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An Interview with Freight Train: Join the Journey, Follow the Movement
House | Wednesday 15th January 2014 | Aimée
If you were given a swimming pool and could fill it up with anything, what would it be? Chocolate? Beer? 100 dollar bills perhaps? Try A couple Bugatti's, studio equipment and enough food to feed the poor.
I caught up with DJ duo Freight Train at the Guestlist Network headquarters to get an insight into the young rising talents behind the decks and their unexpected guilty musical pleasures that's sure to rile up a good chuckle.
How are you guys?
Wes: We’re well.
Kraft: Yeah, we’re all good busy but all good.
Good, so for all those who don’t know about freight train, who are you guys?
Wes: I’m Wes Sniper.
Kraft: I’m Kraft, and we’re a house production duo, slash DJ duo.
Wes: Slash radio hosts, slash take over the world, everything. We make and play a lot of house music, and feature it in our show.
So are they nick names/stage names? Or are they your real names?
Kraft: Nahh, you gotta have the names people remember you by so its Kraft and Wes.
So where were you lot brought up, are you from London?
Kraft: Yeah I’m East London, not far from here like 20 minutes away actually.
Wes: And I’m South East London.
So how did you two as a pair come together to make music? What’s the story?
(Kraft points to Wes)
Wes: Well, I’ll tell the story this time because when we tell the story Kraft always says it and I get to feel really small so today I’m gonna say it.
It’s your chance..
Wes: Yes!
Kraft: He’s bigger than me anyway so it’s alright.
Wes: We met back in 2008 in Greenwich University and we were both studying the same course ‘entertainment and music production’. It’s quite funny, because at first we didn’t just become friends. We were getting similar marks and they were quite high so you realise ‘he’s obviously good at what he does' and at the time we were both living in student halls as well so we started seeing each other around a bit more.
Kraft: We obviously see we liked the same kind of things and started to team up doing work together. It weren’t even a serious thing. We were just messing around, it was a bit of a hobby, then we jumped onto the DJ’in thing. A lot of DJ’s start to produce, and then go on to making music but it was the reverse for us weren’t it? We were making music and then thought ‘Well we’re gonna need to play it out so we’re gonna need to learn how to DJ’ and the rest is history really.
Wes: I mean separately we’ve been musically orientated I guess for years. Obviously Kraft grew up playing the drums, his old man used to, still does, play the guitar. So he was around a lot of live music. And you was in a band as well weren’t you?
Kraft: Yeah yeah.
Wes: I used to play the clarinet. My aunt used to, still does amazingly play the piano, double bass. My parents were lovers of music as well so we’ve had that musical influence from day 1. And then through school and college we did music, music tech so we’ve always has our fingers in the learning. Then we got to university and we both had the same passion, like Kraft said we started doing it for fun then it got to, was it 2010?
Kraft: Yeah 2010 we took it quite seriously. We made a little EP, wasn’t even a serious thing.
Wes: I don’t even know why we did it, we just did it. It was like sort of around the time that funky house was slowly on its way out. I mean it’d come off the peak and it was on a decline now.
Kraft: It was when we were just getting into deep house, because funky was such a hype and obviously deep house has been around forever, but really started to become a bit more..
It kind of just exploded didn’t it?
Kraft: Yeah, obviously we were listening to Maya Jane Cole and stuff like that.
Wes: We’d been major lovers of house for time, I mean even me, one of my favourite genres of music is the sort of 90s era of dance, house, that ‘Rhythm of the night’, them sort of tunes and to be even more honest we’re huge fans of disco.
Kraft: And arguably house, you could say it derives from disco. We’ve always had that kind of passion for dance and house music.
So the name Freight Train, very innovative from you guys, how did that come about?
Wes: It’s down to this guy [points to Kraft]
And the slogan?
Wes: Well the name.. literally, I remember it. One day I had work, you had a day off [pointing to Kraft] so to be the helpful person I am I was like ‘by the time I come home, you need of have thought of a name’.
Kraft: So I was like ‘Alright cool’. So then I was racking my brains. He was at work and I was texting him like ‘Bruv what about this, what about this?’
So you’re the creative one.
Kraft: I’m the name guy.
Wes: It’s true. Every time we need a name for something, i'll be like ‘you need to think of the name’.
Kraft: And I just come up with ‘Freight Train’ and then thought ‘Ok, you got a name but what’s the meaning behind it’ and if you think about a freight train, it’s moving carrying large goods, it’s always going to a destination. And that’s kind of what we represent. We like to do a lot of things involving music, we’re not just house DJ’s. We like other genres of music, we make other genres, play various instruments and I think we’ve got a lot to bring so having that name Freight Train, it’s always gaining momentum, it’s going forward. The name I guess suits what we’re about. And then obviously the slogan. Are you talking about 'join the journey..
