LWE residents Dense & Pika have been on a blazing trail for the last 6 years. Playing some of the best dancefloors in the world from Berghain to Fabric. Emerging from the fray in 2013 with Colt and then making appearances on Scubas Hotflush Recordings. They have elevated to one of the biggest acts in the UK techno scene. Alex and Chris, have well over a decade of production experience each. They recently teamed up with LWE for their debut headline show, where they curated a night of hard-hitting techno at east London’s Village Underground.

Walking up to Village Underground we were met by a queue of excited revellers bustling and smiling, blissfully ignorant of the pouring Winter rain. Inside and out of the rain we were welcomed in by Dysart. One of the young guns on Dense & Pika’s label, Kneaded Pains. Not your average warm up set. He played hefty chugging techno laying the groundwork for the nights proceedings and getting the crowd ready for what the rest of the night had in store.

An artist I was delighted to see on the lineup was Benjamin Damage. Playing his fabled live set he took over the whole club at once with trippy semi ambient techno beats seeping in and driving the crowd on. Continuing on the vibe Dysart had expertly set. Seamless changeover. Lulling the crowd into the palm of his hand before powerfully pushing on from what Dysart had started, dropping elements of tracks of his such as “Delirium Tremens”.

Next up was the main event. Dense & Pika providing what they called “a smash and grab” performance. After spending the last few years 6 years or so honing their talents as a duo they put on a killer performance playing “the absolute pinnacle of what they’ve got”. They then left closing duties to Tijana T who closed out the night on a high and leaving the crowd ready for the next one.

We sat down with Dense & Pika before their set and asked them about everything from the state of London nightlife to their upcoming album.

WWD: So we spoke before back in September 2016 when Fabric was closed in relation to the state of London nightlife. What do you make of the state of things in London now compared to 2 years
ago?

Alex: I don’t go out in London enough, but my friends do. My friends that live here now are always talking about the different kind of parties that are going on in the city, like that Rave Boat – on Regents canal? My friends are saying that it’s kicking off as well so must be going alright. I mean, London is always going to be alright.

WWD: Well yeah, but then you have things like the Hackney council putting curfews on new establishments and stuff like that?

Alex: Well it just goes further out though doesn’t it. Just like what I had said about that rave boat out on the barge.

WWD: I suppose you see the same thing happen in places like Berlin and Paris. Where it keeps getting pushed out further and
further.

Alex: It’s great to see people make the effort to be in a place where you can’t be shut down. Like people will always find a way, but in London people are being more creative, they don’t want to go to clubs as much anymore. There are more creative things now, like the barge, warehouse raves, and more.

WWD: So, the artists you have playing tonight, how did you choose the support acts? Was it an excuse to get your mates together or how did you got about choosing them?

Alex: Well Benjamin Damage is someone we have had a lot of respect for a long time. You know, from his first release on 50 weapons to the last one. We used to play live, and I respect anyone that can carry as much clobber as he does.

Chris: We came for a soundcheck earlier this evening and we were shocked by how much gear he has. To be fair to him the best part is how much he can fit into the bags he has got. What’s most surprising is it’s just him carrying it. He’s got all that stuff squeezed into a 23-kilogram Pelican case.

WWD: You guys are residents with LWE, which obviously is a bit of a weird one because they don’t have that physical presence – it’s not like being a resident at Fabric or at Phonox. How did the idea for this party come about?

Alex: So this came off the back of the last Junction 2. There was a poll completed through the Junction 2 app which asked people to vote for the artist they wanted to see the most. It turned out we were one of the most sought-after artists on at the festival, so it just kind of made sense.

Chris: And also, every single gig we’ve done for them has been perfect. They’re like the English version of Awakenings. Really well organized and great sound so, through being residents with them, we have had the opportunity to play all the best parties. We only play for them in London, and when we got asked to do it, it just made sense.

WWD: How long are you guys playing for tonight?

Chris: Just two hours. We wanted to play for 3 but…

Alex: But if we play for two, people are coming to see us because of what they’ve seen at the LWE events. I’d rather us do a two-hour smash and grab like they would expect but, I think I would rather deliver it, get in and out and play the absolute pinnacle of what we’ve got and showcase the new album, and ideally leave them on a high.

WWD: That’s funny because I was expecting you guys to play about 3 – 4 hours!

Chris: We do, we normally do. We like playing longer sets. What the idea is that ideally, we do this, and we weren’t expecting it to go this well, it has, and then ideally just do the next event with just us.

WWD: In the UK I’ve noticed that it’s almost an anomaly where someone plays all night. Whereas, you have places like Phonox
where Jayda G is playing all night every Friday in February and Esa is their Saturday night resident. What sort of effect do you think this has on A). Up and coming young DJs and B). The punters, the kids going to clubs being like “Ah I’m going to see six DJs in one night” as opposed to seeing one for the whole night.

Chris: I feel like it’s the whole EDM thing, where DJs play for like an hour, and Drum & Bass is kind of similar where DJs just play for one hour. To stretch your legs, if you want to show people as much music as possible, which I think any DJ – especially Techno – want to show as much as possible and not just super banging stuff, 3/4 hours would be
the norm.

Alex: The reason we’re only doing 2 hours is because we wanted to give the people who are going to come and see us exactly what they want to hear. We get a lot of accolades for leathering the shit out of it. So, I’m guessing that most of the punters come and see us because they’ve seen us at the LWE events, and if we were to play other stuff and to stretch our legs a bit, I think perhaps a lot of people don’t know us well enough for us to do that. I just think, fuck it let’s just do exactly what we
do but stronger.

