Building on an escape from winter blues with some open-aired melodic tunes, UK duo Just Kiddin’s new single ‘Only For You’ deliver a hook you won’t forget. As demonstrated in their 2014 hit, Thinking About It, which achieved over four-million plays online this original track builds upon the duo’s signature piano-driven house sound and shows off their accomplished songwriting abilities.
Interview by Mike Greene
Mike: What is your inspiration for creating such airy and lively remixes? Do you feel that experiences either positive or negative affect the way you create?
JK: Well, we’ve always tend to make music that makes you feel good — we can’t really help it, it’s just what comes out. So creatively speaking, our inspiration will always come from a positive place. Our approach to remixes is usually to take the more positive, feel good aspects from an original and turn it into our own. We love to take inspiration from DJ’ing and playing shows, as it gives you a great insight into what is going to work at a party.
Mike: Is there any particular musician from your childhood, that you or your parents listened to, that affects how you create today?
JK: We both had a lot of different influences growing up. Laurie was a drummer and I (Lewis) played guitar, so naturally we both listened to different stuff when we were younger — but we’ve always had very similar tastes, which is why we probably started writing together. Between us, we’d probably say one of our biggest influences is Daft Punk – those guys are our heroes and probably brought us together initially. From then on, it was a healthy combination of French House and house parties that inspired our sound.
Mike: Do you feel there is a difference in creating music that will gain popularity in America, versus gaining popularity in UK – How does the music differ?
JK: It’s hard to say, because we don’t really tend to make music based on what will work in different markets. We usually make music for ourselves and our friends (who we’ll always play new stuff to before we release it) and this seems to have served us well so far! We feel that our music has accessible qualities that opens it up to a wider audience though – I think people can relate to our music on both sides. We are not trying to be ‘cool’, we just want to make fun music and extend an open invitation to come and party with us.
“One thing we’ve definitely learnt is to explore different ways of writing as much as possible, that way you don’t get stuck in old habits and end up learning a lot more. Sometimes the magic happens – and when it does – we love what comes out.”
Mike: How is the music scene/underground scene in your hometown? Has that shaped your production choices at all?
JK: Haha, our hometown doesn’t really have a scene, it’s a small market town in the middle of England so this is quite a funny question (sorry Kettering – you know that we love you!). The lack of influences from home probably gave us more creative freedom on the type of music we’d like to make — without having to make stuff that would only work where we’re from (thanks Kettering). In a way though, it is nice to be out of the big cities like London and escape to a quiet location with minimal distractions! This way, we can fully focus on our music.
Mike: The majority, if not all, of your tracks have an upbeat, open-aired melodic theme to them. Sticking with that feeling for ‘Only For You’, How was the creation process different this time being for an original track ?
JK: We’ve been developing this track for a while now and we probably wrote the initial idea a little over a year ago — the creative process was very simple and the music all came together really quickly, we just like to tweak the music based on reactions from friends and in the clubs. It definitely has that upbeat vibe, that is something that we always try to include in our music. But this one probably has a more emotive energy than our other stuff. Jay Norton, who we wrote the track with, is amazing at delivering a memorable hook – we always have fun in the studio with him! He is a great writer. We’ve included Only For You in pretty much all of our DJ sets for over this year, including some of our sets in America earlier this year – so some of you will have hopefully have already heard this!
Mike: Being a duo, how does collaboration work? Do you Both work on the production together, or do you split parts up? How do you work so both your skill sets shine, in the sense that one may be better with the drum kit and the other might work better with synths?
JK: We definitely both have different strengths with writing & production so we work well as a team. Sometimes we work straight out of a shared project in dropbox, other times we work together in the studio, other times we write whilst sipping pina coladas on the beach (this is a lie, I think this is just what we secretly dream of). Truthfully, it’s hard to say what works best, there’s not a one simple formula we can rely on to get the best results. One thing we’ve definitely learnt is to explore different ways of writing as much as possible, that way you don’t get stuck in old habits and end up learning a lot more. Sometimes the magic happens – and when it does – we love what comes out.
Mike: You are about come back to North America to tour in February – what are you looking forward to most about this visit?
JK: Well, this time we’re doing a lot more shows, which will be great. Last time we visited the US for around 10 days and when we returned to the UK we were already excited to come back. In the US, the shows were really fun and everyone gets ‘our sound’ straight away. Fans there seemed very open minded and this is great for us, because we always like to play a range of different genres in our sets. We also really enjoy visiting the different cities and we were surprised by the diversity between where we played. Before a show we always like to explore the city and meet people we’re playing to (no matter how hectic our schedule is).
