Touching Bass: Catz N Dogz

Seeing as my only real pet was a dim-witted koi that died due to overfeeding, I’m not in the best place to wax lyrical about animal love. Catz N Dogz are though, and they also happen to be skilled tech house beatsmiths from Poland. They’ve released two animal-themed albums on Claude VonStroke’s Mothership label as well as steller cuts on Dirtybird and their own Pets Recordings imprint. Naturally, we had to discuss how close we are to worldwide cat domination, but the pair also digressed #producerproblems and Polish cuisine before offering up this week’s Touching Bass.

Noisey: Straight in at the deep end with the serious stuff. Are cats genuinely going to take over the world or not? They’ve already conquered the internet. It’s only a matter of time…

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Catz N Dogz: Haha yes, soon they’re gonna come out from your fridge and toilet. We made up the name Catz N Dogz in 2007 specially for the new project we started on Dirtybird Records.

Trendsetters. Are you both animal lovers?

Yes we are. I had a cat and Voitek had a dog. Now I have a huge dog but Voitek doesn’t have any animals at the moment.

Now, apart from your pet loving, what have Catz N Dogz been up to, music-wise?

We’re producing our third album right now, digging a lot of music and not only house or electronic. We’re getting the inspirations from wherever we can. It’s a very long process as we want to make our work better than we did last time, every time. We’ve been listening to some hip-hop, old Polish jazz and we just did a collaboration for Polish Radio with a famous Polish jazz musician, Michal Urbaniak. In March we’re gonna have a new EP on Dirtybird and in the summer time, a new EP on Pets Recordings. We also did a few remixes and we’re compiling the Friends Will Carry You Home compilation on Pets.

In your minds, is house music teetering on saturation yet?

To be honest not so much. There’s a lot of good music around and a lot of shit. Our job is to find the best tracks and play them in the club. It’s a big adventure and fun. Sometimes frustrating, but in the end there’s so much music, so much older stuff that you can still play and a lot of new productions that still make you tremble and you have huge inspiration with new production skills.

What software/hardware setup are you currently using and what are your favourite plugins?

Definitely Ableton. It changed our life. We travel a lot and we can produce on the plane, waiting somewhere.

Seems to be a “producer’s thing” but do you ever give your Ableton/FL Studio/Reason/Logic projects weird names? I used to call mine whatever I first laid my eyes on. Big ups to ‘pink coffee mug’ and ‘you need to clean that’.

Of course. That was always a big nightmare when there was a deadline. Especially when you were looking for the project and you needed to go through 100 files, load them and find the right one because their names were dirty vagina 008, asshole13, zxzxzxzxzzxzx, 0000222222 or %^$#%#.

What other producers have been floating your boat recently?

We love the new stuff from Danny Daze, Kink and Eats Everything. Those guys’ production skills are top. Also the Atu album is amazing.

And when you’re not doing music, what normal people stuff do you do?

Meeting friends, going to the gym, watching movies, doing dinners with the theme “who will talk about music business pays for the dinner”.

Nice. Which Polish delicacy do I NEED to try and why?

If you’re a meat lover – kabanos (sausage) and also bigos (meat and cabbage stew) and bread with smalec (lard). There’s a sour soup called zurek that is best for hangovers and Pierogi (dumplings with cheese, cabbage, mushrooms and meat). For the vegetarian, Polish pickles.

Finally, thanks for putting together this week’s Touching Bass. What vibe have you gone for on the mix?

We mixed a few of our recent favourite tunes and one of our new edits plus a new track thats gonna be released on Dirtybird in March.

Thanks guys!

Catz Eats KiNK Tour from 19th – 22nd Feb. Their new Dirtybird release “Booty Comes First / Bones Shakin’” will be out on 18th March.