Gabriel & Dresden – June 26 (Ten Nightclub, Newport Beach) + Interview

On Friday, June 26th, Gabriel & Dresden will be taking their Classics Only tour to Ten Nightclub in Newport Beach. Josh Gabriel and Dave 6Dresden will be playing from open till close and playing only their classics and remixes. The first time I saw the duo was at Nocturnal Wonderland in 2011, the year they reunited from their 2008 breakup.

After re-listening to that mix, I feel like I’m back at NOS Events Center in San Bernardino. Some major highlights from their set include D-wayne & Jacob van Hage’s “Eponym“, their mash up of Clashback & Michael Woods vs R.E.M. called “Losing My Outset“, Myon & Shane54’s remix of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit“, Wolfgang Gartner’s “Shrunken Heads“, and the closing tune “Spitfire” by Porter Robinson.

Ahead of their performance at Ten, I had the chance to ask Gabriel & Dresden a few questions about their upcoming set, what it’s like to play for hours on end, and who to keep an eye on in the future.

Hey guys, appreciate you taking the time to talk. What have Gabriel & Dresden been up to lately?

We have been knee deep in CD’s and vinyl getting all the music ready for this tour. When we decided to do this tour, we thought it would be easy. Just grab a bunch of old tracks and then we’re off to the races. It sounded like maybe one or two days of work, but it has been a months long process of daily work finding the music, ripping it onto the computer, editing and mastering everything then figuring out where songs will go in the set.

As part of your Classics Only tour, you’ll be playing a 4.5 hour set at Ten Nightclub on June 26^th. What can we expect to hear?

You can expect to hear mainly Gabriel & Dresden productions. With a heavy emphasis on some of the more obscure things that we never get to play anymore. We are also playing songs from other artists that were on our mix compilations, our radio show Organized Nature and also we’re playing a lot of the music that inspired our music as well. So besides our music, you’ll likely be hearing some Gui Boratto, James Holden, Sander van Doorn, in the mix.

How will you prepare for these extended sets? Playing 6 or 7+ hours (on select dates) sounds physically exhausting and mentally draining.

As we said above, months of work has gone into getting all the music together. We literally became Gabriel & Dresden historians in order to find everything. And we’re still searching out more music, so that each show we do is different from the last.

But the main preparation for a marathon DJ set after the music is the right nutrition. We have been hitting up Whole Foods on the day of the show and just getting really healthy, nutritious snacks and meals. You can’t go into playing long sets with a stomach full of steak you’ll just be groggy and feel disgusting. We mainly eat fruit, vegetables, fresh pressed juices and plenty of nuts and seeds before and during the show. It helps us stay on our feel and thinking, because there’s a lot of thinking that goes into DJing for 6 or more hours.

We’ve even cut back on the amount of whiskey we drink during the gig ; )

If you could perform anywhere in the world, where would you dream location be?

We still have a dream that one day we will do a tour of South Africa. Hey South African promoters are you reading this??!!

Also, It would be cool (literally) to do a party in Antarctica. Just because.

Who are some up and coming producers we should be paying attention to?

Andre Sobota, E-Spectro, Daniel Avery, Kölsch, Jeremy Olander, Christian Loeffler, Ghost Culture…we could go on…

2015 summer anthem: Two different Jonas Rathsman tracks come to mind – either his single “Wolfsbane” or his remix of Sam Smith fit this bill. Also the Shir-i-Kan remix of Jody Wisternoff’s “The Bridge” also has much summer vibes.

Best track to play at peak time: For the classics only tour, we’d have to say that goes to Sander Van Doorn’s remix of Wamdue Project “King of My Castle”

Unexpected remix to switch things up: Our bootleg of The Shins “New Slang” or, for the Classics Only tour, probably Annie Lennox “Pavement Cracks” (Gabriel & Dresden Remix)

Vocalist you’d most like to work with: We would love to do a song with The xx, Jamie Smith and Romy Madley Croft. These two have such a unique quality to their duets, we think it would be perfect for our kind of music.

Be sure to catch Gabriel & Dresden at Ten Nightclub this Friday, June 26th! Doors open at 9pm for the 21+ event, with tickets currently at $20.

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