Meet Buenos Aires’ hottest trance duo: Heatbeat

Meet Buenos Aires’ hottest trance duo: Heatbeat

7 March, 2008 | 9.30PM

• Section: Music News Topics: South American Music Conference
• Written by: Zack Rico

From the underground trance clubs of Buenos Aires, Heatbeat have risen to become one of the hottest new names in trance music.

The duo of Agustin Servente (21 years old) and Matias Faint (23) has everyone from Armin Van Buuren, Paul Van Dyk and Ferry Corsten excited - every one of Judge Jules’ radio shows in the last three months has featured a Heatbeat tune [except one].

We grabbed Heatbeat to find out more about their past and Buenos Aires’ trance scene.

Why do you think you’ve received such quick recognition around the world?

Our first release was on Istmo just two years ago, and since then, our music has gotten much better.

We knew that we had to keep trying — you must move on and finish the tracks you’ve started.

What’s your history of making music?

It’s very second nature.

Matias has produced since he was 10 years old, he can play piano, guitar and drums.

I play guitar and have been producing for five years.

We wanted a strong reaction from the beginning, and being original is very important to us.

It’s certainly helped you to get the attention of big-name producers, including Armin Van Buuren.

Yes, isn’t that crazy?!

There are a lot of big DJs that we’ve been listening to for five years now, and they’re the ones contacting us to tell us that they like our music — instead of the other way around.

We’re really surprised.

We sometimes speak with Ferry Corsten.

We talk a lot with Armin Van Buren, who has always supported our tracks.

He’s now No.1 in the DJ Mag 100, which is fine by us.

Now, we’re lucky enough to be on Paul Van Dyk’s label, Vandit Digital.

After such a short time producing, you must be pinching yourself.

It’s great to be on a such a global level.

I’ve loved Paul’s music ever since I started listening to it.

It’s fun to see a video on YouTube of Paul playing our track in Germany to 15,000 dancing people!

Lately, we’ve been receiving private messages from people who love our music, asking “Where can I buy it?”

That’s the great thing about the global nature of electronic music; there’s a DJ in Germany playing your track, and you help that DJ to set the mood of a party.

I would love to meet someone from Japan who dances to our tracks, but chances are, I’ll never meet him — yet he’s still dancing.

Electronic music works around geographical borders.

And with your music, you work around genre barriers, too. You often mix up your primarily trance sounds with other types of sounds.

Nowadays, you have to combine sounds. It keeps DJ sets much more interesting.

If the focus is on trance 100% of the time, there’s no evolution.

Every single one of our tracks has to have something crazy or original, like the sound of rain in the breakdown. Or a solo piano. Or a Deadmau5 influence.

We often add elements of electro house, minimal, tech house and progressive house to come up with new sounds.

None of which has thwarted the media at all?

Interestingly, we talk a lot with Judge Jules from BBC’s Radio 1.

He asked us to do a remix and we did an interview with him.

We’ve discovered that in three months of radio shows, there’s only been one in which he has not played our music.

But we still remember our humble beginnings of going from being small to pretty big in trance.

How is it that you started?

We started in Buenos Aires locally, and have been holding DJ residencies for two years.

We DJ every Friday at club Bahrein and once a month at FIESTA PURA, where we bring in and do warm-up and closing sets for the most innovative international trance DJs like Above & Beyond, Markus Schulz, Tall 2XLC and Menno de Jong.

Is the trance scene growing here?

It’s small, but it’s growing.

There is a big house scene here, thanks to DJs like Heran Catteneo, who was the first Argentinian DJ to have a global profile.

Because of that a lot of house events take place here.

But while there aren’t many trance parties here currently, there are promoters who are starting to bring trance DJs to Argentina.

A taster of Heatbeat’s unreleased tracks

Heatbeat have got an upcoming EP on Armada’s sub label Soundpiercing.

“‘Push Over’ is a dirty filthy tech trance with a low BPM range of about 130 bpms,” says HB’s Agustin.

Agustin: “‘ChochiCho Tiene Hambre’ is a funny story.

“Chochi Cho is the nickname we gave to Matias’ cat.

“‘ChochiCho Tiene Hambre’ means Matias cat is hungry - so it’s quite funny to hear people like Markus Schulz say the name of the record on his radio show.”

• (5) Comments
• (2418) Views
• Check out Heatbeat on Beatport