Wes: follow the movement?'
Yeah..
Kraft: Did I make that up? I don’t even know.
Wes: I think we both did.
It’s definitely a memorable one.
Kraft: Yeah, I guess when you make the name you associate certain words with it and what it means, so we came up with that slogan and we thought ‘Right that’s something we can use’. I think it was used to initially to promote us.
Wes: Yeah, that slogan gets used on a lot of our promotional videos. It’s like you say, it sums up what we stand for.
What’s been going on in terms of venues you’ve been playing at? You’ve got a residency at 333 Mother Bar in Shoreditch haven't you?
Kraft: Yeah, It was early 2011. We were playing there for free on a Sunday night. I think we were playing there on a late one as well weren’t it? You go there at 1am, and the club's open til 3. We could be playing at anytime but we was like ‘we need to get into the club scene’. Remember?
Wes: Yeah, Sunday night I think our set was, at like 2 til 3, and that particular promoter wasn’t really promoting that night, so it wasn’t a huge turnout. Funny enough one of my old friends held the license for the place and pulled some strings. After about 2 or 3 months of doing our Sunday night set, he got us a Tuesday night slot which was the birth of our first night Pink Tuesdays, which is still on going now. Then we did occassional Fridays and Saturday as well. We still play there now. Over the course of 2 years we have had some amazing parties down there.
Yeah I’ve been to one of your nights.
Wes: Some of the parties we’ve done, I can only describe it as something like a scene out of 8 mile. There’s some footage online of some of our nights. The normal set is we warm up with some house, go into your chart commercial, then we play hip hop, normally it’s the stuff from the 90’s 2000 era then we end the night on bashment, drum and bass, depending on what the crowd wants. And there’s times when we’ve dropped Nivarna, songs like Teen Spirit.
Kraft: It just goes off.
Wes: And they’ve just turned into animals. We like doing things like that. Part of the reason we started DJ’in was because we were going to events and thought ‘It’s not amazing, the DJ’s aren’t that great, it’s a bit predictable now.’ We want to have fun and be surprised, and be taken on a journey. You go into a club and one minute the guys playing hip hop and the next minute he’s playing a rock tune, and everyone’s going mad. That’s what it’s all about, it’s all about good music.
Kraft: And obviously Mother is very catered. So there’s a lot of times we have to play the chart and commercial stuff but when we do play out as Freight Train solely, then it would be a house night. We might throw in the odd classic to completely throw a spanner in the works, like end the night on an old school hip hop tune or drum and bass tune and people would just go crazy.
Wes: Because it’s unexpected.
Kraft: Yeah, when we go out as Freight Train we do stick to the house genre but we do like the classics as well. Check out some of the videos on our YouTube channel. We just play what we feel people like and sometimes it’s nice to have an alternative in there.
Wes: We was speaking to Nic Fanciulli the other week and I was saying to him, if you was to have your own night and everyone has gone mad to your set what curve ball would you throw in to land the set and he said Chaka Khan – Ain’t nobody. Just wow! A tech house god - you just wouldn’t imagine it.
Kraft: You know what, you got to get your influences and enjoyment from other genres.
Speaking of influences, either of you, which genres or artists have influenced you?
Wes: Too many to mention. I tell you what lets make it interesting. Lets say one from each genre.
Kraft: Okay, from an EDM point of view i'll tell you who I look up to and this is gonna be mad but I look up to someone like Calvin Harris. I’ll tell you why, because of where he started and where he’s at now. You know my man started in his bedroom making tunes and now he’s the highest paid DJ in the world. He saw a vision and he just went for it. Yeah sometimes his tunes are a bit commercial but flippin hell man you go back to his early stuff and he was ahead of his time. Someone like that I look up to, someone with a dream, with prospects and thinking of the future, and they’re doing it, they’re doing and they get to the T.O.P What a story! I look up to people like that.
Wes: To throw a couple others in there, I’d say definitely Ryan Leslie.
Kraft: Aahh yeah, major, major. How could I forget? Ryan Leslie he’s amazing.
Wes: Our favourite house DJ and producer has got to be Maceo Plex.
Kraft: Second to none. He’s got an interesting story as well, because he was making tunes that people weren’t really feeling when he first started out and then he just rebranded and suddenly blew up.
