As a new member of the Deadbeats family, Champagne Drip is certainly curating quite the following. With a diverse background and years of experience, it's no wonder he’s able to manipulate the crowd in the way we witnessed at the Dead Rocks pre-party.
Touring with the Deadbeats fam, they had multiple stops in Colorado (seeing as how the label bosses themselves sold out Red Rocks Amphitheater on July 3). Champagne Drip graced us with his silky smooth, synth filled, future forward, & unreleased (at that time) tunes off of his now released Millennia EP at Ogden Theatre on July 2nd. Now bass heads, don’t be mistaken, the man can lay down some filth in the sultriest of ways. If you missed his pre-party performance, fret not, there are more chances to catch him. See his tour dates here.
We had a chance to sit down with Champagne drip and discuss various topics. Go ahead and check it out below.
DB: You had a lot of performances during your time in Denver. Which one stood out the most to you and why?
CD: It's hard to say. The SPL show was fun because I played a lot of old Drum n Bass music that got me into producing and DJing. That's always nostalgic. Ogden was great, I was really sick with a stomach bug so that made things challenging. I'm glad I felt good long enough to perform. The next night at Gothic was interesting because I improvised a bit more and was forced to flip the script a bit to make it different from the performance the night before.
DB: On the production side of things, while in Denver you had a production workshop at Black Box. Tell us a little bit about your experience there.
CD: The experience was great. I love sharing information with people and I really love bringing people together. I always end up learning a lot too. A lot of people have really cool tricks and a different approach to music production.
DB: Speaking of production, you recently released a sample pack on Splice. Talk about the inspiration behind the samples as a producer.
CD: A lot of the samples came from previous productions. I wanted to include stuff stuff that would be unique to what I create in the studio.
DB: Denver is a great city with a vibrant music scene, and who doesn't love Red Rocks. So aside from RRA, what are some other venues you want to check off the bucket list?
CD: There aren't really any venues that I've heard about at this point that I haven't checked out. There have to be some great spots out there there that I don't know about but after playing in the city for 11 years I've had the wonderful opportunity to check out many different venues.
DB: We would like touch on SPL as well. What were some of the circumstances that lead to the creation of Champagne Drip?
CD: I just felt like changing things up a bit. I was feeling a bit pigeonholed with the SPL project and I thought it would be fun to broaden my horizons.
DB: You’re touring a lot currently. In your sets, do you have any tracks that you find yourself using a lot? Any must hear tracks to share with the readers?
CD: I'm really digging everything by EPROM or his project called "Shades" with Alix Perez. EPROM just dropped an EP called "Pineapple". Be sure to check it out!
DB: For Christmas you posted about getting yourself a Shun knife as a gift. Are the culinary arts just a hobby? Or do you have formal education?
CD: It's totally just a hobby. I like to nerd out on cooking as a way to be creative, but there's no pressure. I'm not an amazing cook, but something I figure out some delicious recipes.
DB: Recently did a mix on Diplo and friends. Did you see a surge in your followers on social media activity after? How was your over all experience with the mad decent team? (Diplo and friends mix as well as the release on the label)
CD: It's hard to tell, a lot of my online traffic (especially on twitter) seems to be growing at an exponential rate this year.
DB: Millennia is soon to drop. Excited? Ready? Finished and happy with the final product? Any special influences when producing any of the tracks?
CD: I'm really excited about this one. It includes a lot of different influences, from pop music to Drum & Bass.
DB: When you made the switch from SPL to Champagne Drip, you also switched from your own label to Deadbeats. Talk about the transition. Have you had any roadblocks being on a label that's not your own? How have you felt with the deadbeats fam?
CD: I wouldn't really consider the development of Champagne Drip a "switch" from SPL, since I'm still playing shows as SPL and I'm not opposed to producing more music in the future. I also worked with a lot of different labels as SPL including SMOG which I consider family. Deadbeats has been super fun to work with, they stand out in the way that they actually really care about music and developing our relationship.
Article and interview by Barrett Hoffer
