Well well well, one of Naarm's finest duos in 2Dixx otherwise known as Cal & Will have been taking the scene by storm with there insane track knowledge, creating remix's of songs off each other USBS to pout the crowd in awe. Cal & Will have hosted events such as Sundaze Sundays & Modul8, keep in mind also they have been killing their gig slots with a booking supporting internationals such as Alan Fitzpatrick, Tales of Us.
Cal & Will hosted an underground rave last year & man it was a hit, hopefully there is time for another in the future! You can check them out via Instagram @2D1M_ to see videos on how that went! Having met these 2 now it has gotten me excited for what the future holds for them! We recently caught up with them to have a chat about their experience with each other!
Q & A:
Question 1: When did the drive to start mixing and being involved in Dance music be a big thing for you in your life for you two?
A: Cal - For me I've always loved all types of music from a young age. I was always looking up the ARIA Charts and using Limewire, Youtubetomp3 and any other pirated site I could use to have what I thought was the best music at the time. I used to pride myself on knowing all the words to most songs played at parties or on the radio and my dad would lose his shit because I would belt out each verse of ‘P Diddy - I’ll be missing you’ and ‘Shaggy - Angel’ (interesting choices I know) but couldn't remember my times tables that he had screamed into me daily… In terms of dance music I went through a minimal phase from about 15-19 where I’d love blasting a classic Levels Mix daily but after I attended Strawberry Fields, Beyond The Valley and Pitch Music & Arts in the 2019/2020 season I was quickly brought back to reality and never wanted to hear another Melbourne Bounce Bootleg again. I knew I always wanted to be a DJ but never really made time for it and would only play around on a DDJ-SB3 at pre drinks for my mates to hang shit on me as I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. It wasn’t until I got back from Pitch and we went into covid lockdowns that I decided it is something I want to give a proper shot, so I bought a XDJ-RX2 and spent hours upon hours mixing House & Techno.
Will - Growing up my dad would always play old school house, trance or just anything that could make you dance and also my grandpa was a DJ so I spent a lot of time listening and being around dance music. As soon as I turned 18 I would go out as much as I could, mostly attending xe and revs and I would always try to shazam as many tracks as I could throughout each night out. It was from this that I collected thousands of tracks ranging from slow jams to house to quirky electro and everything in between. I would always try and have a go at mixing some of these tracks that i heard on a night out on a mates dj controller that linked to soundcloud whenever they had their decks out at pres or a house party. I bought my first dj controller after seeing denis sulta at revs in 2019, and even then it wasn’t until i saw Honey Dijon at revs in 2020 that I gave mixing a good hard crack as I was mesmerized by how well she mixed and controlled the crowd during her set. From then on I’ve never looked back and loved every minute behind the decks learning how to play on a full vinyl set up and CDJ 850s driving me to be better as they were extremely challenging, but it is something that i am extremely thankful for now having learnt how to play with no screen or waveform to look at, just using my ears.
Question 2: Your upcoming gig supporting tales of us & Alan Fitzpatrick would you say this is a huge step for you?
A: This gig is certainly a step in the right direction for us and one we feel so grateful to be given the opportunity to play at given our short time in the industry. We haven’t really chased down any gigs, as through our experience we have found the industry is too congested with promoters who will only book you if you have kissed their feet for weeks on end and rather than booking you for your actual tallent. We soon realized after a small stint of doing whatever gigs came our way, that it’s not worthwhile doing gigs for the sake of having a gig every week. We much prefer a gig with a good brand and culture once every 1-2 months then to be on a line up of 10 x 30 minute b2b sets.
Question 3: How do you guys work so well with mixing songs as a duo and knowing each others track selection?
A: To be honest this is an interesting one. Our Journey began obviously with livestreams and we weren’t even mates, we were just two skinny white boys doing DJ livestreams in covid lockdowns that started chatting online and decided to create a platform to get all local DJ’s on streaming. We would hardly watch each others livestreams because we both didn’t rate each others music but we just had a mutual respect of wanting the same thing (we know, sounds like a sweet love story).
Cal - Once we got out of lockdown I was running a Doof with a few mates on the Murray River and invited Will up to come and play as we had ran Isolation Station together but never hung out in person it was a bit of a stretch but thankfully Will is an outgoing character and trekked up to the bush to come and play to a bunch of randoms who are now our Family. Will jumped on and was playing for about an hour and the majority of the stuff he had played I was thinking like a typical new DJ “Fk dude i was gonna play that, shit that's a track I downloaded this last week” but then it was getting to a point where I was worried I’d have nothing to play so I asked if we could go b2b and he said sure so we played for the next 10 hours no break just straight jamming and then did it all again the following day for a further 12+ hours. We didn’t repeat a track, we hardly spoke a word and we had the time of our lives. We went through Disco, House, Techno, Tech House and the 80-100 guests loved every minute of it as much as we did. It wasn't until about a month later I was at DANSE and 2 guys were playing together absolutely tearing it up and i was highly intoxicated so like a late night booty call I sent Will a marriage proposal on Messenger at 3am. Thankfully he said yes and we are now 2dixx1mixx.
