Audio By Carbonatix
Every musician dreams of making it big. Of course, it doesn’t usually work out that way. Unless you’re Miami-based electro duo GTA.
Matthew Toth and Julio Mejia, AKA Van Toth and JWLS, have been working together for only about a year and half. But already their work has been featured by EDM giants, and Laidback Luke has made himself their mentor.
New Times recently caught up with Toth to talk ghetto tech house, bedroom studios, and Laidback Luke.
New Times: How did you get in touch with Laidback Luke?
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Van Toth: Just through his forums. Online, he has these forums where he has people post up their music. He’ll check them out and give feedback. We posted a bunch of different songs, and he contacted us privately and said, “Oh, you guys are really good, some of the best stuff on the forum.” He wanted to sign us to his publishing label. So we just went ahead and did that. And he’s sort of mentoring us now.
How does it feel to have someone like Laidback Luke as your mentor?
It’s crazy. I don’t know, it’s just such a big name that’s really supporting you and helping you with your music and stuff. It’s unreal.
How do your and Mejia’s personal styles differ? And how do you blend them in the studio?
We both really like all kinds of music — rock, hip-hop, a lot of Latin music as well. His stuff is more, I wanna say, ghetto, and my stuff is more tech house. But together, we just kind of fuse everything and do a little more big-room.
So would you say being from Miami has left a mark on your sound?
It kind of does, just because it’s such a big Latin community. We’re both from the Latin background and have Latin families. We like a lot of tribal Latin stuff, and we incorporate that into our production while still trying to keep it not Latin at the same time. It’s just a mix of everything. But it’s definitely a huge influence.
What gets you stoked in the morning when you wake up?
I love the fact that my studio is in my room, so I can just wake up and start working on stuff.
Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and have to get to work right then and there?
Definitely a lot of ideas come at odd times. A lot of it’s kind of random, mostly in the middle of the night. But I’ve never actually woken up and been like, “Oh, man! I need to so work on this right now!” It’s usually more like, “All right, I won’t go to sleep until 6 o’clock in the morning because I’ve been working on this song all night.”
