Hailing from Brooklyn, NYC, Infectious NYC are a night crawler collective who love underground electronic music and throwing parties. Every month Infectious NYC sits down with a local NYC based DJ to record a radio show which broadcasts on InsomniaFM every 4th Tuesday of the month at 12pm EST. This month Infectious NYC got together with The Golden Pony.
Seductive dancers dressed in body paint, fire breathing on top of party buses, secret underwear parties and circus performers. This is a typical night in Brooklyn for New York City’s most iconic DJ duo.
Unlike most artists who breakthrough with a hit track, The Golden Pony gained recognition through playing at warehouse parties and festivals to over 5000 people. Although their music picked up significant attention over the last year (reaching #1 on Hypem), TGP only just released their first official single “Die Inside Your Dance” on Thrive Records last month. You can check out the interview after the break, and their epic hour long mix for the radio show right below.
Infectious NYC: What is the story behind The Golden Pony? How did you guys meet? Did you naturally gravitate towards each other when you saw each other’s Afros?
Timothy: “So actually yeah we did meet because he had afros. It was a fitness party at a fitness studio and the theme was 80s fitness so everyone had on bright neon colors and short shorts and we both actually had afros with head bands on. I was DJing down stairs, it was a 2-level party, and there was nobody there yet. Thomas and his girl came down and started dancing and we looked very similar so I think we just kind of hit it off and said hey (laughs). Ironically that was just the party and we didn’t exchange numbers but then later on I had a Craigslist room mate that move in randomly who was friends with his girlfriend and yeah so met again and that was it.”
Thomas: “My only recollection of that night was Tim dumping glitter into my afro which took like 3 weeks to get out. He had a make-up brush full of glitter that he was just running up to random people and spraying with.”
You have been producing tracks for a while now and your productions have been sounding really tight, why did you wait until now to release officially on a record label?
Thomas: “So we are just releasing our first big proper originals now because it was a lot easier to get people to pay attention to us by doing remixes and check our tracks out by doing remixes and also we wanted to put a fresh twist on a lot of tracks we really loved and weren’t really getting the remix treatment.”
Timothy: “It really helped doing remixes because its familiar material and helped us hone our skills and develop our sound. So we’re doing all sorts, we’re doing Drum & Bass and HipHop beats and so much different stuff because we both love so much music. We kind of developed our sound over a year and a half of doing a lot of remixes. We were making originals at the time too but now we think we have the right direction to really go ahead with our originals.”
Which is closer to your heart The Golden Pony or BangOn! NYC?
Timothy: “For me, I mean if you put a gun to my head and said I couldn’t play parties or make music or just pick one, I’d say just shoot me in the face (laughs). To me throwing parties is about creating art, you know we are building giant lotus flowers that glow and then we are DJing at them as well. So its very much about making art and making people smile so they are kind of about the same thing to me but one is making music specifically and one is building art and stuff. I guess music is my favorite kind of art but I like building stuff too and making people have fun so they are really very similar things to me.”
I noticed that your following has picked up significantly over the last year, why do you think that is? What do you think are some of the most effective ways to promote yourselves as DJs?
Thomas: “I think our following has picked up a lot over the last year because we started a really intense work-out regiment. So I know there is audio but you just have to imagine our abs. They are just swelling, undulating in the summer wind so just take that visual.”
Timothy: “I think a lot of the time its just getting your music out there and people start to like then it picks up and when it starts to grow, it grows very quickly. I think we’re lucky, we paid some dues, sending emails to every blog in the world and getting like 3 of them to post it. Now it has become a lot easier.”
What changes do you think we will see from The Golden Pony and Bang On in the next five years?
Timothy: “I think with The Golden Pony we want to do a lot more live stuff and a lot bigger crazier shows with a lot of audio visual production. Mainly we have been writing music and getting stuff out because really we want to develop our music first but really we’d like to do live shows first. We both play guitar and keyboard and bass and stuff so we’d love to do more of that. Its just finding the time to get that all done but once we start touring more there will definitely be a big change with that.”
Have you thought about taking Bang On outside of New York? If you could take the party anywhere, where would it be?
Tim: “Bang On outside of New York, yes definitely. We’re doing our big summer festival this year which is going to be our signature thing because the warehouses we have maxed out at 5000 people so we can’t really go anywhere with that. So we’re going to start doing these outdoor things where the skys the limit obviously. We’ve done small things at South By South West and we did one in Melbourne, Australia which was a 200 person warehouse party. I think when we grow big enough in New York we’re going to start branching out and doing other stuff.”
What is the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you at a party?
Thomas: “So this was sort of a year ago, we don’t do this as much anymore but we used to have a tradition, only when we played Bang On. I would invariably end up in my underwear. We played with Oliver $ and some other fantastic people. Really fucking cold. It was like middle of March. We were closing out the night at like 5am and it was really cold. This f***er runs on stage and rips down my underwear and I’m just like mooning the whole crowd. Luckily I don’t think there is video footage of the incident.”
Timothy: “For me I don’t understand the emotion of embarrassment. It doesn’t register in my head to be honest with you (laughs).”
Are there any New York City based artists that you’ve been listening to a lot?
Timothy: “There are just so many. Lately, Coyote Kisses I thought they were really cool. Sweater Beats. We really liked him, he played at one of our parties, he’s local. There’s a lot of good local DJs, even my friends like Dirty Looks, just local guys but phenomenal DJs that play way better sets than the headlining DJs at our parties to be honest (laughs). They care more and don’t play as much.”
If you could party with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?
Thomas: “The iteration of the Chicago Bears that recorded the Bear Shuffle, so them in a room with the original cast of Cheers and Lindsay Lohan when she’s on a real drug bender DJ’d by 90s era Basement Jaxx.”
Timothy: “I think Jimi Hendrix straight up. He’s one of my idols and you know just lock ourselves in a room with two girls and a bunch of acid. With really cool outfits and jewelry and incense. So that would be a dead guy I’d party with. Alive I’d say David Hasselhoff. That would be so cool just going around to parties with him and being like this is my uncle (laughs).”
