An Interview With Sentre

We recently spoke with London based duo Sentre ahead of them releasing their smashing album full of genres to take you on different journeys. Already gaining massive support from the likes of Sasha, The XX, M83, Pete Tong, Calvin Harris, Maribou State, MobyLittle Dragon amongst so many more!

We spoke about their new album ‘Dream Logic’, what other acts they have featured in this album, what we can expect from their DJ performances, what they use when working in the studio plus so much more…

Let’s start by talking about your new project out in July… What can we expect?

It’s a bit of mixed bag with some slower tracks on the album as well as more club orientated ones. We tried to make something that reflects what we listen to – hopefully that comes across.

In words, how can you describe the differences in each of the tracks on the album… 

Well the album starts off with ‘Make Me’, which is housey, and it ends with ‘F-ace’, which is an odd kind of melodic e-record. In between those two tracks we go all over the place from pop, garage, ambient pieces to full on anthemic house. There’s a bit of techno and breakbeat in there too for good measure. We didn’t set out to make it as random as this but we definitely didn’t want to repeat ourselves on every track.

You’ve featured a few other talented musicians in Dream Logic, who would you say is the most fun to work with and why?

That’s difficult to say as they are all friends of ours. We had a good laugh with Tom from Fourteen03 on ‘Eclipse’ as he’s very funny but on the whole it was fun working with everyone. Each of the featured vocalists understood that we wanted to do different styles and really embraced that. Stephanie O who sings on ‘Drawn’ was great too – she really got the whole idea. Even the people we sampled and got clearance for were cool. The fact that we got Aurora to clear the sample we used for ‘Lost In The Moment‘ was great.

Sentre… What does this mean and is there a reason around you deciding this name? 

There is absolutely no meaning behind the name at all. We had a few different names actually. We were going to launch Sentre by doing a collaboration with somebody last year under a different name but neither of us were really happy.

A friend of ours showed us this Swedish Sci Fi artist and on one of the pieces it just had Sentre and it just kind of clicked. We have a very funny list at the studio of names for different projects. Finding a name that fits what you are doing is harder than you would expect… I mean at one point we were thinking of going with ‘All Kestral Moon Hoovers In The Park’.

What can we expect from you boys when you perform out to crowds?

We think its important to make sure your punters are happy. Saying that though we have been known to play a few odd things at times. When we DJ, it starts off quite slow but then builds nicely. I think the important bit is making sure you sound unique – and how you do that is the interesting bit. I can’t think of anything worse than going to a club and hearing the same idea over and over again.

There’s so much middle of the road club music at the moment. A lot of people chasing the same sound. We’ve been talking about our live show recently and how we can mess with the format of what people expect without leaving people disappointed.

When working in the studio, do you tend to use virtual plugins, or do you prefer to use hardware? 

I think the simplest answer here is we use everything. Both digital and analogue stuff. We don’t think there is a wrong way to work. So much goes into this whole ‘you must use this or don’t use that’ debate – and it’s all nonsense really. Try stuff and experiment.  As far as our favourites bits of kit go, I would say Dennis’ Juno 106 and our Eventide boxes.

Your music style is said to be compared to the likes of Bonobo, Caribou and Moderat… Anything in the pipeline for any collaborations?! 

We’d love to work with any of those guys (give us a shout!). We have a few things lined up for after the album is out, but right now we just want to get Dream Logic out there and perform the live shows.

July 9, 2017