Jacob Husley and August Jakobsen, otherwise known as Husley & Gunz, are currently taking the London club scene by storm with residences at Egg and Fabric. The Danish duo who know no end to their musical skills; DJ’s, Producer’s and Musicians, can do it all! With a unique blend of minimal techno, driven by complex jazzy undertones and a deep understanding of musical theory, Husley & Gunz have just released their first single through OKO Recordings – the 3 years in the making Change is an epic track featuring Danish folk singing and remixes by Betoko, Delicious and Noianiz. After meeting the guys during a very messy Sunday night at Fabric’s WetYourself we met after hours for a chat about where they’ve been, what they’ve been doing, and where they’re going next…

We’ll start quite traditionally, how did you two meet?
H: We met in Chichester in ’99, we were both studying, and then…yeah, that was it! (Laughs)
G: Yeah, we moved in together and had about a year where we raved and just partied hard.
H: August was studying music and I was studying films and film production. I did it in Denmark as well. I was DJ’ing too but more the electronic side, I always wanted to try more jazzy stuff which is very much Augusts domain and we just ended up spiralling off towards each other musically.

If someone had never heard of Husley & Gunz, how would you describe what it is that you do and how would you describe your sound?
H: A mix of house and techno with some clear jazzy undertones, jazzy and dubby undertones.
G: Yeah, dubby undertones, and then lots of samples. We infuse music with samples from our tracks or from the music that we play. And there are elements of improvisation on the keyboard and with effects, both from Jacob and me really.
H: It depends if you’re talking about the music we produce or the music we DJ because the experience is somewhat different. We do a live set but we also do a DJ and effects set. I also play basic guitar, piano and drums, August is the advanced one.
G: I play the keyboard and guitar.

I was reading a bit about your history, and saw that when you were performing as the Nocturnals you utilised a lot of live performance such as instruments on stage, singers, that sort of stuff. Does that still factor into what you’re doing now?
H: Not at present time.
G: I mean it does with the live instruments on stage, but the Nocturnals was more like a live show where now it’s more like an electronic show, a DJ show. Nocturnals was more of a band.
H: But I think that although we produce together anyway, strictly techno and house, we still implement a lot of live instruments in the productions. We know so many jazz musicians so we get somebody down and he will put down a hook. Most of our sounds, in fact pretty much everything, we do ourselves.
G: Lots of sampling and funny, quirky sounds from the studio.

What made you both want to do this? Become DJ’s, become musicians?
G: Childhood. A childhood dream, always playing music I think.
H: (Laughs) Yeah.
G: I’ve always played music since I was a kid and always wanted to be in a band, be on stage, and perform. We have fun together – it kind of made sense to go more on the clubbing scene. It’s a great show to play as well to get people dancing. Nocturnals wasn’t a dancing band really; it was like a listening band. I think we both wanted the clubbing thing so we started doing that.

Gunz, I’ve read that you have a BA in Jazz. Does that have a big impact on your sound?
G: I guess it has an impact in the sense that you know something about music, but not really, it doesn’t matter that much. Rhythmically I think…I don’t know. Does it have an influence?
H: I think it does. I feel that when we work together a lot of the time because of August’s education and depth in the music, he’ll come to me with a track for example and there will be like ten ideas in one track. I’ll be like, ‘That’s amazing!’, but we can’t use it on the floor, we need to simplify it, and I’m more the simplifier. I cut it down and make it more simple and understandable.
G: There are definitely elements of the jazz, but I think it comes more down to melodies. I tend to, from playing keyboard and playing all that stuff, find that you have so many notes to fill into a short space but in techno actually, you use the same notes but you need to stretch it out into a longer space so you get something that’s more understandable for people dancing instead of just sitting and listening. Sometimes I do bring lots of notes into it and then Jacob cut’s it down to something very simple that actually works.

Where do the names Husley & Gunz come from?
H: It’s a bit of a weird one. We were doing tracks as Nocturnals which was the jazzy, electronica sound but I really wanted to make a breaks track, well, a break/tech track. I had this idea so we got together and made one, we had this sample that went ‘Husley!’, we were laughing about the fact, that we couldn’t hear what it said at first, so we put it really slow and it went ‘Hu…Sley…’. It was quite a funny word, so I was like, well – I’ll be Husley!
G: Gunz came from a track we made called Bullet. Husley needed something to fire the bullet.
H: Yeah, yeah, I needed the gun, so it was Husley with the gun – Husley & Gunz.
G: It’s just a name. But it’s a funny one. (Laughs)

Yeah, it is a bit gangster!
G: (laughs) Yeah, I know! But it’s just one of those things that came by its self. It is funny when we go out and people call me Gunz. (Laughs)
H: Yeah!

Who are your major musical influences and heroes?
H: There are a lot of them. Personally I’ve travelled through so many different music styles; I used to MC, I’ve played in heavy rock and black metal bands. I actually made the change from black metal to drum ‘n bass because I couldn’t get it fast and heavy enough! (Laughs) When I heard my first drum n bass track, I was like, ‘Wow! This is amazing! Let’s do that.’ But at the same time I was brought up with classical music, so musical heroes is almost impossible to go into because it depends what genre your talking, Mozart is just as much as hero of mine as Minilog is.