Wes: He’s taken things deeper a bit more groovier. And also I’d say, because he’s released his new album as well recently, Eminem. I think he’s an influence to me man. It’s mad because people will say to me, ‘but your like doing dance and he does rap’ but sometimes for influences if you look at the peoples work ethic, their talent, their audio talent like mixing engineering, how they’re branding, just them as an artist, you don’t always have to be like ‘Ok so if we're talking about influences I wanna talk about this person because of the way they make music'. It might just be the way they are as an artist. And personally I think with fans of hip hop, I mean I’d say at the moment I don’t really listen to a lot of hip hop – I’m not really feeling the way things have gone , but someone I like and I feel, within reason, that has remained true to himself and hasn’t taken this sort of new era is Eminem.
If you could be anyone, not just a musical artist but anyone in the world, who would you be?
Wes: Erm, ah man who has got a good life that I’d like to live. Are we talking for a day or a long period of time?
Lets say for a day.
Wes: Okay erm, hmm.
(A deep thought of silence)
Kraft: I’d like to be David Guetta.
Whys that?
Kraft: Because he’s just.. again, a master of what he does. He’s life just looks amazing. He’s played at the best places the world can offer. I would like to be him in Ibiza, one summer night playing to thousands and thousands of people. That’s who I’d like to be for a day. As well I’d like to be him in the studio and also him on stage for one night. But then I’d like to take all that and bring it back to Freight Train.
You never know, that’ll be you guys in a few years, keep at it.
Wes: 100% Erm.. I’m gonna go with 50 cent because, I’ll explain why. I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been 50 cent fans when he released get rich or try dying back in the day, the album was phenomenal. I think 50 had been out for a little while before that, but when his album came out it was like his main step to the world and that album shot him into the spotlight. Over the last 10 years you’ve seen him change, we’ve seen him grow up. When he first came out he was that young guy obviously all about his training, bit of a showman. I watch a lot of his videos and follow him on twitter and obviously he’s got money but he’s doing a lot of things. He’s got charities I think set up, he owns Street Kings, which is like a brand. He’s doing bits with that and he’s actually got his fingers in a lot of pies, not just musical pies but he’s a pretty big businessman. He’s got lots going on. He’s still obviously got money, so he’s able to do his thing, but he seems like a very interesting person and I don’t think we always see what he’s about, what he’s got to offer. I’m quite nosey so I think if I could be 50 cent for the day to see how he’s day is to the minute he wakes up, what business calls he has to take, what meetings he’s got to have, where he’s going for lunch and dinner in the evening, who’s texting him, who’s tweeting him. I think he must lead quite an interesting life. I don’t know about the dangerous side of it, that might be another issue ,but that’s alright I mean its only a day so its cool.
So what venues you got lined up?
Wes: Lets talk the next six months. We jus done Nottingham, market bar. New years eve we’re doing a private party, I can’t remember the name of it but it’s in this big churchy looking building at the back of Great Portland Street. You’d never expect it, its quite hidden. We do a lot of corporate stuff as well. Over the past year some of the places we’ve played in like The Gherkin, the top of Tower Bridge. Last weekend we was at Cue Gardens, The Natural History Museum, we’ve played a lot of museums and public places . I know for a fact in the New Year we’re potentially gonna be in the shard, which will be quite sick.
Kraft: We played in Monaco as well.
What? You played in Monaco? How did that come about?
Wes: that was another corporate gig for a lawyer for from a law firm that was cool.
Kraft: We got another gig at Nomad in Shoreditch that’s in February, 1st or 2nd weekend in February. That’s a very nice venue, its quite hidden I think when people talk about Shoreditch they think about Old Street, Village Underground Plastic People.
Cargo..
Wes: Yeah, they think of main sort of Shoreditch. Nomad is where Old Street is as if your driving towards Farringdon, on the way out of Shoreditch
Kraft: We’re also suppose to be doing something with a new promotion called ‘House your Sundays’ based in north, so in the new year we’ll be there, that’s up in Kilburn way.
What’s the best venue the one that stands out to you the most, that makes you think’I cant believe we’re here?
Kraft: For me in terms of ‘I cant believe we’re here its got to be the gherkin, just because it’s like a sky roof, your playing and it’s just like a huge dome and you just see the whole of London and the skyline, and can just do a 360, that for me that is ‘I cant believe we’re here.’
Wes: When you get to the top you feel ever so slightly.. not like the air is thin or anything but you look around and you’re like ‘Woah we’re pretty high up man’ you can see tower bridge you can even see Olympic Park over in Stratford. Yeah I agree that for me as well that was like ‘this is heavy.’
Alright so let’s just throw one out there. If you were given a swimming pool and you could fill it up with anything..
