Prospa begin their year with a brand new milestone: their first release on Ninja Tune, who tapped them for BRONSON remix duties. Their take on “KNOW ME,” just released, shows off their range; rather than infusing their signature, euphoric “rave” sound into it, Prospa go down a darker path, distoriting Gallant’s vocals and planting them into a gritty foundation with buzzing bass and off kilter percussion. It becomes clear that no matter what direction they take their music in, we can count on quality.
Re-launching an iconic record label is an intimidating task for any artist; especially when they’ve only had a few releases under their belt as was the exact circumstance for 20-year-old duo Prospa with Stress Records. The resulting “Prayer” became an instant hit on a global scale, earning accolades from Pete Tong, Annie Mac, Danny Howard, and numerous high profile producers around them. They’ve only continued to ascend since then.
The outfit’s introduction to the Ninja Tune fold builds on a solid year of growth, despite the enduring hardship wrought by pandemic. On top of growing their label Rave Science, the two have taken its eponymous event concept to the digital space in a new and unique way with their Virtual Warehouse—an immersive, 360° live stream experience hosted on their YouTube. Their 2020 was additionally pumped with new hits, like “Feel It 92” and “The Thrill,” on top of their entrance into the Domino fold via remixing Georgia’s “Let You Go.”
Ahead of their BRONSON remix arrival, we caught up with Prospa on their swift success, adapting to the “new normal,” plans for their label, and what rave culture means to them.
Starting off with the obvious… you are about to make your Prospa Ninja Tune debut with a BRONSON remix! Big look. Can you talk about your approach to this remix? It feels like you took your experimentalism up a notch for it.
Sure! Well honestly we always forget that everyone else hasn’t heard the true scope of what our musical output is. We have around 14 tracks awaiting release and they dip into all the various electronic music genres that influence us.
We’re glad to be able to showcase just some of what we can do with this remix. As soon as we were asked to do the remix for BRONSON we were really into the idea and it honestly was a very seamless process.
The original track is amazing and we just wanted to take it down a slightly darker path. Our approach with 99 percent of our remix work is that we essentially build a whole new track just taking some vocal elements or synth lines, something that ties the tune back to the original version. We really like to go to town and make something completely fresh and new. We were both absolutely buzzing with how the drums and bass sounds came out in the final version of this.