DJNY #3: Lorant Duzgun

Any musician can compose music to release, but without the backing of a record label who can provide professional assistance and marketing, their chances of commercial success are reduced.

Enter Lorant Duzgun, a New York DJ and producer and founder of the newly-launched Royal Advisor Records, an electro-focused label that is a home for an eclectic variety of sounds from local artists. 

RAR, which kicked off their live show schedule with a recent launch party in Manhattan at Home Sweet Home on 131 Chrystie Street, will be showcasing their talents and new releases at the venue on every last Sunday of the month.

Here's the inside story on the beginnings of RAR- a mix of luck, passion, and friendship leading to bigger things.

Around town…

Binarysound: Can you tell us about your background and how you became interested in electronic dance music?
 

Lorant Duzgun: I started DJing in high school and then I got myself a fake ID and started going to all the big New York City clubs like Twilo and Vinyl.  Shortly after that, I was introduced to Danny Tenaglia by my friend Geoff Gains while I was in the beginning stages of my career so that was obviously inspirational.

Later on I began working for Twisted Records which is a pretty significant label as far as the "tribal" genre of dance music goes.  I first got into music production when I was working for Twisted by doing a remix of "The Hook" by Geoff Gains. After that, DJing took a backseat to production for a while because I wanted to learn music composition and get my head around some of the software out there.

A record label was something I always wanted to do but there needs to be a right time to start something like that. I met SAMN two years ago and we started working on some demos and I from there on in the label became a work in progress. I then started working with Monique-Renee (Sappho's Journey) and given that these are two very talented people, I thought I might as well start putting out the stuff we were working on.

BSound: So that's where the idea for the label come from- trying to find an outlet to release these demos?
 

LD: Yea it was actually about 5-6 years ago that I wanted to launch a record label but I wasn't experienced enough. After meeting SAMN and Sappho's Journey it just seemed like the right timing to get it off the ground.  

BSound: Where did you meet them?
 

LD: SAMN I met through a mutual friend of mine. With Sappho's Journey, we knew each other back at the time when we worked at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. Then we lost touch and I ran into her on the street a little over a year ago and I told her "we used to talk about making music so lets finally do it". So then she came over one day to see if we could work on something together and it was an instant musical bond [laughs].

A label is born…

BSound: Where did you come up with the name 'Royal Advisor' for your label?

LD: There are two answers to that. One of them is that it just came to me and the other answer is that I'm a big Queen fan. Freddy Mercury is my idol, but I didn't want name it something like it 'Queen Records'. I just liked the whole concept that Queen had to their stuff like "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races". They were kind of like an indirect inspiration. 

BSound: In today's music industry, record sales seem to be shifting away from physical formats to digital stores like Beatport and iTunes. How did that transition affect you in your experiences of starting up RAR?

LD: It's much easier as far as costs go because you don't have to print vinyl and CD's. The upside is that you save a lot of money by not having to do that. But the downside of it is that many, many others are doing the same thing at the same time. There are a lot of independent labels going up at once, so there's a lot of competition. But in terms of getting a label off the ground it's a lot easier because you only need a web site, distributor, and some talented artists.

BSound: Can you describe the styles of the artists on RAR?

LD: Both of them are very good songwriters. They have their own styles and that's not something that comes by every day. They both have definite but separate visions, like Samn is really into the early R&B nu-jack swing stuff, and he wants to reinvent that genre and bring it into 2010. With his voice especially, it's working out and it makes sense for him to do that and I think he's doing a good job at it. He comes to me with what he wants and shows me his inspirations and we take it from there. 

As far as Sappho's Journey goes, she's very into Depeche Mode and Radiohead and the darker electronic sounds. She also has a very definite vision- she wants each of her EP's or albums to be a concept from beginning to end. And with her EP that recently came out, Venerate, I think we've succeeded in that sense as far a concept from the first song to the last. 

The concept behind the EP is the process of discovering oneself whether it's through love, struggle, or loneliness.  Sappho's Journey found the perfect word for her EP- Venerate, which means to have the utmost respect for something or to adore it a Godly fashion. I think she means to say we owe it to ourselves to feel that way about who we are after all the things we have to put up with in life.

Bsound: On RAR's web site, there's a fourth artist- Forest Families, which looks interesting based on the concept artwork you have posted for them. What's the deal with this artist?

LD: Forest Families is a new artist from New Zealand. We have never met in person and that's one of the good things about the digital age, where you can reach out to people like that. Their tracks are not ready to be released but hopefully by the end of the summer.

BSound: Where do you draw your influences from in your songs?

LD: I think it's kind of a gut feeling. When I sat down to create "Hunter" I wanted to make it be like a roller-coaster ride. It's like 'stuff all you can in there and see where it goes'. As I was finishing it I thought about it and thought 'maybe this has a lot going on in it', but that is what I wanted. 

With my next single, "The History of Love", I wanted that to be very emotional while keeping in sync with a minimal tech-house vibe. It has a lot of strings that come in near the end. It's a very minimal track that's not like "Hunter" at all, in the sense that it builds up and then fades out. 

              [Sappho's Journey performing at RAR's launch party on Feb. 23]

BSound: Are there any upcoming shows or releases that RAR is going to be putting out?

LD: At the end of this month on the 28^th we're back at Home Sweet Home in Manhattan, where we had our launch party. This show is going to be Sappho's Journey Venerate EP release show where she's going to be performing all the songs from that record. 

I'm also going to release my own EP in May- The History of Love,  which contains six original songs including collaborations with famed Nuyorican poet Emanuel Xavier, French pop artist O-Red, and SAMN in addition to my current tracks "Hunter" and "The History of Love".
--------

Tracks from Royal Advisor Records artists can be purchased at iTunes, Beatport, Traxsource, Junodownload, TrackItDown, and other digital music stores.

[Image credit: Jason Whitehead, Ron Porto]