Mia Dora have been keeping themselves busy of late. But you can’t be playing Fabric every night of the week so they had just enough time to squeeze in a quick Q&A session at Sub Rosa HQ, ahead of their appearance at the Sub Club Tonight.
Who are Mia Dora?
Mia Dora is Al Quinn and Rob Etherson, both from Glasgow.
What have been your highlights so far?
We’ve had the chance to play some great clubs and meet some great people. DJing in Fabric back in September with PBR Streetgang, Shadow Child and Jaymo & Andy George in December was definitely a big highlight. It was daunting at first but there was such a buzz in the club. Timbuk2 in Bristol in February was another; it’s a great club. We’ve also played some great gigs in Manchester, Derry, Aberdeen, Edinburgh…. but there’s nothing quite like playing on home turf. Can’t wait to get behind the Sub Club decks again.
Where do you want to be next year?
We’d love the opportunity to play abroad next year. We’ve played some great gigs since we started Mia Dora but we’ve yet to play outside the UK. It’d be great to play somewhere sunny; we’ve both got our sights firmly set on Ibiza.
When did you start, and when did things start gathering momentum for you?
After meeting working in the same nightclub, we’ve been producing together for about 3 years. At first we we’re just making the odd hip-hop or garage bootleg for a laugh, but after doing this for a year or so we started to take it more seriously. Things started to really pick up about a year and a half ago when we were given the opportunity to remix Roots Manuva – Get The Get. The track was released on Big Dada/Ninja Tune to a pretty positive reception, so we started lining up releases of other tracks we’d been working on. Our first EP being with Glasgow’s High Sheen.
Why the name Mia Dora?
It doesn’t actually translate as anything. We liked it because it sounded a bit like ‘I love’.
How do you make music and how do you play it out? I.e. what programs and set up.
We don’t have any set process for writing music. We tend to find the more ridiculous the better, it gets the creativity flowing. Sometimes setting up a mic, raiding the kitchen for pots and utensils, and just making drum sounds by bashing different kitchen utensils together can be the start of a great track. We’d then start building on top of that.
When playing out our live setup and our dj setups are very different. Recently in our DJ sets we’ve been using laptops and CDJs, but our live setup involves keyboards, a guitar, drum pads and various other little bits of gadgetry. We try and make it as hands on as possible.
And here are three tunes Mia Dora have been playing in their sets recently…
Lake People – Kmmk
Marco Bernardi – Unknown Promise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDjk6Qx6_FQ
Simon Baker – Hideout (Thermalbear remix)