Myon & Shane 54 are one of the brightest stars of the so-called new generation of dance music producer / DJs.
Coming from Hungary, the duo have achieved serious success in the international dance music scene; an achievement no artist had done before from their home country. In less than 2 years after they started making music together, the pair were voted into DJMag’s Top 100 DJs at #91. They’ve been producing for the biggest names in the trance scene, are a constant fixture in their record boxes, and the combined sales of everything they’ve done way exceeds the million mark.
USTM: Hello guys, how are you? You just celebrated 100 Episode’s of International Departures! Must have been a great achievement in your life/music career. Can you tell us how you celebrated?
S: The show started a few days after our big introduction at ASOT 400, which was our 2nd international gig together in 2009. We had a few ideas about how it’s gonna turn out, but we never imagined it will go this far. It’s still weird to think about all those people around the world listening to what we do week by week. We get a lot of feedback, and that’s what keeps us going really. It might sound cheesy, but the love of the fans makes everything worthwhile.
M: We were celebrating in Winnipeg, Canada while we had a few days off while touring there. We made a regular radio episode, and we thought it would be great to do a long mix consisting of all our stuff, just to show how far we’ve come since day one. But as the mix reached 4.5 hours length, we realized we might not be able to squeeze everything in there. So we kept half of those tracks and remixes for episode 200, where we pretty sure they will work with our future material. And it was a lot of fun listening back to all those old productions we’ve made like 3 years ago, and haven’t heard for a long time. We will also have an ID100 Celebration in Hawaii on New Years Eve. Now THAT is something we are looking forward to…
USTM: What are your opinions on the changing EDM scene and the effect that pop culture has had on EDM? Do you think its better? Worse? And would you be willing to change your style to fit the new and growing audience?
M:It’s just as true the other way around. Pop music has changed a lot due to dance music, and now every single big pop artist wants to work a dj or seen hanging out with big djs. Obviously those people don’t have any real idea what EDM is really about, but they have a great sense of pop of course. Underground djs can moan about this, but we don’t necessarily think that way. We think it’s a great thing, and it opened a lot of doors for people who might have never thought about 4/4 beats if it wasn’t for all those big cheesy hits.
S: We don’t believe in getting into the line and make stuff that’s not us musically, but since we both coming from a pop background, we can certainly see ourselves making great songs with artist we like anyway. At the end of the day a good song is a good song, and people will always relate to them even if they don’t know much about the whens and hows of “real” dance music. But it’s happening big time in the US, and no one can deny it.
USTM: Who are some artists you’d like to collaborate with in the near future? Are we going to see Velvetine project again in the future?
M: Yes, a new Velvetine single is ready for a while now, but since we used a little piece of music in the piano riff by Thomas Newman, one of the best film composers out there, we had to ask permission to use it. We were surprised how fast he agreed after hearing the song, and of course we are extremely happy he was going for it. Above & Beyond premiered “The Great Divide” on TATW 400 just a few days ago, and the response was more than great.
S: We have quite a few ideas who we would like to work with, but we won’t reveal any names, just now. Some people are more open to dance music than others, but we can only hope everyone we approach will see our dedication to great songwriting, and good production.
USTM: Can you tell us something we are the first to know?
M: I was a cook at some point in my life.
S: I’m allergic to tomatoes…
USTM: Can we expect an album in the near future?
S: on January 13th we’ll finally get to release the first Mash Up double album on Armada. It was in the works of more than 6 months, the tracklist has changed gazillion times, and for the label it was a licensing nightmare, but we’re glad to report it turned out just as we imagined it. We can’t wait for you guys to hear it.
M: We also working on our new artist album, which we work on for more than a year now. We got pretty much all the songs written, but loads of production work is still ahead of us. We can be very meticulous, so it’ll take some time to finish it. We surely want to do something different, not just a “regular” dance album, that’s so common with djs these days. As we said earlier songwriting is the key for us. You can’t make a good album without actual songs, and that’s what we’re after.
USTM: When you guys are not touring or releasing fantastic mash-ups! What do you guys like to do to relax?
M: We make music to relax. We always working in something, if it’s not a particular track, we make samples, discovering instruments or effects, you know, just fiddling about. Sometimes great things coming out of not necessarily going for something specific.
USTM: USA has long awaited your “International Departure”. Should we hold on to our seats? What can we expect?
M: We always loved the US, and the enthusiasm of the crowd. We can’t wait to finally tour there, and we will give everything we have in our belts to make our gigs the best we can. We will play loads of new stuff, and there’s always a new mashup to play.
S: Not to mention Cinnabons, which I love so much I always have to buy more than one piece.
Myon & Shane 54 were recently our Featured Artist of The Month: November – You can read our full feature here
