Premiere: Weval - Half Age

Weval are duo Harm Coolen and Merijn Scholte, two mates from the Netherlands united through a shared passion for producing music of the electronic persuasion. After forming back in 2010, the ‘Half Age’ EP, their debut release, is out on new-ish Dutch label Atomnation this week – the imprint that most recently released the ever-prolific Applescal’s fourth LP ‘Dreaming In Key’ last month.

The EP is a sturdy reflection of their jazz and hip hop reference points, with first shared cut Out Of The Game also displaying a knack for crafting a stirring vocal line. Now we can share the EP’s title track with you: a teasing electro stomper whose shifting chord patterns threaten to burst at the seams at any moment. Give it a listen below, and scroll down for our Q&A with them.

Hey Weval! What have you been up to recently?

We released our first track last week. It’s been great to hear all the reactions! We went straight back to producing new tracks because we spent so much time fine-tuning the EP.

You both have backgrounds in film – in what ways do you think this plays into the production of your sound?

Making films and making music have certain similarities. In both cases you create a story or atmosphere from scratch and then continue to fine-tune it until you’re satisfied. The fun thing about music is that it’s generally more abstract than film, so it gives you a lot of freedom.

We generally lean towards sounds that have a filmlike quality. We don’t necessarily go for a danceable tune or follow any guidelines, we tend to just follow our instincts instead and try to find the right sound and atmosphere.

With almost every track we have a certain image in our mind which we try to translate into sound. So yes, all in all film definitely plays a part in our ideas about music. Therefore we really look forward to making a video for one of our tracks in the near future.

The EP’s title track feels indicative of the rest of the release, in that it feels stylistically really wide reaching. When you started Weval were you always interested in drawing on a range of genres and textures?

The way we make music, we never really go for a genre or bpm. We find a certain sound and go from there. We try to make a track that feels right to us and don’t really think about genres in the process. But of course we hope to create our own signature sound in time.

Growing up, we both had different musical influences. Merijn used to lean more towards trip-hop, and Harm came from a background of house music. So the wide range of genres was kind of a natural process.

Beyond the release of the EP, what else have you got lined up in 2013?

We’re going to work on a new album that we hope to release in September of 2013. We hope to continue working with Atomnation. And in the meantime we’re also working on a live set so we can really kick off once the new album is finished.

Atomnation will release the ‘Half Age’ EP on the 19th March 2013.