INTERVIEW: Beat Today’s Miserably Cold Weather with Jude & Frank’s “Sun Is Shining”

FEATUREDINTERVIEWSNEW MUSICSTAFF PICKS

Written by:

Views: 2463

Sun is shining, it’s 9 degrees in New York, and we’re all feeling pretty miserable. Luckily, Italian house music duo Jude & Frank are here to the rescue. Their newest track is a 2019 revival of the Bob Marley hit “Sun Is Shining.” Made in collaboration with American producer 1 World and utilizing the original Marley vocals, “Sun Is Shining” feels like summer optimism at its finest: all fresh energy and positive vibes.

Close your eyes and listen immediately:

Purchase & stream it here.

Jude & Frank aren’t strangers to mixing classic songs with new grooves. Their singles “La Luna” (which samples Totó La Momposina’s Curura), and “La Vereda” (based on the Negrocan’s house classic Cada Vez) have been inescapable for years in clubs and mixes. But outside of their musical ubiquity, the artists themselves are relatively enigmatic.

WOTN had the chance to speak with the duo about the track, why reggae and house belong together, and what we can expect for 2019:

How did you both meet and come to start making music together?

Francesco (Frank) and I (Giulio alias Jude) became friends back in 2009 before we began working together. We are both from Rome and after years of friendship we decided to have a go at making music together. It began in our apartments as just a bit of fun. We signed and released our first tracks in 2016, after which we decided to split our roles within the project. We continue to produce our music together but only I travel the world and perform as a DJ.

How did this remix for ‘Sun is Shining’ come about? Are you guys big fans of Bob Marley?

We started this collaboration after an interesting meeting with the producer 1World in September. The overall idea for the track came to us quite quickly because listening to it in the studio, we were absolutely sure that it would fit with a cool tribal groove. The first demo was nice but maybe too clubby for our sound but the addition of the electric guitar riff made the final result a great crossover tune.

Personally I’ve always been a big fan of Bob Marley, ever since my adolescent years. Songs like ‘No Woman No Cry’, ‘Redemption Song’ and ‘One Love’ became the foundation of my music preferences and knowledge, I find this type of music relaxes me a lot.

Over the past few years, there has been more and more overlap between electronic music and other genres. How do you see reggae and house music fitting together?

I think this song is proof that these genres really can fit together well. Reggae music is very rhythmic and would be a great genre for new house music producers to discover and study. When we started out as producers, we found huge inspiration in Latin music. Our first big success was with ‘La Luna’ in 2016, you can hear a lot of Latin elements in this but we think that reggae music could be a new source of inspiration for us.

Jude & Frank have a reputation for reproducing classic songs and making them current. Are there any particular songs or artists you haven’t worked with, but want to?

Yes, this is true but in the last few months we’ve been working hard on a couple of original tracks and we plan to have them ready for release this summer. Our music is totally inspired by the DJs and producers that we loved when we first started to play music, artists like Axwell, Fatboy Slim, Armand Van Helden, Bob Sinclar and obviously Daft Punk, so a collaboration with any one of these artists in the future would be a dream.

What’s next on the agenda for you? Any new tracks or a tour we have to look forward to?

2019 will be full of music for us, we’ll be busy in the studio cooking up some new tunes till February, including an amazing original club tune. From the end of February, I set off on tour across Europe, South America (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia) and US (starting with Miami Music Week at the end of March).

You can hear more from Jude & Frank by following their social channels below:

Facebook
Beatport
SoundCloud
Instagram

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail