Swiss Watch: Round Table Knights Are On the Rise

Round Table Knights

Round Table Knights are Biru Bee and Marc Hofweber, a Swiss duo who’ve released tracks on labels such as Defected, OFF, Exploited and Made to Play. With a roll call like that, you’d imagine this duo to be one that’s brimming in quality – and you wouldn’t be half wrong either. On that note, theirs is a sound that’s indebted to full-on forces and is very much made with the dance floor in mind. It’s a fact that comes to prominence quite brilliantly on their latest outing, the delectable tale that is the Midnight Spark EP, which is out now on Shur-i-Kan’s always on-point Exploited label. And with this one, it’s no exaggeration to point out that it’s some of their best work yet. Here, we catch up with Biru Bee to find out more.

How are you? What’s on your mind now?
Biru Bee: All good here. We’re just working on some new music in the studio and getting slowly ready for the weekend.

How long have you been involved in music? Are you full-time DJs right now?
We’re involved with music since over ten years. Right now we work as DJs, producers, radio makers and club owners.

How do you find the traveling? Does it still excite you or do you now officially hate airports?
We still love to travel! We are so happy that we have the chance to see so many great countries and meet new people almost every weekend. Of course, sometimes airports can be really annoying but we already have a few tricks to making the waiting time at the airport go by faster. Still, I’m very excited to explore new cities like Seoul a few weeks ago. We often try to stay a bit longer when it’s possible.

So what’s your daily life consist of? Is it just music, music, music? Or what else do you guys get up to?
Mostly our daily life is about music. But like with every business you have to deal with other stuff too. Some paperwork, etc. We try to do as much stuff ourselves as we can.

What led you two to setting up Round Table Knights?
We met at a jam session, and we like the same music and we had the same vision. So it was just a natural progress to set up Round Table Knights.

“I live in Bern, Marc is in Zürich and the studio is Bern. I’m always surprised about the how much is going on in Switzerland.”

And where does the name come from?
The name comes from a hip-hop record we used to play when we started DJing.

What’s the most satisfying thing about being a part of RTK? And the worst?
Seriously? It’s a dream came true! I mean we can make a living out of it with that we love to do. Make music, play in clubs, travel around the world, meet new people, work with other artists, etc. The worst is maybe that we don’t have that much time for our friends because on the weekend when they have free time we are somewhere else. But often we have a dinner all together on Sunday night, or we try to do something during the week.

What would you be doing if you hadn’t ‘made it’ in music?
That’s hard to say. Something creative definitely. We are not made to sit in an office the whole day and work for somebody else.

At what stage did you realize you wanted to make music and become a duo?
Of course the whole thing started as a hobby and it got bigger and bigger. But at the point when we had our first releases out, a booking agency we knew now [said] it’s time to do this. We always wanted to do this and not work in an office all day.

And what do you consider your finest moment to date so far?
It is quite impossible to break it down to only one moment, because everything is connected. Signing our track to “Calypso” on Made To Play was a career defining moment, but also some of our all night long sets at Club Bonsoir, or us playing at Panorama Bar a couple of times was amazing.

Your latest track is out now on Exploited. Can you tell us a bit about that one?
We wanted to do the new EP with Cédric Monnier. He’s an amazing piano player, and was Marc’s former piano teacher. For “Midnight Spark“ Marc already had the loop and the idea of what the track should sound like. Cédric just added the organ. “Morning Glory“ was a bit different. We just had a small loop. Cédric then improvised over it, and we formed a track out of the stuff we got from him in the studio.

Did you always produce it with the Exploited sound in mind?
No, not at all. We don’t think that we even have the “Exploited sound.” We’ve known Shur-i-Kan maybe eight years now. That’s why it was cool for us to release some records on his label. It’s important to us that there is a personal connection to the people we work with. But when we produce, we don’t think about on which label we wanna release it.

What did you use to make the EP? Is there a story behind the brilliant “Midnight Spark” especially?
We had demos of the two songs and we went to the studio with Cédric Monnier. We recorded organ and piano, then went back to our studio and finished the songs. It was super cool to work with such an amazing musician like him. The basic idea of “Midnight Spark” was a loop Marc did in his studio with some samples cut together.

Are you guys still based in Switzerland then? Whereabouts? How’s the scene there?
Yes. I live in Bern, Marc is in Zürich and the studio is Bern. I’m always surprised about the how much is going on in Switzerland. In Bern we have Deetron, Mercury, Trinidad, Kellerkind, etc. In Zürich there is huge nightlife with great Clubs like Hive Club or Zukunft to name a few… also from Switzerland are Ripperton, Andrea Oliva, Animal Trainer, Adriatique, DJ Le Roi, Jimmi Jules, and many more! Switzerland is small but there is something going on!

What’s next on the horizon for the Round Table Knights?
We have a remix coming out in May on Nervous Records. We finished some edits and we work on some new music that’s going to be released later this year. Other than that, throwing parties, traveling around and playing good music to people!

Round Table Knights’ Midnight Spark EP is out now on Exploited.

Big Shot Magazine

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