Where are you currently performing?
H: We’re doing a few different projects. August is touring currently with Maps, I have my own solo residency in Egg with Always Fridays and Wet Yourself at Fabric on Sundays, then of course our gigs together. At the moment because we have a very busy schedule they are a little bit in between so we try and be very selective about our gigs as a duo.
G: We play in Fabric.
H: Yeah, we do the Fabric gigs, but only the really big nights like the Bank Holiday nights. We probably play about once every two months in Fabric as Husley & Gunz.
G: We do one offs as well.
H: And then we still hold on to our very old residency at Cafe 1001, which is quite funny, it’s in Brick Lane which is where we started out. We both think it is quite funny still to play there once in a while. For the last four months it was just August playing five, six hour sets.
G: It is always good fun there.
H: But we have a lot of music lying, waiting. We’ve been working on an album that we’re still hoping to get finished in this year, that’s why we’ve been holding back a little bit on releases.

What’s your current favourite night in London, either as a performer or a party goer?
H: Always Fridays and Wet Yourself! (Laughs)
G: Yeah, Wet Yourself. A lot of our friends go.
H: Always Fridays, as well, is a brilliant night.
G: It’s a good party.
H: I like going out to Trailer Trash and Lost Souls as well; we have a good relationship with them.

Tell me about ‘Change’, your new single.
H: Well it’s funny; I think it was about 3 ½ years ago, August came to me with this track, I really, really liked it, but it was five tracks in one. There was so much going on in it; three different melodies, four different bass lines, all hanging in but it was really, really good, all of it was really good, but you could quite easily have made four tracks. It was one of those tracks that we kept speaking about; ‘When are we gonna do a remix, when are we gonna work together and make a version of this track’. We would do some than leave it again. Do some more, leave it again. That went on for three years (laughs)! Literally, on and off we would take it up again and go like ‘Yeah, we need to finish this thing’ in the end we decided this track needed to get f’in finished (laughs), so we did and it got signed. A lot of people were interested in it; Rui de Silva wanted to take it, and we sent it out to some other labels who were very interested as well but in the end we signed it to Betoko’s label, OKO Recordings. We’ve got a really good relationship with him and he’s an amazing producer, more to the point we see a great future in him, both as a producer and massively in the label too.
G: He did a remix for us as well.
H: First we asked for a remix from Delicious. They did a remix, but they did a remix of the old Change track! Not the old, old one, but one of the old versions (laughs). So we sent that out, Betoko said ‘Yes. I want it. I want this track’ but then we listened to it, and we were like, ‘we’re not really happy with it any more now.’
G: We want to change it again (laughs).
H: And then our friend, a Danish folk singer named I Love Twig came round and put some vocals down on this track, this ever changing track. So he sang, we put it down, then it was finally finished, sent it to Betoko, he took it, and actually after he took it we did yet another remix.
G: A re-re-re-remix. (Laughs)
H: We put the last little percussion thing on, and that was it. Done!
G: As long as you have it you can change things, but when it’s out, it’s out. And it is a really nice feeling to get it out.
H: A very good feeling! No more changing (Laughs).

What would you be doing if you weren’t DJ’ing?
G: Music in general. I play in bands, I produce for people, and I even teach a bit. I’d definitely always be doing something in the creative field.
H: Same for me. I’ve produced TV programs, documentaries, films, and I’ve organised festivals as well. Anything creative, basically.

Not going to work a 9-5, then?
H: Only to survive! Which you have to do sometimes.
G: Luckily we don’t have to do that to survive any more.

You’ve travelled the world playing some big name clubs and festivals. How does it feel to be making a career out of something you obviously love and are so passionate about?
G: I feel really privileged. It’s great. Most days you wake up smiling even though it’s hard and it’s not always as fun as it looks.
H: It’s just good when you do something in an industry that’s quite competitive. Its like, ‘Mum, I wanna be a musician’ – okay, maybe accept that one. ‘Yeah, mum, I wanna be a techno DJ’. You see, it can be very hard to prove yourself within this field. It’s not just going out to party every weekend, which, you know, I also want to do (Laughs)! But, if you are serious about it, it’s a very nice feeling when you actually get to that stage where other people are giving you recognition, both your family and friends and people in the industry, and everybody can see that what we said all along was actually true we weren’t just mucking around we were being serious. That recognition is really nice.

Whats the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you?
H: I think I’ve had a lot of good advice. Ray Stanley said to me, ‘If you can’t dance to your own music, you can’t expect other people to.’ that is something that I always think about. Because too many DJ’s, they stand, and expect the dance floor to dance but they don’t move a muscle themselves. That’s the best piece of advice I’ve ever had. You can quote me on that (Laughs).

Great! It’s been good to meet you both, and I’m looking forward to hearing more big tunes from Husley & Gunz. Change by Husley & Gunz (with Betoko, Noianiz and Delicious remixes) is out now on i-Tunes and Beatport