NEONLIGHT is the union of two very different, unique personalities – Jakob Thomser and Tobias
Jakubczyk – childhood friends brought together through their shared passion for Drum & Bass. The
German producer and DJ duo first entered the worldwide D&B scene in 2009. Since then, they have developed their own individual sound, enveloping melodies and harmonic twists in Drum & Bass beats and fierce basslines with fast and heavy drums (174 bpm). Enticing listeners both in clubs and at tour concerts across the globe, including countries as close the Czech Republic and the Netherlands and as far as Australia and New Zealand, they have released their music with multiple labels, such as Blackout Music, Eatbrain, RAM Records, and Visio
Hi Neonlight! How are you doing?
We are very happy that “our baby” is finally out and that there is such a huge positive feedback from all sides! The pressure of the last few weeks is slowly easing and the hard work finally pays off. It took quite a long time until we had everything together – especially for the physical release. Now we are ready for summer, a little vacation and of course the festival season!
Where does the name Neonlight come from and where did you meet each other?
Tobi: It was in summer 2008 as I was looking for a name which might fit better for our collaborative work as our recent names “Nize5ive & Pitch‘n’Sulphur“. I was flicking through a graphic magazine and stumbled across an article which was about the making of the artwork of Booka Shades album “The Sun And The Neon Light”. The words “neon – light” got my attention right away. After a few draws making a remarkable logo design we were ready to go with our new name “Neonlight” back in January 2009.
Jay: We have known each other since childhood. Our Dads used to play together in a rock band and we have been playmates in a sandbox. But let’s say, we met again musically in the early 2000s. In that time we started to produce our first music on PC together.
Take us back to the beginning, how did you find your passion for producing electronic music?
Jay: I begun producing in 1998 on a cheap PC and a MS DOS software called Fast Tracker II. At this time I listened to euro dance and techno/trance music. Even before that I composed music on a Roland RD-500. In 2001 I became addicted to Drum&Bass and of course I wanted to produce this amazing music! But there has been no youtube or books to learn from and I spent much time on trial and error, haha!
Tobi: For me it was my school trip to London 1997. I was watching MTV for the very first time and one of the first songs I saw was “Firestarter” by The Prodigy. This had an serious impact on my taste of music. I started looking for music everything from Breaks to Hip Hop and Drum & Bass in the following years. At least Jay and his brother showed me a lot of their first Drum & Bass CD´s and records that time as well. This was the beginning of my passion for that kind of music! 🙂
You have over 10 years’ experience of working with electronic dance music. What are your favorite elements within your recent releases that you still call back to/is heavily drawn from the original inspiration behind the “Neonlight” project?
It was always our goal to have more “musically aspects” in our music than just technical sounds. We both listen to Rock Music (and other) since ages and we love melodies. Cheesy melodies, haha! That’s why we still love writing intros, occasionally with a huge and cinematic pathos.
When a song has a good hook line that stick to your ear and you can sing along AND it touches your soul, then it is a good tune.
You released your second album called “Vanity Fair” through Blackout Music. Could you share the creative process behind this album?
You have to watch our weekly vlog on youtube, haha! Well, it took us two years of writing all that tunes. A few projects are very old, from 2016 or so. We have two workstations here, each in a separate room, that are connected via a server. Most of the time we work separately. We do not split into sound design and writing so much, all is done on the flow inside the Cubase project. Sometimes we get a couple Ideas (resulting in tracks) from just one project, where we started to mess around with sounds and synths. Some projects are huge and very unclearly. Dozens of tracks (a lot of them disabled). Before mixing we always have to tidy up and take decisions; what we want to keep in the song and where the focus is on.
The title track “Vanity Fair” was the initial moment, when we started to think about archetypes. From that point we looked differently on the tracks we worked on and wanted to find the “character” in each track. Our concept was born – And we always love to work within a concept!
We found good names for some tracks and wrote good tracks for some characters. Vise-versa.
The “Vanity Fair” album includes collaborations with Black Sun Empire, flowanastasia, Holly Day and Lucaciu. How did you end up working with these artists?
Jay: There have been three tracks where we wanted vocals for. We had a list of artist, but – you know – everybody is busy. The Canadian vocalist “flowanastasia” was responding very quick on our request. We already followed her for a while, because of her diversity and her timbre is exactly what we wanted on Desire! And the result is stunning! (Big up!!).
Holly Day is a singer and songwriter who works next door, haha! One day I made myself a coffee in the kitchen and she was practicing something. Her deep and strong voice was impressive! Holly was interested in the whole album concept and confirmed quickly.
“Ignored” was supposed to be with vocals too, but there was not much time asking artists. While mixing I came up with the idea of a saxophone improvisation. I had somebody in mind. Antonio Lucaciu and I studied music at the same university, and there I recorded him a couple of times. I felt that he must be able to deliver a great recording. And so he did.
Tobi: We had the idea for the album to write all tracks by ourselves. No collaboration with other producers with the exception making another track with Black Sun Empire. So we did and it turned out to be exactly what we had in mind for this track.
Covid time and restrictions are finally at an ease. How did you adjust to living in a completely different time mentally and physically? Was it hard for you?
Financially seen it was pretty hard. We had big luck – a couple times. On the other hand we had much freedom. For example, when everybody had to stay at home during the lock downs, we where able to go to our studio. And we had many free weekends that we could spend with our families.
It was also very hard to keep a connection to our fans! When you are not playing, you cannot tell so much. And posting always the same stories about music production and studio life was pretty boring quickly. We did production live streams, gave online lessons and started a patreon.
We missed the stage and the feedback from the people a lot.
Would you like to share something with the followers of Let the Bass Get You?
We want to say Thank You to everyone who supported us over the last few years! Of course, we do this music for us and our passion, but it would not be the same without the people who listen to it, give us feedback and come seeing Neonlight live on stage!
After the release is before the release 😉 We don’t take a rest and are already working on a follow-up release. It is part of the Vanity Fair universe. Until that we recommend our Special Edition USB Box full of bonus content like three tracks, videos, a printed booklet, a gallery and more! Check it out on the Blackout Bandcamp store!
Last but not least: You can support us by following our Instagram (instagram.com/neonlightmusic) or becoming a Patron (patreon.com/neonlightmusic).
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