A.M.C. and Turno’s new Alliance EP released on Drum&BassArena last week, and while it’s already getting lotsof play it’s also destined to be a staple of the upcoming festival season. While all the tracks on the EP are quite different from each other, all of them are also highly danceable, steppy and infectious. You kind of can’t not dance to them. Also technically clean, the producing pair say that back to their Collision EP on Titan last year, they wanted to combine techy, neuro synths and vibes with the steppy kick-snare beats of modern jump up. Mission more than accomplished on Alliance.
Your EDM sat down with the DnB duo to find out how the Alliance EP came together, how each track was made and what they think about their music’s position in the current drum and bass climate. Take notes; these DnB veterans know what they’re talking about. 
How did the two of you come to work together on the Alliance EP?
We’d been working together on a few other projects starting with the “Collision” EP last year on Titan Records and the “Alliance” EP felt like the natural progression.
How did you hook up with Drum&BassArena for this one?
We previously hooked with D&BA on “The Breaks” EP for our track “Ice Cold.” The reception we got from that track coupled with the amazing work the D&BA team put in behind the scenes it was only right we came back to release our “Alliance” EP.
The four tracks on this EP are all quite different and span a lot of different DnB subgenres. Was this a conscious decision? How did you decide to put these four tracks into an EP?
The main ethos behind the A.M.C & Turno sound is the combination of the techy, nuero flavors mixed with the dancefloor, jump up vibes so the tracks were always going to have that edge. “Alliance” we wrote for the intro for our special shows we do together and “Maybach” was a sketch for a while we (finally) finished. For “Draw 4,” that went through so many versions until we knew what we wanted to do with the track. Finally “Boundarie”s we wrote in a week to accompany the tour show we were doing with Dreps and Phantom.
The whole theme of the EP seems to be quite theatrical and sort of like a blockbuster movie in feel, even though the tracks are all so different. Was that how you wanted the EP to be thematically? If not what was the theme you had in mind?
It would be cool if we could answer this question like, “the concept was born from an early date et cetera, we always knew what we wanted to do.” That’s all total bollocks. We were making a load of dubplates together for our special show, which is where you’ll only hear our new music. We don’t play them in our individual sets. We simply thought we should release some and D&BA was the perfect vehicle for us to do that. The “Alliance” theme was created in a meeting with the team along with the concept and all the encompassing ideas.
The title track may surprise some fans from both of your camps. Did you mean to shake things up with this “Alliance,” pardon the pun?
(Laughing) you know it’s actually done the opposite. The track has seen some amazing support from across the scene. We think this is down to the music becoming less separated and starting be called what it was when we were growing up. Long live Drum and Bass!
How did you come to work with Dreps and Phantom on “Boundaries”?
Dreps and Phantom have been our own personal MCs of choice for our individual shows for years so it was a no-brainer to get them involved in the shows were doing. The first show with all four of us was a club show in Jersey (UK) and we made “Boundaries” specifically for it. We had the hip hop intro and drop down in a couple of days and Dreps and Phantom turned ‘round their sick vocals in another couple of days. In five days the track was basically written. It was a crazy turnaround.
Do you think it’s important to represent a number of different styles on an EP like this, and especially in the current DnB climate where it seems like a new subgenre and division seems to pop up every week?
To be honest we disagree. If you look at drum and bass and the artists and music recently the divisions between the subgenres are getting more and more blurred. You have artists like Annix remixing tracks on Blackout, Benny L playing his moody Headzy music at what used to be a predominantly jump up rave Breakin Science and many more examples. The scene in our opinion is currently the healthiest it’s ever been. Originally we wanted to combine our sounds together because we thought it would sound cool but now it probably has more meaning to it because of the shift in sub genre attitude currently.
How did you find the process of working together? Was it a total mashup of styles or did one of you do drums and the other basslines, etc?
Total mash up of styles. One of the reasons we work so well together is because our work process is pretty much the same. We also work on the same DAW which also helps.
What’s up next for each of you?
For our special duo show we have Animalz in Paris on the 21st of April, Nass Festival on the 6th of July, Boom Town on the 11th of August and Pukkelpop Festival on the 18th.
Alliance by A.M.C. and Turno is out now on Drum&BassArena. Click here for all purchasing and streaming options.
