Playground magazine

They've been wreaking havoc on the Madrid night scene with the Araña club for years now, also taking their sets nationwide. But in their on-going battle for world domination, Void Camp are still locked up in their studio to work on their debut full-length on the Subterfuge label, scheduled for release after the long, hot summer.

The band are Clara, Edy and Kaze, three tattooed nightbirds with a sound built from American dubstep, flaming guitar riffs, trip-hop moods and sickly electro beats. With the 7” “The News” recently out as an excuse for more incendiary live gigs, Void Camp are bringing us an exclusive mixtape featuring the tunes that give meaning to their lives. There's something for everyone there, so consider yourself invited to their frantic party.

You run the Araña club. As not all mortals have been able to attend your parties yet, could you tell us what it's all about?

Araña is a club night we do with Santi, Clara's partner in The Warriors, in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. We invite everyone to come and experience it. What you can hear at Araña? Dubstep, electro, rock, broken glasses, crazy people, good vibes, and anti-religious and anti-government visuals... Among other things.

Two of you come from rock, and the other two from hip-hop - two seemingly opposite worlds that nevertheless have always been close and collaborating. In your case, what was the connection between the two?

We actually listen to all kinds of things, even though we come from different places. Kaze, who's from hip-hop, was never a close-minded rapper - his favourite bands are Nirvana and Muse - and in music, the beautiful and innovative thing to do is to mix it all up. So Void Camp's sound comes from Edu's love of Björk, Clara's Doors adoration, and Kaze's Public Enemy obsession, to name three extreme examples.

A band isn't built in a day. When and how did you decide to team up and start Void Camp?

It all went pretty naturally. It didn't happen overnight, but it was fast. Clara and Edu had been seeing each other all over Madrid for years, and Kaze came to the city after he met Clara and they started to do things together. Edu got interested in what we were doing, and he invited us to his studio one day. That afternoon we had a traffic accident, but we made it to the studio, bruised and everything. That same night we made the first sketches of “Waking Life”, and as we got along so well musically, we started to get together on a regular basis. That's how Void Camp was born.

If four hands on the decks are a lot already, don't you think six is a crowd? How do you organise your DJ sets?

It depends on what kind of gig it is. Depending on the place, we play our own tunes live, or we play them on the turntables and mix them up with dance floor hits. When Clara sings and Edu plays percussion, Kaze does the mixing, and if the three of us are djing, we take turns. Kaze does the scratching and Edu plays the music over it. It's fun to watch and very dynamic.

“The News” single is an appetiser for your upcoming LP. What can you tell us about the album? When will it be out?

Well, it will be out before the world ends [laughs]. We hope we can do it in September or October, but the summer is looking very busy with Void Camp and our individual projects. It will be very musical, with floor fillers but most of all proper music and contents. We'll do the remixes afterwards, so that people will still love us on the dance floor…

How do you work? Do you start with samples, with song structures or do the lyrics come first?

It's different for each track; one day we're in the studio and we start a new song from a couple of chords and a concept. Another day Kaze comes up with something at home and brings it to the studio, and sometimes Clara does a guitar and vocal track and we take it from there. Which is why the songs sound so different from each other. “The News” is very different from “Firefight”, even though they both sound like us.

Why do you sing in English? We're not saying you should sing in Spanish, we're just curious.

It was a half conscious decision, almost all the bands we love and that have influenced us sing in English, I suppose we're just used to the sound, so it seems like the natural way to write songs. It sounds great and you can reach a lot more people. Our objective is not to be an electronic band from Spain, we would like to be a worldwide electronic band.

Rock, electro, dubstep for the masses, yours is a hybrid sound. Nevertheless, which styles do you feel are essential to the sound of Void Camp, and which genre would you never use?

Rock, electro, dubstep, trip-hop, pop… We love them all and we use them, because everything you listen to is an influence. What we don't listen to? The commercial charts stuff, and hardly any Spanish music, although we are pretty open-minded, so we listen to all kinds of stuff, really. I would have loved to have answered this question a couple of years ago and see what filters we would have used then [laughs].

You're sporting a lot of tattoos. Why, if you don't mind me asking? What's the story behind your most special tat?

We all have our reasons, and I can even tell you each tat has its own story. Let's not try to fool the people! There are tattoos that have a deep meaning to each of us, or that mark a certain episode in our lives (like the Void Camp logo), and others are just there 'because they are'. We like tattoo culture, and these days it's pretty widespread, so something we no longer have to justify.

On the mixtape you made for us, Skrillex peeps around the corner a couple of times. Why do you think the Californian has made such a deep impact in such little time?

Skrillex is an incredible musician and producer. He became that big because he did something different at the right moment, and his tracks sound really fat.

Do you see him as an influence?

Though what we do is rather different, he is a clear influence, and we always play his tunes.

How did you make the set, both selection-wise and mix-wise?

Each of us has their favourite tunes, so we just brought the ones each felt should be in it together. Once we figured out which tracks were going in we started to play around with the track order and see which mixes sounded good, and which direction to take the set in. Easy peasy!

Summer is coming: what are your plans for the immediate future?

We want to finish the album and play as much as we can. I don't think we'll have any days off.