Dutch house music duo from Netherlands. The group consists of two men – Gaston Steenkist (Dobre) and René ter Horst (DJ Zki). They are dance music lovers since the early 1990s.

Their well-known hit “Give it Up” was on the top of the UK and US charts

“We never set out to make hit records. We just know how to make great dance records”. 

Interviewer: René, Gaston, where in the world are you right now?  

Chocolate Puma: Today we are in our studio in The Netherlands playing with our new toy called 'The Bass Machine'.

Interviewer: Well what can we say? Quite simply a huge start to 2014 for you guys with three productions we are all so excited about. Let’s kick off with your remix of GOTSOME’s ‘Bassline’ taking the Buzz Chart No.1 slot for the third time!! You seemed slightly bemused on your Facebook site when you learnt the news…?

Chocolate Puma: Well we are always very happy and grateful if one of our remixes or tracks gets such a good response. And hitting the No. 1 position in the Buzz Chart is very special for us.

Interviewer: Why do you think your rework of Bristol’s finest has captured the world’s dance floors so much? The original was literally thrown together after Adam had been listening to Adonis’s ‘No Way Back’ on loop all day and simply fell in love with the bassline… 

Chocolate Puma: Well, the vocals are about a bassline, so we knew we had to come up with a fat one! When we played the first demo of our remix we saw the people's reaction to these very catchy vocals, but our bassline just did not deliver. So, it was basically a lot of tweaking and road testing till we had the impact right and had a good reaction from the crowd. So, this is a good example how DJing and studio work go hand in hand.

Interviewer: Also smashing up The Buzz Chart this week is your own production ‘Step Back’. Talk us through the track…

Chocolate Puma: We have been playing more and more tracks that have some kind of UK garage feel lately. Not full on London pirate radio, but more like deep house with some balls and a bit more energy. We also appreciate the energy of some of the EDM tracks out there, although we sometimes miss the soul or swing. So inspired by that we came up with the instrumental of Step Back. We heard of Kris Kiss through our old buddy Aaron Ross (who used to work at Defected) so we asked him for the vocals and he nailed it. He exactly delivered what we had in mind with this track.

Interviewer: Also hot for next week’s chart is your remix of Janelle Monae’s ‘Dance Apocalyptic’ – a piece of production that had the Buzz Chart office shouting to me “they are so still on their game after all these years”. What is your ethos on taking on a remix, is it simply a case of your liking the tune and knowing you can add something to it? 

Chocolate Puma: Haha, thank you! It's always a matter of 'how can we turn this song into a Chocolate Puma track?'. Are there elements that speak to us and that we can use? In the case of Janelle Monáe it was the whole hyped 40's energy that was going on in the song that we liked very much. So we took that as an inspiration and came up with these handclaps, horns and that shuffled feel in our remix.

Interviewer: True or false: 20 years ago René via his radio show did a shout out asking for people to send in their own productions…and Gaston was the only person who sent something in?

Chocolate Puma: René: “Very true!  I did a radio show at one of the first stations that was playing house music at that time. Every show I would play some experimental tracks that I produced myself and I would challenge other people producing themselves to send in their tapes. I would promise to play everything that was send to me, good or bad! There was only one tape in the mail…

Interviewer: I love that guys. What is the current top 10 you are spinning…

Chocolate Puma:

Gotsome - Bassline (Chocolate Puma Remix)

Harry Romero - The Butcher 

Vaal - Seahnak

Chocolate Puma - Afrika

Chocolate Puma - Step Back feat Kris Kiss

Russ Yallop - The Journey

Tchami x Janet Jackson - Go Deep

Foamo - Without You

Oui'wack - Jungle Wars

Stanton Warriors - Cut Me Up (Cause & Effect Remix)

Interviewer: You had us lot jealous as hell flying off to the Maldives last month for some well deserved white beach bliss. I have been trying to convince my wife Tess to go for ages but she says it is too boring. Please help me with some words of Maldives love…

Chocolate Puma: Does saying it is the most beautiful place on earth help? Although you have everything like unlimited sun, secluded white beaches and blue water straight from 'The Abyss', we would not recommend staying there for 3 weeks though.

Interviewer: Away from dance music, who are some of the artists you are currently listening to?

Chocolate Puma: Child Of Lov, Dave Grohl's Sound City, Thelonious Monk, Telegram, Ian Brown, King Krule…

Interviewer: When was the last time a record stopped you in your tracks that you just had to find out what it was?

Chocolate Puma: Last week, but still do not know what record it was!

Interviewer: Gaston, you are one of the people responsible for the rise of Laidback Luke. He gave you a cassette tape when you were DJing at his school…the tape you recall “kinda sucked”. What was it about this kid’s talent though that you thought was worth investing in?

Chocolate Puma: There was, and still is, something very fascinating about Luke's persona and character. So even if his first tape 'kinda sucked' (you do not want to hear my first tape haha!), there was something about him that spoke to me. Maybe I saw something of myself in him, I do not know. All I know is that it was very interesting and much fun to have countless nights in my home studio with him listening to music, talking about production and basically me trying to pass on my knowledge and passion for music. Given the wide range of protégés you have taken on over the years, how important do you believe sharing your knowledge with the next generation of artists is? I think one of the great achievements of sharing my knowledge with Luke (besides Luke becoming so successful), is that he took all these nights in my studio as an inspiration and started to mentor a whole new generation of producers and DJs. So if I had a part in helping the next generation making music, it is only a beautiful thing that helps bringing the music forward and getting it to places, it never was.

