Viking riddim, Toog & Goot, EDC Vegas and more: SampliFire shares all
He joined us for the season 3 premiere of the Filthy Beat Inspectors Podcast
In a season premiere full of insights, we got SampliFire talking about what it's like to be part of the infamous Toog & Goot duo, his starry-eyed experience going back to back with his best friends at EDC Las Vegas and what artists he would marry, f*ck and kill.
All the way from France, SampliFire offered us a peek into the life of one of dubstep's most respected artists. Coming off a flaming hot, full-length EP titled Loki on Disciple Round Table, Samy shared more about how his new, more medieval style of dubstep originated.
"I had a track to send for Alliance Vol. 5," he said. "The last day I had to make the track, my manager called me like, 'Where is the track?' ... I had a day to make the track."
His girlfriend actually encouraged him to use more vocals in the track, so he added chants instead of bass. That's where the viking stuff started -- he posted it and EDM Twitter immediately coined the viking riddim term.
He then started planning the EP with this idea of cinematic viking flavour and dubstep. He even has a new track coming up with similar chants.
"I don't want to completely be a viking dubstep guy, but I'm still working on some songs like that," SampliFire said.
While Samy said the French dubstep scene is growing, there was nothing like his set at the EDC Las Vegas BassPOD with MVRDA and Infekt.
"I was not on the lineup, and ten days before I got a call from my team and they said, 'Samy wake up, you're playing EDC,' and I said, 'You're tripping right?'"
One of the artists got his visa denied, so Samy was lucky enough to be placed on the lineup. He said he played in Paris one day before, got on a flight the next day, drove to Vegas then went on no sleep for 36 hours on adrenaline.
"In Europe, you don't see that, especially for dubstep," SampliFire said. "I was impressed to be honest. I was trying to catch up with what was happening."
He gave us the rundown on his producer best friends
We wouldn't be the FBI unless we grilled him on how he and MVRDA came up with their infamous Toog & Goot aliases. It started out as somewhat of a joke, MRVDA's alias for riddim stuff — just another SoundCloud account to post WIPs.
"One day we were on Skype and he was showing me a project and I finished it in a couple hours, that was a track called Swoog."
Samy reversed Toog and came up with Goot — that's how he came up with Goot.
"Literally a random alias from MVRDA, which I carried on — by the way, Toog and Goot isn't going to be riddim always, we may diversify this year. Yeah, Dnb, cinematic, ambient. Maybe even soundtrack music, which we love doing. House, electro, techno," he said.
UMM OKAY? SampliFire is working on techno, house, and more? GAHHDAMN BROTHER. What a guy.
...and it wouldn't be an FBI podcast without some fun
"I'm gonna kill my boy MRVDA because he's the worst at WarZone.
I'm gonna marry Ivory just to piss off MVRDA.
I'm gonna f*ck Svdden Death because Voyd, Voyd is so sick."
Shoutout to our friend ShockerT who submitted the best question, asking Samy to pick between MRVDA, Ivory and Svdden Death to marry, f*ck and kill.
While shows aren't happening currently in France, he did hint at an upcoming booking in September. It will be at a big festival - 50% indoor, 50% outdoor - in his home country. Before COVID, he even told us there was a strong chance he would've been playing in China, too.
It's safe to say we should expect some big things from SampliFire in teh near future, and they'll likely be multi-genre. We will be locked in on his every move for the rest of the year, and are dying to see him throw some viking riddim live at the next fest.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all streaming platforms.
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