WWD: And with keeping a focus on the UK scene and perhaps maybe this reaches into other scenes too but, do you think longer
sets becoming more common will help drive DJing forward, but not only that, help drive electronic music coming out of the UK as
a whole? Like do you think if everything gets focussed into these 1 or 2 hours sets, will you really get people like Mano le Tough or
Dixon?

Alex: It’s the kids getting there that’s the problem. I think as a punter you’re going to get a much better, I don’t know if education is the right word but, from a DJ playing a long set you’re going to get a much broader spectrum of what the DJ wants to play. Whereas in a 2-hour set it’s like smash and grab.

Chris: On the flip side you have only got the people there that arealready established doing it and you can’t give people the opportunity, like less established artists, you just can’t. If it’s just about our label, Kneaded Pains we have got so many artists that we want to promote and if we go and play all night then I think it’s selfish. Obviously at some stage we will do it, but if we did, some of the other artists on the label wouldn’t get that chance.

Chris: I’m a big fan of longer sets. You know, I just think it’s more descriptive. You get more time to go a bit deeper and show different sides that you don’t normally get to present. Personally, I think great DJ’ing is about showing more than just what people want to see and the hits I suppose. If I was going to see a DJ that I really, really wanted to see I would want to see them play for 4 or 5 hours.

Alex: But my point is, and the reason we didn’t do it tonight, is because we obviously wanted the people that we respect to be part of it and I think as it is our first one it also shows more musically what we are into. I think at least then the crowd will see the sort of artists we are into. Dysart, Tijana T and Benjamin Damage, that’s a pretty eclectic lineup that you wouldn’t really see at Tobacco dock or Drumcode Live. It shows what we’re about.

Chris: It’s really just an opportunity for us to show our musical diversity.

Alex: In the future, of course we would love to play all night and probably will or, do half and half if we have the opportunity.

WWD: So with that in mind can we expect more of these events with you guys curating the line-up or playing the whole thing
yourselves?

Alex: I think we will do both. I would quite like to do “Dense and Pika Presents” … or just Dense & Pika and that’s all you’re getting.

WWD: So you recently did an interview where you described the music you play out as “Hateful”. Now, you joked about that
comment later but I feel like there was more to that. Is this hatefulness coming from hanging out with too many heavy metal bands whilst making the new album or what?

Alex: Well like you said we have done a record with Igor Cavalera – of Sepultura fame for the album. When I said hateful it was slightly tongue in cheek but, when we are playing we play the stuff that we want to play. You know when we play music we feel like there are very few people that are in the position that can play the style of music that we really want to play. That’s that dark. Like UK techno, the stuff people make is fucking dark, but dark is the aesthetic of what we play. I’m not going to beat around the bush about it, but we have gotten to the stage where we can play like that. When we are in the studio and we are signing music,
and Matt (Dysart) will tell you, we ask them if they can they make it darker and weirder and that’s our MO, that’s what we’re about.

WWD: And so with your record label Kneaded Pains I suppose it sounds like you aren’t out signing stuff for the masses or stuff that you think is going to sell tonnes of copies.

Chris: No not at all. We sign what we want to play and it’s as simple as that.

Alex: Yeah exactly, we sign stuff that we appreciate and stuff that we want to play. You know there’s this safe path of stuff, nice poppy stuff, melodic, heavy drops and big rises that will make a crowd move, but I’m not into that and I know Chris certainly isn’t into that.

WWD: In referring back to your album. I feel like electronic music albums are always a bit of a slippery one. Because you either get someone putting out 10 club bangers or they tend to go towards really weird ambient stuff and try and stretch their legs more
artistically, which can sometimes not go so well. For your album, what’s the story, what’s it going to be like?

Chris: It’s functional, so it’s all stuff that we are going to play. You know there’s no point, say, if you are playing pumping techno a lot and drums a lot in making ambient house records. So, it’s all functional stuff that we want to play out. It’s a little bit broader than what we would do on an ep, more melodic but still very much us.

Alex: Yeah! There’s no point and I was saying this to Chris yesterday when we were going through promos of an album and just wading through the ambient bits to get to the middle to find the bits that you’re looking for. It’s true that you don’t really see many albums that are all banging and that’s what I want us to do on this. I want us to write music that we release and every EP we do or every remix we do, we try and make it ours. You know there are moments when you are watching someone play and a track comes on and the whole crowd immediately goes “What the fuck is that!?”, I want the whole album to be that. Be it
kick heavy or be more synth based or whatever. The thing is that we aren’t trying to impress anybody. I don’t give a shit. I am just
showing you what we do. It’s just us and we aren’t making it for anyone else other than ourselves, but it is thought out. We aren’t just putting out 10 tracks that we think are ok, we have fucking toiled over this.

WWD: How long has this been in the making for?

Chris: It’s been a long time coming this.

Alex: Well you know we have always gone through phases of saying we will do an album, we will do an album and we never do it. Now I feel like just to cement the project, without sounding big headed, there’s a lot of people now that generationally, don’t know the stuff that we did originally. That’s fine, but for us to cement what we’re about, I really want to show people, as does Chris, that this is our style because we don’t sound like anyone else. We just don’t and that’s why people dig us.

Chris: But maybe don’t write all of that.

Alex: It’s fair enough though!

Chris: Well… yeah.

 Alex: What’s wrong with that? You’ve got to be confident about it, don’t
you?

You can follow Dense & Pika on Facebook, Soundcloud, Beatport and Instagram. You can also check out their label Kneaded Pains which is currently sitting at the top of the Beatport charts with Eats Everything ‘Space Raiders’ (Charlotte de Witte Remix). Buy it HERE!