyllys: Your textures and tones are very authentic to the genres of music you play. What process led you to these sounds?
Clay Parnell: In the tone aspect for me, I spent the better part of 10 years honing in on gear and technique to authenticate the genres. Johnny has gone as far as designing cymbals and drums. For playing I have refined a monophonic approach to the bass, and through rigorous trial and error and at some points invention with my pedals to get the sounds I was looking for. It’s important to have your own take on a genre of music but for the sake of purity you certainly want to have some of those classic jungle sub bass and snare sounds or it’s just not jungle at all. It’s like, what would house be without a soul clap?
Wyllys: On tour we spoke about a series of EP’s you guys were planning on releasing. Care to shed any light on those?
Clay Parnell: The idea was to do a series called “In The Box” EP’s to get our songwriting and production chops down in the digital realm. Live, those songs would get the BioDiesel touch and have more of a human feel. That’s why we wanted to do a live album as well to be a snapshot of a BioDiesel concert and a synopsis of these EPs. We thought we would group them by tempo so each one has its own vibe and feel but the songs would all be around the same speed. Carbon Confidential is a house/mashup/electro vibe EP. All the songs would have some EDM standard sounds and attributes and fall into the 124-130 BPM range. Like I said earlier, even though the songs would be four-on-the-floor, none of them would sound like straight up house.
The second EP would be a jungle/breakbeat effort that we haven’t named officially yet. The working title is Here We Go. A track or two will remind people of old school jungle as well as some intelligent drum and bass tendencies. The tempo for this one will be noticeably more swift than Carbon Confidential.
The third EP is in beta phase of testing. We’re experimenting with some downtempo and nu school breaks like Reid Speed pioneered back in the day. I used to go see her at Simon’s/The Soul House in Gainesville, FL and she was always amazing and pushing that 2 step garage/nu school breaks sound. That’s kind of the vibe we want for the 3rd EP.
Wyllys: What does your touring schedule look like coming up?
Clay Parnell: We want to hit Europe. We just got back from the West Coast so the next go round will be the Southeast and Midwest. Colorado has a great EDM scene. But yeah, Europe is something we really want to tackle. We’ve done Moscow which was a trip. Obviously places like Japan and Australia we would like to visit as well. We’re planning on taking over each country little by little. :laughs:
Wyllys: In recent years, after the initial forming of BioDiesel, the EDM Duo format blew up with Big Gigantic, Pretty Lights, MSTRKRFT, etc. Did this inspire you to really get BioDiesel going?
Clay Parnell: Well, that format certainly blew up but we never lost enthusiasm for BioDiesel. We always loved this project and wanted to do it full time so the fact that the EDM Duo format blew up had little effect on us. We knew we had something special regardless of what happened in the scene. Sure, we see those duos getting lots of attention so we feel like we need to play a little catch up since we started in ’06. It’s really our own fault we’re not right up there with them because of our other projects. Now that the dust has settled from last year our focus is all about BioDiesel.
