Tea & Biscuits With: Koven

Multi-award-winning producer and vocalist duo Koven (Katie and Max) recently followed up their ‘Butterfly Effect’ LP and the launch of their virtual reality club Another Home with an extended version of their debut album on Monstercat. The album dropped on March 11th, almost one year on from the original’s release.

The ‘Butterfly Effect’ extended edition features brand selections as well as a host of remixes from the likes of mainstay names Ilan Bluestone, Franky Nuts, Oliverse, The Prototypes and more. It’s another huge body of work to come from Koven and the extended version of ‘Butterfly Effect’ has some new material included, which are tracks they’ve spent meticulously finishing over lockdown.

Exclusive offerings like the cinematic soundscape of ‘Light Up’ leads you into the LP on top of soaring, euphoric vibes and the drum & bass inspired breakdowns which injects the track with their relentless energy. This is an energy carried throughout the remainder of the album, something which takes different forms but is still inherently the duo’s magic. With ‘Butterfly Effect’ due to be launched at Rampage Festival last year, Koven instead tested ways to bring their explosive live performances to fans across the world, which continued in 2020 with a host of event line ups at Another Home, alongside their Audio-Visual show with Jägermeister. It only proves Koven’s ingenuity and constant commitment to their audience in bringing them fresh music through different formats. 

Koven’s musical evolution, even despite the hurdles of the last twelve months, has been phenomenal and the new music on the extended edition of ‘Butterfly Effect’ demonstrates this. The next chapter is beginning to open for Koven and whilst they’re embracing new technology, as well as flexing their creativity through new music, they’re set to climb new heights in the coming year. They’re an unstoppable force and ‘Butterfly Effect’ stands as their testament.

We had a a quick catch up with the duo to find out what brought them to the idea of the album, processes, virtual reality clubs and tech…

Hi Koven – thanks for speaking to us! Tell us what the process was behind ‘Butterfly Effect Deluxe’ – were they all tracks you wrote over lockdown? Or was lockdown more of an influence into writing a second album?

The idea of the deluxe came because of lockdown, we may have done it anyway, obviously it’s impossible to know what our decisions would have been if things didn’t go the way they did, but we chose to do it to keep the whole project as fresh as possible until we could get out to play shows again. The first idea was mainly to create a remix package as we had already started creating our own VIP of ‘Butterfly Effect’. But we wanted it to be as impactful as possible to make sure the project continued to have life. So that’s when we decided we needed some fresh singles in there as well. It was a combination of tracks we had already had ideas for and then some we started totally fresh. ‘Numb’ was written during the first lockdown and ‘Light Up’ was actually written about 6 months after that. You can hear our optimism had increased somewhat by this point. ‘Good Enough’ was an idea we’d had for ages so we are really glad we finally got that one finished and out. They are sitting very well in amongst the other album tracks.

You’ve done some amazing events to get your music to fans across the world. Tell us about the process behind your virtual reality club ‘Another Home’ – how did the idea come about and how did you find performing in virtual reality?

It was during that horrible time that everyone in the music industry was realising just how long this could all go on for and we needed to be creative with our ideas to continue to grow, promote and create content. We are very pleased that we were one of the very first to do a virtual reality show / club. We had the idea very early on, it took ages to build but we started working on it super early, like right at the start of lockdown one. 

You were one of the first acts to have a Bullet Time camera rig as part of a DJ set and live stream – when you started playing out live and working with your team, did you have an idea of the scope you wanted to explore with your project, especially technologically? Or was this more a product of lockdown and needing to get yourself out there for fans?

We knew we wanted to do something very special for the livestream that would be launching our deluxe album. Originally we were looking at different locations and trying to be creative with where it was taking place. But it soon became apparent that was being done by everyone else, so we decided to be creative with how it was filmed rather than where it was filmed. The idea of the bullet time rig came from our manager, he suggested it to us and right away we said yup – Let’s get on this. 

How did your link up come about with Bullet Time and how was the overall experience? It must have been quite a set up.

We just found a company online, but it was all very lucky it fell into place because there are only two companies that do it in the UK. So, the company we worked with were very busy but had the time free on the two days we needed them (one day to set up on location and one day to shoot). We were also lucky that they had never done anything in this kind of music / DJ world which meant they were as keen as us to work together. 

You have a host of remixers on the LP – how did you go about selecting them? Was there a direction you were aiming for as a whole with the remixers or was it more about selecting them on a case by case basis?

We wanted the remix package to be a whole load of emotions and genres, so it was great fun deciding who we wanted to have on it. It was a super personal project for us because we just approached people we knew very well ,who’s work we loved, it wasn’t done in a manager to manager way it was us being very sincere and genuine in our approach and saying “we just love your music and we would be honoured for you to be part of this project”.

How has it been working with Monstercat? And what are your future plans with them? Is there anything you can let us know about coming up?

We absolutely love Monstercat, we feel very at home there, their audience suits us really well and we will be working with them lots more in the future, including on some live shows and festivals which is very exciting for us.

Koven have just announced that they will be performing on the Main Stage at the massive Let It Roll festival which runs 5th – 7th August!