The Mix 017: SoFTT

Did you ever expect your songs would find such a global audience?

Trevor: It amazes me how many people like it. People either get it or they don’t. Some people are like ‘woah, it’s so fast?’

Have you found that audiences in certain parts of the world react differently to your music?

Trevor: Yes. In the States, we have play a lot of vocals. They don’t really know what to do when you’re playing a 155 BPM instrumental track.

Karen: They need Britney Spears or other pop hits!

Trevor: In the UK we played at Ministry of Sound in London for an NTS Radio party. It was great but a bit of a mixed bag. It’s a legendary club that I always wanted to play at… but it was also a Saturday so we had NTS ravers and then some Russian tourists asking us to play David Guetta. We had to be like ‘she’s singing live’!

Karen: Our first show ever was in Mexico, with MCR-T and Miss Bashful, and every kid that showed up knew the lyrics. I was like ‘wow, I guess the song really hits people’.

Trevor: It’s interesting because the lyrics really resonate with our Spanish-speaking fanbase. But then when we’re playing in non-Spanish-speaking places, it’s way more just the palette. Because it’s fun, fast and loud.

How were your US shows with horsegiirL?

Karen: They were fantastic. So many kids turned out and I feel like there’s a really passionate group of people that feel maybe underrepresented by current club life. They were very, very excited. And she’s super sweet. We play with her probably more than anyone else. We’ve played with her four or five times and we’ve only been playing for a year, so we see her every few months.

Have you had any surreal moments so far?

Karen: It’s all been pretty surreal because it’s happened really fast, especially having been in the music industry for so long.

Trevor: I’m always blown away when kids get tattoos and lyrics and stuff, and we’ve already had that. I’m still in disbelief that a year after we started this people would want to do that. We have one guy on Instagram who constantly asks us to put out a song that we’ve played three times in live sets. The fact that there are some people paying attention to everything is really flattering too.

What is inspiring you at the moment?

Trevor: Some of the new stuff we’re making, it’s very guitar-driven. Our newest song ‘Ja Ja Ja’ was inspired by living in Mexico, listening to corridos (stories told in song) and wanting to programme guitars.

Karen: It’s inspired by that, but it sounds nothing like a corrido. It ended up being just one element of something we like that we then took to a completely different place.

Trevor: We’re also listening to a lot of Tegan and Sara… song-songs.

Read this next: The Mix 011: DJ Anderson do Paraíso

Which other artists do you rate at the moment?

Trevor: The label Muakk in Bogotá. What CRRDR, 2AT and Aleroj are doing is some of the most interesting music in the world to me. Brenda is really special, too, and Nick León and Danny Daze in Miami. We’re also playing a lot of Jõao Lágrima de Ouro who remixed ‘Ja Ja Ja’; Brazil lives in the future, they’re already there. zpectrum, from Peru, is really good too.

What’s your ambition with the project? How big do you want SoFTT to be?

Karen: I see it as a ‘fuck around and find out’ type of thing.

Trevor: The more I think about it, I was listening to Everything But The Girl and we both have creative practices. Karen has a bikini brand and designs fashion, and I’m still building software projects. The idea of that group having a family and all this creative output for 30 years is super cool. I don’t know that we want to headline Coachella next year, I’d much rather be able to play Primavera in 20 years and have people show up.

What message do you want to get across through your music?

Trevor: At least in the States, I’ve seen dance music really explode with EDM in my lifetime. But the beating heart of it, to me, was always Latin kids. Whether in Los Angeles or Miami, or even at EDC, Mexican kids put tickets on a credit card, show up and properly rave. But then you look at the party footage and it’s blonde girls with champagne, so to have Latin kids be like ‘it’s so fun to go to a club and hear Spanish’ and sing along is great.

What have you got coming up this year?

Trevor: An EP, but we’re thinking about what we want to say because, originally, there wasn’t much thought. We like songs, melodies and emotional lyrics, but otherwise the palate changes. The idea of hard music for soft people has always stayed consistent though.

Karen: We’ve got a song with Babymorocco coming called ‘Portarnos Mal’ – he’s so fun. And our one called ‘Asserin’, which samples a nursery rhyme, that we’re going to try and get out.

Trevor: We’re in this moment where we’re trying to figure out how to push our sound further, so a lot of guitars. I don’t know if they’ll make it, but we’re figuring it out. For six months we knew what we were doing and now we’re going in wondering ‘what if’ and seeing what comes.

Can you tell us about your mix?

SoFTT: This mix is somewhat of a reflection of the absolutely insane year we’ve had. It’s a collection of music we’ve made, edits we’ve thrown together before shows, and finishes with a nod to the highest praise we’ve ever received when, after our Primavera set, an older man came up to us and compared our show to “Everything But The Girl on speed.” Strap in!

Ben Jolley is a freelance writer, follow him on Twitter