(Wes laughs and whispers to Kraft.)
What was that?
Wes: I won’t repeat that. (laughs) Wanna go first? (to Kraft)
Wes: Anything? Can you split it half and half?
Kraft: Does it have to be of liquid form?
Nope doesn't have to be.
Kraft: Gold coins, real gold coins.
Wes: But why not cash though, why would you say gold coins?
Kraft: It looks nice don’t it. You know when you look at a treasure chest full of gold coins.
Wes: This guy thinks he’s in The Goonies.
(laughs)
Wes: Why wouldn’t you just get cash, like 50s surely you’d get more money and it would be easier to take out. I’m gonna say…
Kraft: We got to make this interesting.
Wes: We got to think as well, we got two swimming pools because there’s one each right, so we got to think strategically.
(Laughs) I see your game, smart thinking..
Wes: See, I’m not just good looks, I got the brains as well. I’m thinking fill one with studio equipment
Kraft: But you couldn’t jump in it then.
Wes: Well, who’s gonna jump in it? I want to take it out
Kraft: But it’s a swimming pool?
Wes: I don’t want to swim in it, it’s just keeping my goods.
Kraft: There needs to be.. What’s the terms and conditions of these?
There’s no terms and conditions.
Kraft: You’d use it as storage then?
Wes: Nah, I’d keep it in there and obviously Aimée would be like ‘here’s your swimming pool’ so there’s the newest plug ins, x amount of monitors, mixing desk, I’d be like ‘thank you very much Aimée’ now I’m gonna take this stuff out and go and put it in the studio.
Kraft: Alright cool.
Wes: So that is what I’d say studio equipment.
Kraft: And then the other one..
Wes: Ah that’s a bit tense, let me put a Merc in there or something.
Kraft: Couple Bugatti’s.
Wes: A couple you know, you’re gonna have one of top of the other? It’s gonna get scratched. This is the wrong question, this just brings out the materialism in us, that is just not correct. (laughs) I’d fill it with food to feed the poor and the starving. That is what I would do!
So tell us about the radio station you feature on, its represent radio right?
Kraft: Yeah, we host the derailed show, it's 2 hours of just house music.
Wes: We do features, like every fortnight we give the listeners a little idea of our top 3 nights that we would recommend to go to in London with underground music. We feature the must haves, so that’s a little bit for people that might be getting into house music, DJ’s that want to know the must have tunes to have, so we give recommendations. We have mixes, interviews, and we outline artists who have done huge things in house music over the past 20, 30, 40 years. Also on the flip side, we highlight artists who are up and coming and are tipped to the next best thing. Then normally at the end of our show we flip the show on its head, and do a feature called top 3 of the week, so we play 3 tunes from any genre. It might be a classic that we love or might have inspired us to go and make music or something we’ve heard before and thought this is a really cool tune. We might play electronica, rnb, pop, drum and bass, anything. It’s a nice little cherry on top. Every single Tuesday 7 TIL 9PM.
That's right guys, tune in! Ok, so you’re a house duo and house is predominantly what you do. Do you think in the future you might switch up genres or experiment with something else?
Kraft: When it comes to playing music as a duo DJ’in, I think it’ll always be house based, when it comes to production, definitely do other stuff.
Wes: Funnily enough we’ve just started a song, I say started but it’s like 50% done now, with an up and coming singer called Iviee Mercutio. The song, it does have elements of house, very very minimal, it’s a bit soul it’s a bit deep. If you were to change the drum pattern it could easily be soul. That’s the thing with us, Freight Train, like you said will predominantly always be doing dance and house but because we love music as a whole and we got so many influences it really just comes to what we want to make on the day. We might sit in front of the computer and say today I want to make something different. Sometimes I think if you want to keep the strength in your brand, you don’t want to confuse your audience so people know us to make house music, so an idea we’ve had is that we might make another alias up.
Aaahh I see, like what Ghetts did with Ghetto and J Spades.
Wes: Exactly, I mean if you look at some of the biggest guys in the world, everybody does it. For instance the other day I heard Danny Dyer’s a producer. Everyone knows Danny Dyer’s a cockney geeza and you wouldn’t expect him to be doing this, but if u listen to the stuff that he makes you’ll be very surprised. It’s smart to just change your name and push a different sound under that name.
Kraft: I can see us doing it, but in terms of playing out, obviously we love all our other genres, but when were trying to push the genre that we really love I think we’ll just branch out a bit. I mean I can see us making a disco kind of influenced tune.
Wes: There’s plenty more to come form us 100%.
