From Jam to Journey: El Mundo and Hugo Oak on Creating MØHK

We spoke to MØHK — the new collaborative project from El Mundo and Hugo Oak — about their debut EP on Bar 25 Music. Built on years of friendship, creative trust, and instinctive chemistry, the project fuses Hugo’s soulful vocals and keys with El Mundo’s hypnotic, deeply textured production.

In the interview, the duo reflects on how MØHK came to life, why their sessions are rooted in spontaneity, and how they’ve found common ground between live emotion and dancefloor energy.

You’ve both had long individual careers. What drew you to start a project together as MØHK?

We’ve known each other for years, both as collaborators and as friends from Nijmegen. Every time we crossed paths creatively, something clicked instantly. MØHK started very naturally: no plan, no pressure, just two people who realized that our combined sound had its own identity. It felt like the right moment to finally give that chemistry a name and build a world around it.

How do your creative roles divide when you’re working on music? Is it instinctive, structured, or something in between?

It’s instinctive first. We start by jamming with no expectations — Pim shaping the sonic landscape, textures and groove, and Hugo responding melodically and emotionally. Later in the process, it becomes more structured: sculpting the arrangement, vocal layers, and dynamics. But the initial spark is always spontaneous.

You both have strong individual identities as El Mundo and Hugo Oak. How do you approach preserving those voices while creating something new as MØHK?

We don’t try to hide who we are — we let those identities bleed into the project. But MØHK exists in the overlap. Hugo brings cinematic soul, instrumental storytelling, and vocal emotion; Pim brings deep, hypnotic production and a strong sense of atmosphere. Together it becomes something neither of us would make alone. That balance is the core of MØHK.

Your music feels intimate and emotionally charged. What kind of emotional space are you trying to create — both for the listener and for yourselves when writing together?

We’re drawn to contrast: tension and release, darkness and uplift, intimacy and expansiveness. We want the listener to feel something physical on the dancefloor, but also something personal in their chest. Our sessions are a safe space to process emotions — grief, hope, chaos, beauty — and we try to translate that into a sonic world people can step into.

You’ve described your sessions as jam-based. Can you walk us through how one of your tracks usually begins?

It usually starts with a simple spark: a texture, a chord, a beat. Pim builds an atmosphere, Hugo reacts with vocal sketches, and within minutes there’s a mood we can both feel. We record everything. Then we zoom out, keep the magic, trim the noise, and slowly shape the track into a story. The first 30 minutes are always the most important.

What challenges have you faced working as a duo, especially coming from different musical backgrounds?

The biggest challenge is also the strength: we come from different spaces. Sometimes we push each other outside our comfort zones, and that can feel intense. But it always leads to growth. Another challenge is giving both voices equal space in the final product — not too vocal, not too clubby, but a true hybrid. We’ve learned to trust the process.

What’s something you’ve learned from each other through this collaboration, musically or personally?

From Pim, Hugo has learned patience and sensitivity to detail — the art of letting a sound breathe. From Hugo, Pim has learned to embrace emotional storytelling and to let intuition lead. But overall, we’ve learned to really listen: to each other, and to what the track is trying to say.

“Light the Fire” and “Imagination” feel very different in mood. How did those tracks come about, and what do they represent for you?

“Light the Fire” came from a high-energy jam — raw, impulsive, a kind of ignition moment for the project. It’s about lighting something inside yourself that you didn’t know was there. “Imagination” was the opposite: quieter, more reflective, born late at night. It represents the cinematic side of MØHK, the emotional depth beneath the surface. Those two tracks together show the spectrum of who we are.

And finally, what’s next for MØHK? Will this project stay studio-based, or can we expect to see you perform together live?

We’re building toward a full MØHK universe — more singles, a bigger body of work, and a visual identity to match the music. And yes: live is coming. We’re developing a performance concept that blends dancefloor energy with vocal storytelling — something intense and cinematic. We’re also working on a concert film, which will capture the visual world of MØHK in an immersive, cinematic way. We’ll be recording it in December 2025 as the first real glimpse into what the live experience will become. 2026 will be the year MØHK steps on stage.