From the vivid city of Budapest, two Hungarian producers that go by the name of David and Sullivan form Stadiumx. At the end of 2012, Stadiumx was the start of a philosophy by Dave and Sully. They were both under the impression that if they would create a unique, energetic sound, while fusing production techniques from multiple genres and combining their own sound design, their would be a cool synergy resulting in unique music, which resulted in the birth of the Xsound. Playing at Tomorrowland, Ushuaia, Sziget Festival, Balaton Sounds and Octagon, just to name a few; the Stadiumx guys are progressively conquering the big stadiums! ‘Howl At The Moon’, released by Protocol, has turned out to be a favorite for many DJs to play in their sets. Besides having reached the #1 position on the overall Beatport charts, ‘Howl At The Moon’ also became the most played track at Ultra Miami and it became the best sold release ever within the Protocol family, which led to Stadiumx receiving a platinum record! Since then, their career has really taken off, following up with several originals (‘Ghosts’ with Tom Swoon, ‘Wonderland’, ‘Glare’, ‘Time Is On Your Side ft. Delaney Jane’), remixes, such as Lovers On The Sun for David Guetta, which resulted in Stadiumx playing at Ibiza with Guetta himself, Sugar for Robin Schulz and Cash Cash for Gareth Emery! Their successes at Protocol paved the way for several gigs with Nicky Romero and a collab with him, ‘Harmony’!
How do you meet? Were you already friends or…?
The first time we met was 2010. I did a workshop in my hometown, Budapest, and he came to this workshop, and at the end of it he came to me, and we started to talk about music and stuff.
We found out that we have the same vision and way of think so after two weeks we went to the studio together, and from that time we started to work as a team.
What’s your track that you can not miss in a set?
We played a lot of “Howl at the Moon” and also we usually play our own songs, I would say that in our set 90% of what we play are our own songs and we also play “So Much Love”, which is a song that we did it a few years ago.
“Howl At The Moon” It becomes very popular, and people still remember the lyrics. How it borns and do you expect all this success from that release, or it was like “The track is good, let’s see how the people react”
Before StadiumX we always have producing music. We have started to creating music more than ten years ago but at the time, of course, when we had the song finished we know that it was good. As a producer, you can smell when a track sounds good or bad, but you never know what’s the reaction of the people. If you take much time to care about all these things you’ll probably lose the creativity on your works.
So, are you cooking something new and different?
We are gonna stick to house music because it’s a vast genre. The progressive house it’s included. But we are also trying to do something about dance music. Not really pop or rock or the super hit you listen on the radio. For example, we like these genres, but we don’t feel the passion for sitting in the studio and say “ok let’s produce something rock or pop.” As long as you say “this is dance music” we are into it.
Tell us a little more about the new collab, “Rise” with Nicky Romero!
So the purpose was for us to have a song with a different vocalist and we were naturally deciding if that was a good idea, so we sent it to Nicky to hear his opinion, he was very happy with the idea and we started working in the music, you know how to change this and that and work as a collab. In the end, we had to change the vocals of the song and we started looking for new vocalists that could fit the best. We had more than 40 versions, yes, we had many versions. We met Matluck, who is a Los Angeles singer, and he’s really an incredible songwriter, who even won an Emmy Awards a few weeks ago. So we decided to release the song the way you can hear it now and we’re super happy about it. After the demo, I think in two months we had one last version of the song.
What would be a unique characteristic of your production?
I do not know if it’s unique or not, but we produce most of our songs starting with a piano, even in remixes we start at the piano to discover the melody. We are very influenced by melody and vocals, but we also use a lot of hardware like synths, and that sort of thing.
Any other genre that you would like to dabble in besides progressive?
House music has a very big spectrum with all the sub-genres! Let’s say progressive house is very close to our sound at the moment but we really don’t want to put ourself into a box and keep doing what we do just like that! As long as we can say it’s house music, we are up for it!
Which other artists do you’ll think are doing some great work right now?
There are so many talented artists in the scene! It would be very hard to tell you all the artists we like, but Axwell is one of our all time favourite since we produce music! If you want to check for some fresh names in the scene, we’d say Sick Individuals and Galantis! They make some really good music!
https://soundcloud.com/stadiumxofficial/xhour-barcelona-1
What got you’ll into production? Do you’ll often disagree on things in the studio?
Before we’ve started to do Stadiumx we’ve spent many years in the studio while working together on different tracks and projects! This was a very helpful period for both of us to develop our workflow and learn from each other! It’s still a pending process! We have new ideas and tricks everyday but we have to find the middle way of things that we approve from both sides!
One festival you’ll are looking forward to playing at?
We’ll visit some really good festivals this summer! Summer and festivals are always a good combination with a lot of positive people and energy! It would make no sense just to pick up one!