Tritonal on their start, creative process and importance of finding your peace of mind [Exclusive Interview]
BY ANASTASIIA and Stephen RIDDLE
When I first heard about Tritonal I was in high school, and I had no idea what progressive trance was, or even what EDM was, if I’m being honest. But their melodic and calming music resonated with me so deeply back in the day, that I continued to enjoy them as I grew older. In the last 13 years they sure have grown as well! Becoming top producers and establishing themselves as one of the trendsetters of the genre. The legendary duo is known for their complicated sound design, whether it’s their earlier soul touching and meditative trance tracks or energetic and vibrant main stage worthy tunes. We sat down with the masterminds behind Tritonia radio before their show in Atlanta. Chad and Dave quickly teleported us back to the beginning of their careers, from choosing their name to artists that inspired them to the importance of finding your own peace amidst the global pandemic.
Atlanta EDM: Tell us about your name, how did you come up with it and what’s the meaning behind it?
Chad: Wow, old school question, I like it! This is like a throwback to 2011. So, Tritonal is just about 15 years old right now, right? We've been doing it for a minute! We're old school. We came from the trance days before dance music really landed and really took root in North America. When we were looking for names, it takes me back to the MySpace days of forums and internet blogs, and back when Microsoft Windows still mattered to us. We went through so many and a “tritone” (in music) is an augmented 4th, diminished 5th note, and Tritonal is an explosive. It's 80% TNT. So, musical explosivity was sort of the crux, but it took a lot of really bad names to get there. And we always get asked what they are... And I always say no, but I don't care sometimes… *laughs*
Atlanta EDM: Is this one of those times?
Chad: Yeah, we have a few. “Refracted Nature” is one of them! Like a psychedelic rock band.
Atlanta EDM: Who were some producers that you listened to at first that made you realize this is what we want to do?
Chad: The classics. Yeah, we came from the classic guys. Right?
Dave: Yeah. I mean, obviously Armin Van Buren and Tiesto, Sasha, and Digweed.
Chad: Dave was more into pure trance, PVD, Armin and them, and he kind of occulted me, so to speak, and I was underground. Carl Cox, Sasha, and Digweed, Nick Warren, Global Underground, all those dudes. It was a cool mesh. It was a mesh of what I think the best elements about trance are, the real musicality of the actual interval movements, and the chord movements. If you're an astute transfer, you know your way around scales usually, and harmony, even if it's by ear. There's a lot of real interesting harmony there, or was in the early days. But we really bonded as a duo around Above and Beyond. And I think to this day, they probably still hold the most respect for me anyway.
Atlanta EDM: How do you guys produce your tracks? Who usually takes the lead on what?
Chad: Dave's a better producer than I am. We've always both been producers, though. So that was really key early on, is that we both had studios, and we both bounced projects back and forth and still do. I think that when it comes to like, “Hey, man, you need to tackle this riff,” Dave's the guy that takes that on. When it comes to big picture, “What are we fucking doing? How does this feel? What's the song about? And do we even fucking like it anymore?” That's really a gut feeling that we do together, but I'm really good at it, in terms of arrangement and the “is this right yet” kind of guy, and a mix guy! I'm really meticulously trying to get the mix right, but you know, I have always been more outgoing in terms of frontman, and Dave's always been more introspective and really good at writing music. So, I think that just those two polarities of personality type harmonize well.
Atlanta EDM: Tell us about your latest release with Codeco, how did you come about this collaboration?
Chad: That collaboration came about five or six months ago? We were working through it, the cords came out really dope, and the vocal was sick. I think that we got to give a lot of props to Codeko! So, collaborations happen in all different ways. We've been in so many of them, and a lot of times we've been the ones to take on the brunt of the work and finalize the master. This particular record, we were privileged to have an instrumental that was pretty much done. We reworked it a little, and we rewrote the end of the record, then we co-wrote the top line with Brett Truitt, and the message of “Superhuman” is on brand with the message of our new album Coalesce, which is really about awakening the aspect of yourself that's already whole, complete, cohesive, at one with everything in the universe. It's really the sort of birthing of consciousness, and a new level of awakening is happening on this planet. So it turns out that “we're superhuman” means that we can be day to day sort of entrenched and engrossed in our human aspects on the ground, getting our hands dirty in our day-to-day activities, and simultaneously realizing that regardless of how the narrative plays out, there's an aspect of our beingness that's boundless, eternal and infinite. And so when you're playing on both of those fields simultaneously, there's inner equanimity, which just means that there's a place within you that's in stillness or in peace.
Atlanta EDM: From what I understand, the creative process is very important for you both. What are some things and artists that you draw inspiration from?