What is your biggest tune at the moment? Not what you like playing but what are you banging out in your car right now?
Kraft: I got to say the drums, Richy Ahmed like now that’s my tune man.
Wes: I’ll tell you what tune I’m banging now Erykah Badu 'Window Seat'. Every time I sit in my car that’s the first tune I’m starting with. Erykah’s voice is just so sultry and soothe. The drums sound proper live and then the key, there’s some nice chords. Yeah definitely 'Window Seat'.
Have you got any guilty pleasures, in terms of music?
Wes: YESS!!
Ohhh you have..
Wes: Yes, I was talking to my aunt about this yesterday. Queen 'don’t stop me now'
Oh noo.. Really?
Wes: Yeah and Carly Rae Jepsen 'Call Me Baby'. I will say that I don’t care. Ill tell you why, coz they are very very good pieces of music. Like I said we do a lot of corporate stuff so like we play chart music but anyone that says why do you like that, I say ‘Look, play this tune to anyone in the world and look at the reaction’ when u can make music that can globally move people, undeniably you cannot say it’s a bad piece of music. As producers we listen to everything, and the reason I chose those is, yes they might be cheesy yes they might be pop, but if you listen to the way the tunes are made in the time they were made its amazing. If you can listen to something again and again and again and then go ‘ohhh, I didn’t even know there was a guitar’ then it’s a good piece of music in my books. I don’t know if you’d catch me dancing to them, that’s another question but those are my two guilty pleasure at the top of my head.
Kraft: I would say you’ll agree with me on this one. Madonna 'Holiday'.
Wes: Big tune, big tune.
Have you ever remixed that one?
Kraft: Nah, I tell you what we really wanted to remix Vogue didn’t we.
(Wes starts humming the tune)
Kraft: I’d say Madonna 'Holiday' only because it’s really poppy but it’s still got a little groove to it. It’s got that disco kind of vibe, but obviously you hear it and you’ll be like ‘Oh this is so cheesy’ but if you take away her vocal and listened to the instrumental I think I’d be amazing, so i'd say that.
So I hear you got a new release coming out?
Wes: Yep, we got two actually. Do you wanna talk about the first one? (to Kraft)
Kraft: Yeah, the first one is coming out hopefully end of December, New Years Eve hopefully. Its gonna be released on TooB records which is owned by another DJ duo D'Vinci and it features a very talented vocalist we’ve worked with called Zaiio, she’s from Morocco. She’s a bit hip hopy but she loves her house music as well, so what we’ve done is we’ve kind of made this. How would you describe it?
Wes: It’s like a sort of minimal main room afroy beats kind of tune.
Kraft: Yeah like afro-house. It’s very percussive it’s got a lot of live elements to it as well and she’s kind of spitting kind of talking, she’s telling a little story and the tunes called 'Casablanca'. It’s just basically about her going out being on the floor and just wanting to party. It’s a really nice take on, almost a commercial tune and keeping it a little bit underground at the same time, adding a little bit of rap in it over a house beat it’s like trying to mix and match.
When’s that coming out?
Kraft: Hopefully New Years Eve, fingers crossed, it might be early Jan.
Wes: And the second release what we’re even more excited about, the tune’s called ‘got to have it’, coming out on Orange Groove records which is a house based label, headed by Paul Sirrell. The remix of that is by a man name A Lister, I think you guys interviewed him recently I saw it on the website. He’s on fire at the moment, he’s up and coming on the house music scene as well. He’s getting a lot of good feedback from the likes of Skream, I think even MK said he was backing his music and Huxley as well. Huxley said he’s really feeling his productions so that’s good, he’s gonna be remixing our tune. Coincidently we actually featured him on our radio show last month as well, so that’s looking to be released in January.
And we’re likely to see you when?
Kraft: You can catch us in February, I believe it’s the 2nd check out Resident Advisor, search meraki it’s gonna be in Nomad in Shoreditch. You can search Freight Train and all our events will come up.
Well thanks for dropping in guys.
Wes: It’s a pleasure.
Kraft: You can check out our twitter @FreightTrainUK
Wes: That’s Freight Train, a lot of people call us fright train. We’re not trying to be a ghost ride. And soundcloud.com, same thing forward slash FreightTrainUK. Look out for our website coming out in the New Year.
Kraft: Facebook, you can just search Freight Train or its facebook.com/freighttrainofficial Wes: Huge shout out to Guestlist for having us, it’s a pleasure.
Freight Train new release featuring Zaiio – Casablanca (D’vinci remix) is out now on TooB records. Show your support and grab your copy here at http://www.beatport.com/release/casablanca/1227283
