Camo and Krooked

"Don’t let anyone tell you that this or that isn’t possible because if you think it’s going to work, then it will actually work. It’s just a matter of time”

Camo & Krooked
DJs
IG/Camo&Krooked

Music and sport can be considered creative pastimes, art forms, careers, ways to meet friends and ways to travel the world. They both give joy to so many people, whether you’re watching at a live event with 80,000 other fans, or listening in on a tiny radio in a distant part of the world. There is an instant connection.

Seeing your favorite player score a goal or watching your favorite band or DJ play out can give you a high like little else. Austrian duo Camo & Krooked have been touring the world and creating that energy for over a decade now.

However, February 2020 they took on their biggest task to date, creating the Red Bull Symphonic. A project that saw them collaborating with the legendary composer Christian Kolonovits and a 74-piece orchestra to play live drum and bass in Vienna’s Wiener Konzerthaus in what is quickly becoming a legendary moment in the electronic music scene.

I was keen to learn what has driven them on in their career, how they pulled off this show and what they have taken from skateboarding on their journey.

Jonathan: You posted a pretty sick clip of skating the other day, have you been skating a lot recently?

Reini – Camo: Yes, actually now more due to the whole COVID-19 crisis. I have more time since we aren’t touring so much. I’ve been skating 27 years now. Before I met Markus and started the whole touring thing, I was riding the contests in Austria and won a lot. So that was where I made my money. It’s super nice because the community of skating and music really crosses over, so we have some great contacts from the skateboarding scene that work in media now like filmers and photographers and that’s how our connection to Red Bull actually started.

Were you both into music as kids?

Markus – Krooked: I think the real big interest for music came about when the interest in skateboarding grew at around nine or ten because it kind of goes hand in hand. Then you hang out at the skate park and they’re the guys that play this kind of music and you connect with them and it just like falls into place. You know my dad had a few CDs from Jean-Michel Jarre but the big interest in electronic music, definitely came from the skateboarding scene.

R-C: Markus and I, well neither of us have a musical theory background. Like, we didn’t play piano or anything growing up. It’s all self-taught. I was into music just as a listener back then, it wasn’t as easy as just going to YouTube and looking for related artists. Then with the whole file sharing thing you could explore what kind of music you are into and what hypes you.

You never studied music with classes or anything then?

R-C: I had a class at university, but at that point I just did it to earn a credit, which was easy as I already knew it from YouTube. You can find everything you want to learn on there.

M-K: I think with making and producing music. It’s so accessible nowadays. You don’t need the expensive hardware. You just need a computer and the piece of software and then you’re good to go. For me to discover making music was a really weird coincidence, because my dad and I went to the electronics store when I was 10 and I asked him if he could buy me this computer game and he said, “No, I’m not going to get your computer game. Why don’t you buy this,” pointing to this music making software that was called E-Jay.

It was really bad, but had the law of sequencers, where things fit on top of each other. Then a friend from the skatepark gave me Fruity Loops on a 3.5-inch floppy disk and then it really kicked off and helped me to learn to make proper electronic music. I was always a geek. I loved playing computer games a lot and just browsing the internet, I would always clog up my parents phone all day on the dial up getting these huge phone bills. The whole thing actually just started to open up for me when I started going to technical school when I was 14 to 18 where I met some people that were into the same kind of music. So we formed this little community going out to drum & bass parties. I wasn’t struggling with school, but I just wanted to make beats instead of being at school. Music is way more fun. It was hard as at school some other kids would hear about it but have no clue about this music and I actually got mocked for it until I was 17. I guess that’s when more class- mates got into it and they started accepting my music. I was a lonely fighter for a long time.

The thing is with that one step and then the next; you never think of starting a career when you really love doing some- thing. You’re just like, “I want to be really good at this. It’s so much fun.”

You met in 2007, right?

M-K: Yeah as soon as we met, we started making music. It was just a really nice symbiosis because I was more like the geeky guy who made everything with synthesizers and Reini was the guy that did a lot of sampling from hip hop and so we had a really nice flow in the studio, even though we only were sitting in the studio together three times or something in our whole career. If we have our own space, we can take our own time to do what we want to do before sharing it with each other.

Has there been a moment when you have felt like, whoa we’ve made it?

R-C: I mean it was kind of all flowing, more or less in quite a natural way. One step and then the next. We would always support the UK tours coming over here and we then grew from there finding a good way. Kind of like skate- boarding. Learn this trick, meet these guys, learn this trick. There was never a question of stopping that progression.

How did the Red Bull Symphonic come about this year?

M-K: We actually have a long-lasting relationship with Red Bull already. It’s been going for a few years and all the projects we do are super well done and usually work great for everyone involved. The idea of putting together an orchestra had been coming from Red Bull for years, as there was a guy called Felix Günther who unfortunately passed away due to cancer who was the initiator of the whole idea of turning Camo & Krooked into an orchestra. We always thought it’s a bit megalomaniac to do it, primarily because we wouldn’t know where to start, but then Red Bull picked up the idea again about two years ago and asked if we would still be keen and said they would take care of the rest.

Six months later we actually started looking for venues and they had a conductor, Christian Kolonovits who is one of the most famous conductors in the music business. He’s written so many tracks he can’t remember them all! So, we met up with him 18 months before the show in his living room. He’d never even listened to drum and bass before and next thing Red Bull told us we have the date and venue and we’re selling tickets. Of course, we thought no one would show up, but we ended up selling out in 48 hours. So then the pressure was on and we really started to build it all together as one team. We also realized this is maybe the only time we’ll get the opportunity to do a live orchestral show, especially in the drum & bass realm.

Knowing your parents started you on this journey, did they come to see it?

M-K: Yes, and it was my parents very first Camo & Krooked show. They always supported me, you know, but it’s not like a sport where parents go and watch. They really enjoyed it and I think that’s the beauty of the whole project that it connects people from all kinds of music scenes together and they get in touch with the total opposite kind of music. It was such a moment for us all to learn – us from how an orchestra works, and for them about how we work. Especially when they had to play instruments at 175 beats per minute!

Since then have you had a lot of requests for this to become a live show on tour.

R-C: Yes, the next few days were crazy with all kinds of requests but we turned most of them down so we can plan them well. So, our plan is to get great venues in our main territories. A couple of European capitals like Prague, Amsterdam, London and a couple more in Austria. We will be back with this project, it’s just a matter of time.

For the two of you was that the highlight of your career so far?

M-K: For sure, almost where we’ve reached a sense of ‘can it get any better than this?’ Especially on an emotional scale, we had the blues for like two weeks.

R-C: There was so much stress before, because it was like such high-pressure building, building, building and so many unknowns. But we worked so hard so we wouldn’t have any regrets afterwards. That’s definitely the pinnacle of our career so far.

With you reaching this high, going back to the premise of this project, what would you tell yourselves as teenagers?

Just keep doing your thing. Don’t let anyone tell you that this or that isn’t possible because if you think it’s going to work, then it will actually work. It’s just a matter of time. The most important thing that we’ve learned is you will fail a lot of times. We still do when we make a new track as we try to always do something new, all the time. We run against the wall like 50 times, but the 51st time we break through. Yes, with a mild concussion, but we finally made the track that we had in our heads all the time.

I think consistency is important for that. Reini (Camo) knows that from skateboarding you just don’t give up because you know in your head, you know that you will land it. Just keep grinding as long as it’s fun.

You know, it’s only an achievement when you suffered a little bit before. I would say for me the short version is do what you love and stay focused.