Pennsylvania dance duo are set to take the stage at SXSW and Miami’s Ultra Music Festival. By Adam Stewart Designer Drugs Photo: MTV It’s been a long road for Pennsylvania electronic duo Designer Drugs, but for Michael Vincent Patrick and Theodore Paul Nelson, that’s half the fun. Having been making music together for well over 10 years, the duo recently debuted their second album, Hardcore/Softcore, on Ultra Records and have been thrust into the ever-expanding American dance-music audience. Now, on the heels of the album’s second single, “Through the Prism,” featuring rapper and fellow Brooklynite Cerebral Vortex, Designer Drugs are poised to bring their unique brand of grind-house electronic to the masses Thursday night (March 17) at Austin, Texas’ South by Southwest, followed by a huge set on the Live Stage at Ultra Music Festival in Miami on March 25. “We started doing a lot of remixes and just trying to make a specific kind of music,” Patrick told MTV News. “But now, with the album, we are just doing whatever we want and making more of an electronic album.” “We had, like, a hundred songs and riffs,” Nelson added. “And we just basically picked ones we thought were the best for the album and put them all on. We didn’t really have a good idea of what we wanted to accomplish, but it ended up being what it was and we were pretty happy with it at the end.” Kicking things off with the first single “Drop Down,” a wobbly synth monster reminiscent of an edgy Prodigy-esque sound garnished with Gregorian chants, the vibe DD bring to the dance-music game is unique and captivating. Hardcore/Softcore brings the art of an album back to the table, melding full-length tracks with melodic interludes. “I think it kind of helped to tell a story for this album, but we didn’t plan it,” Patrick said. “Nothing for this album was really planned. It all kind of happened; we wrote all the music and then kind of linked it together.” “We just thought, ‘This sounded cool, but let’s not make it an entire song; let’s just kind of put it in there and see what happens,’ ” Nelson added. “But we do listen to a lot of old classic-rock stuff, too, like Pink Floyd and all that other stuff. So there was a little bit of influence from there.” Will you be catching Designer Drugs on the Live Stage of Ultra Music Festival in Miami? Let us know in the comments below!
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Designer Drugs ‘Tell A Story’ On Hardcore/Softcore Album