Will - Now going into sets nothing has really changed, we go into a gig knowing a certain vibe that we want to play depending on the event, the venue, the time slot etc, but never more than just the vibe we feel is right, allowing us to play to our crowd and live in the moment, which gives us the ability to adapt and be diverse for the crowd and to always keep the crowd on their toes and guessing what we are going to play at a gig. Having been playing together for 1.5 years now our recordbox’s have evolved dramatically from cringy to what we would say is quite sexy. But in terms of working well and knowing each other's tracks, we don't. We essentially have our own USB’s plug in and play. We have never planned a set which has had its downfalls at times where we are stuck for a track if one of us has dropped a track completely out of left field and we’ve never heard it before but there’s only 2-3 minutes between a good and bad track selection. We both know our recordbox’s very well allowing us to mix that unknown track that one of us has never heard until it's being played, we then discuss does this have vocals or where's the best break down or point out the best spot to mix out, allowing us to essentially have 1 huge combined rekordbox.
Question 4: Favorite Gig or Fav Venue you have played at recently?
A: Hard to pin point one exact gig or venue as a lot of our bush doofs, beach parties, private parties and raves have been so special that we cannot compare it but we’d say
Cal - Favourite gig - Sundaze Launch or Boat Party Favourite Venue - New Guernica
Will - Favorite gig - My favorite set would closing Rampant (our bush doof that we hold over new years) Favourite Venue - Old Xe or New Guernica
Question 5: Favorite all time tune?
A: Cal - Flaunt It, TV Rock (much to Williams disgust)
Will - Smalltown Boy, Bronski Beat
Question 6: Sundaze sundays seemed like a successful event ran by you guys are you guys planning to have more of these in the future?
A: We have had many ups and downs in getting to where we are today with our events having had venues shut down and covid lockdowns arising multiple times just days before our launches. We had plans for a long time to move away from throwing illegal parties to local venues which thankfully arrived through Sundaze Sundays which we ran weekly over the summer just gone which was a huge success for us and will return later this year. For all our events we seek to stay local and book local up and coming djs rather than big names, allowing our events to grow support from the ground up, which has seen our local following boom. This following was displayed in our launch for Modul8 last Friday May 6th which saw us sellout and bring in over 300 patrons to a local pub for a techno night full of smoke, lasers and heavy tracks which the bayside area has never seen before. Moving forward we will hold Modul8 on the first Friday night of every month over the winter. We also have up and coming events at The Toff in Town in the heart of the CDB on June 18th which will see some Isolation crowd favorites throw down for Will’s Birthday and a free entry day party at Lucky Coq, May 21st which never disappoints, neither are ones to be missed.
Question 7: Who inspires you?
A: We both took inspiration early on from the likes of Denis Sulta, Patrick Topping, and Michael Bibi when we first started to get into mixing, however in more recent times we have evolved into drawing inspiration from Jackmaster, Butch, Ian Pooley, Overmono, DJ Boring and Ross from Friends who all display a vast variety of genres and vibes throughout there own productions and dj sets that we draw upon in our own.
Question 8: Do you like sticking to one genre or do you like others that you show off in your mixing?
A: We don’t believe in genres, we will discuss a vibe we want to start off with and go from there. We wouldn’t say we have a distinct sound just yet as our taste in music is forever changing and we believe that this reflects in our dj sets as we draw from a range of areas of music to dance to.
Question 9: What is one piece of advice you can give to those just starting in the industry?
A: Practice, Record mixes, upload them, don’t touch sync button, know your tracks well.
Question 10: What is your lifedream goal as a duo Team?
A: Our dream would be to have the comfort to quit our day jobs and be able to make a living off running events and DJing.
Question 11: You guys have held underground doofs/events for the community and they seemed to be a success as well are you planning on having more of these in the future?
A: For now we have had to let go of the idea of underground doofs as we are trying to build a reputable brand with Isolation Station and in our area it’s extremely hard to ensure everyone who attends comes for the right reasons. It’s a high risk for us throwing an illegal rave and word spreading so quickly and it getting too big for its own good, all it takes is for someone to be injured and all our hard work goes down the drain so for now we haven’t quite got much in the pipeline in terms of what we have done publicly in the past.
As you can tell they are taking the scene by storm & I can't wait to see these fellas rise!
You can find them here below on their socials!
SOCIALS:
Instagram: @2D1M_ @Will Carter & @Callum Mitchell
Soundcloud: LINK ABOVE
Tiktok: @2D1M_