Techno with Teeth: The Rise of LUSU
Dutch duo carving out their place in the music landscape
When Wiwek and Mike Cervello first retreated to a secluded house in the woods during the early days of the pandemic, their only plan was to make music. What came out of those sessions wasn’t just a few experimental tracks, but an entirely new sound, something distinct from their solo work.
That spark evolved into LUSU, a collaborative project that now stands at the forefront of modern, driving techno. In light of their most recent release, ‘Drums Of The Night’ on HI-LO’s label HILOMATIK, the duo took the time to answer some questions.
"We ended up making a whole different sound than what we do in our solo projects,"
the duo reflects during an AMA on Heldeep’s Discord channel.
“So we decided to give it a name of its own.”
With releases like Reckless, Ready 4 The Bass, and most recently Drums of the Night on HI-LO’s imprint HILOMATIK, LUSU have steadily built a unique sonic identity, based on their cinematic techno approach.
Still, finding their way in the techno landscape hasn’t come without challenges.
“We both came from different scenes,” they say.
“Breaking into the techno world and finding collaborators within it was a new process. And nowadays, it feels like 10% of the work is making the music and 90% is figuring out how to stand out among tens of thousands of daily releases.”
Despite that reality, LUSU’s efforts are paying off. Their sound — gritty, driving, and undeniably heavy — has earned them dedicated followers and support from names like HI-LO, Armin van Buuren, Eli Brown, and many more.
The pair also express admiration for longtime favorites like Chocolate Puma and D-Unity, both of whom they'd love to work with again, but this time under the LUSU name.
And while they’ve focused mostly on techno-rooted collaborations so far, genre-crossing experiments aren’t off the table.
“We first tried to get in collaborations within the techno scene, which was a challenge because we both came from another scene. It might be interesting to fuse it a little bit in the future with other genres of artists.”