Dave: Hmm, that's a good question. I mean, we don't just listen to dance music we do. We're listening to other music like Jon Hopkins, Ólafur Arnalds, some of the progressions from Ólafur Arnalds are amazing! They're just simply piano, but there's something magical that he does. Creatively the inspiration comes for me, at least from that point of view. When you get the chord voicing right, when the bones of a song are good without a drop then you don't need a drop. The song is already a good song.
Chad: Dave's talking about taking inspiration from the root chakra and saying that if the bones aren't right, it ain't right.
Atlanta EDM: Many artists struggled during the pandemic, what are some things/hobbies that helped you to get through?
Chad: Meditation, Sadhana, but that was it, I dug in hardcore. There's a million things that go into wellness, but to take that time for yourself every day, to sit in the discomfort of the incessant mind and allow it to subside, and use a single pointed concentration as a technique through which to transcend identification with thoughts allows for inner spaciousness to manifest, and when there's inner spaciousness, there's more ease and comfort in the sort of challenging, chaotic, external phenomena that are always changing. Forms change, trees, birds, plants, crypto, your body, the clouds, everything is always changing.
Atlanta EDM: Can you tell us a little bit about Inner Engineering?
Chad: Isha Kriya (a guided meditation) is from Sadhguru. I can't say enough about starting my journey towards really embracing Kriya Yoga. I started with Sadhguru’s Inner Engineering program, but I really fell in love with Paramahansa Yogananda. And the reason is because Paramahansa Yogananda’s love for seeking the divine, resonated with me deeply. In a way, that was very devotional, it was very much a “lover chasing after his beloved.” Whereas some paths, like Zen Buddhism, an amazing path, are very dry. It's not about emotional devotion, it's about using techniques, razor sharp, in order to crystallize your consciousness. There's aspects of your beingness that are absolutely physical, meaning that there's particles and atoms and molecules, and biochemistry going on. And there's an aspect of your being that is more subtle than that. It's a higher frequency of vibration. It's past life, it’s metaphysical, but it's still an aspect of you. You just don't interact with it with your five senses. So, Kriya Yoga is a way to experience that part of yourself, that isn't physical. There's faith, and there's belief systems, and there's dogma, there's paradigms and all those things. And there's scientific inquiry, right? And on the edge of quantum physics right now is the spiritual revolution, because why? Because when they get down to the fucking core, there's nothing there! There are waves, waves of potentiality that manifest the instant consciousness portraying itself on it. So Kriya Yoga or yogic techniques are techniques which have been proven effectively for you to have your own experience of what it means to transcend your body and mind, and experience that aspect of yourself that's Metaphysical.
Atlanta EDM: Is that how Reverence was born?
Chad: Reverence was born from a few things. Dave's always been a big “piano chill out guy,'' and we went to school at University of Texas, and my professor in music has continued to work with Dave and I. So me, Nick and Dave sat in different parts of the United States, and over the course of half a year, kind of allowed this meditation album to meditate our way through the pandemic *laughs* I mean, we're doing other things too, like day club events and streaming, but that was one thing that was really peaceful. And sure, it had a great message. It was born out of a sense of ”hey, we don't even know if it's ever going to come back. Let's put something out there that can be used by the people to make themselves feel a bit more alright!” It wasn't a time to be releasing epic anthems or a fucking big main stage festival banger. It didn't make any sense to us. To me, it felt like a very good time to honor what was going on.
Atlanta EDM: The music industry doesn’t usually talk about mental health issues, but your partnership with National Alliance on Mental Illness is a meaningful one. Is there anything you’d like to share with your Atlanta fan base on how we can make a difference or any other messages that you would like to leave with us?
Chad: Yeah, you could donate of course, but look, we've seen a lot of people die. And we've seen a lot of addicts and alcoholics go back out during the pandemic in really hard ways, in which they're losing their families and ending up in treatment facilities. And as somebody who in recovery has 15 years sobriety now, I would just say do the things that we've just talked about, with meditation, and really finding or making time for yourself, even if that's reading a book, or taking a walk, or something that you do for yourself every single day, that's meant to center, refocus, and rebalance you. If you're not taking time for yourself, you're becoming deficient internally. You're not honoring those parts of your beingness that need to be addressed, that need time for introspection to really harmonize and reflect on “how am I doing? What decisions Am I making? What am I thinking about? Am I obsessively thinking about something?” You need to be mindful of how your mind is going. If you don't have the awareness about your constitution, then you become enslaved to identification with your thoughts. And that enslavement takes away dominion over your volition. Volition is your willpower. When we have dominion over our volition, we can become more aware of those things in our lives which are hampering our growth, those things in our life that are causing pain and suffering for ourselves and others and those things in our life, which are distortions of the way we think. Mental wellness really is about taking time for yourself to really cultivate awareness.