Meet Roughion; Welsh dance duo release their new EP ‘Target The Moon // Acid Test’.
If homemade electronica is your thing, step right this way.
In an dance music scene overflowing with acts and talent, Roughion offer a down to earth, made-on-your-mum’s-laptop sound that has infinite charm. The Welsh duo shove no pretenses or ego at you – it’s two lads, Steffan and Gwion, who like dance music and synths.
Their new EP, Target The Moon // Acid Test, is 10 minutes of electronic goodness. Track 1 takes re-recorded commentary from a sixties documentary on the first ever man-made satellite and drapes it over a classic dance beat, adorned with zany sci-fi synths. The aptly named second track, on the other hand, takes heavy influence from Acid House, sending you on a 6 minute ride to early 90s rave culture.
And that’s all there is to it. Some will be put off by the lack of polish that big budget production could give it, but that doesn’t matter when it’s this fun to listen to. Those prosaic vocals against the toe-tapping beat on ‘Target The Moon’ especially hint to the style of Public Service Broadcasting, which Gwion notes as an influence.
“We were looking for a sample and we wanted a space sample” he explains. “We ended up trawling YouTube and finding one from the 60s. It had music on it so we had to transcribe the words and make the vocal ourselves”. Finding that sample via YouTube only adds to the charm in my books.
As for the Acid influences? They’ve been exploring the genre a lot recently and are expecting it to see a resurgence of the sound in the same way that 80s-style pop music has been finding its way into many new releases as of late. As a die-hard for the genre, I’m hoping their foresight is correct.
Steffan and Gwion have been make music since they were in school, where they met. “He used to listen to everything but dance music” notes Gwion, who’s love for The Prodigy and Drum n Bass was combined with Steffan’s production skills. “We started our partnership there, took a break for us both to go uni, then got back to it”.
Trawl through their earlier work, and their love for dance culture pours through. Anyone with a taste for that kind of sound will find something to enjoy, and they have a knack for remixes too.
My biggest takeaway, however, is the simplicity of their approach. Chatting to Gwion is like chatting to yer mate down the pub, and that feel carries through to the music that Roughion make. There’s no baggage here; if you want EDM home-grown here in Wales, you’ve just found it.
Target The Moon // Acid Test drops on the 31st July, and you can snag a copy here. Check out their wider discography on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.