Interviewer: Who are some of the young up and coming producers we should be looking out for in 2014?

Chocolate Puma: Tchami.

Interviewer: Do you think today’s technology has made it too easy for people to make hit records? One minute a kid is at school, the next he has made a No. 1 hit in their bedroom and is headlining Ultra…  

Chocolate Puma: Well, they still have to make that No. 1 hit record, and if it was that easy we would had like 40 kids in the charts with hit records…oh wait…! People always say that it is so easy to make a record these days. To a degree that is true, but 20 years ago it was also quite easy to make a decent record. Or a shit record for that matter. The main difference with now, is that with all the new technology you can make records sound great quite easily. And a lot of producers now think that if they make their shit record sound great, it is a great record, while it's still a shit record. It is just well produced noise. It is kinda fun to see a 17-year-old kid headlining Ultra though. It reminds me of myself just coming out of school one day, and having a Billboard dance #1 with 'Give It Up' the next haha.

Interviewer: René, what do you make of Prince back on the live circuit?

Chocolate Puma: Always good to see/hear Prince live, he is still got it, a lot! He might not be the huge innovator he once was, but hey, the man is 50+ (haha look who is talking). I like him best at the smaller venues, and even more when he is not doing a 'Best Off Show', although I understand that is highly appreciated by some fans. I still would love to do a Chocolate Puma track with Prince on vocals.

Interviewer: What are your thoughts on the dance music explosion in North America. Did you ever see it coming? 

Chocolate Puma: Did anyone see it coming? We understand a lot of people think it's a negative thing and do not like the whole commercial side of what's going on right now. But in the end it's still about kids having a great time. And what we see when we're playing in North America is that kids that used to go to the big EDM concerts are now discovering other kinds of dance music. They are curious and very hungry for other stuff, and for us is so much fun to play there now.

Interviewer: During your tenure at the top of dance music, the term 'House music' has changed significantly during your years on the ones and twos. Do you both still believe that it provides a positive creative canvas for you after so many years and developments? 

Chocolate Puma: Yeah it still does. Sure, there was a time around 1998, that we were both kind of fed up with house music. The 4 to the floor beat didn't give us inspiration no more. At that time we did some break beat stuff under the name of 'Basco'. But after 2 or 3 years fooling around with break beats we went back to our true love and discovered house music again. What we do not get though is some 'sneaky' DJ's think house music should have rules, like this is true house music, and that isn't. Please... For us house music was always about freedom and doing whatever you want within these great 4 kick drums.

Interviewer: An interesting thing you once said… “The Dutch crowds are one of the toughest crowd to capture for a DJ.” Discuss…

Chocolate Puma: Some say the Dutch crowds are a bit spoiled because of the many parties and festivals in The Netherlands. But maybe it's also because Dutch don't believe the hype. They paid their hard earned money and they want result.

Interviewer: Gaston, why is vodka not on your rider anymore? 

Gaston: “Because I like water better. We have bananas on our rider though. But till now almost every promoter said 'Bananas? Nooo! Here have vodka!'.”

Interviewer: What are each other's greatest quality as a producer?  

René: “Gaston has magic ears, even when I only breathe, he can hear I'm out of tune. He also is very patient and can lay down the rhythms I only can dream of.” 

Gaston: “René has the ability to push thing is a little further while still keeping it cool. He usually comes up with ideas that make no sense whatsoever, but turn out to be brilliant.”

Interviewer: It’s your birthday, who are the 3 DJs you ask to play at your party and which vocalist dead or alive do you ask to sing you Happy Birthday…?

Chocolate Puma: Diplo because he knows how to throw a party, Franky Rizardo for the next generation of Dutch house vibes, Claude Vonstroke because he's just dope.”

René: “Happy Birthday by Lady Gaga.”

Gaston: “Ugh, Gaga's timing is so off.”

Interviewer: What are your ambitions for 2014? 

Chocolate Puma: Well, we are never completely satisfied with what we are doing, always trying to get better. Our goal would be get better at what we do. We still got that fire burning! Although we are very, very grateful for the amazing following we already have, our ambition would be to have a much bigger audience listening to our music without sacrificing any of our musical integrity.”

Interviewer: And finally, what is coming out next studio wise from you guys?

Chocolate Puma: We just released our track 'Afrika' on Junior Sanchez' Brobot Records. Speaking of Junior, we had an amazing studio session with him in LA last October, so look out for that as well. We are also remixing our butts of right now, but we cannot tell you about that yet! Oh and other stuff that we cannot tell you about yet!

Interviewer: Thank you for your time guys, as always very much appreciated down at DMC.

Chocolate Puma: No thank you! It was a pleasure to fill it in as they were such cool questions, normally we get questions about our favorite color and how we met!”

www.chocolatepuma.com

 

Interview materials source: http://dmcworld.net/