The Lowdown | Canadian Duo Love Thy Brother

Hailing from Canada, Conor and Liam Clarke aren’t just siblings but also share the stage as duo Love Thy Brother.Their take-off into the electronic music scene began in 2007 and hasn’t shown signs of slowing down. House artists by definition, they dabble with the sounds of techno, and even bridge into deep house and pop from time to time. Conor is a classically trained musician who traveled the world at a young age with an orchestra. Liam has been a studio rat since the first time he was able to get his hands on a copy of Ableton. Influenced by the electronic scene in 2006/2007, you can hear elements from that era in their unique sound today.

The past year has seen great support for this duo, with releases of both remixes and original tunes into the scene. Their remix of Kiiara’s track “Feels” has been on my playlists for a nice chill out session for some time. Just two months ago they released their latest remix of The Wombats’ track “Emoticons”, and also dropped an original track titled “Love Me Better”. Featuring vocals from Ariel Beesley, the track brings an electronic sound with an almost indie vibe, make sure to check it out below!

Watch Love Thy Brother – Love Me Better Feat. Ariel Beesley on YouTube:

What was your inspiration in becoming a DJ?

Conor: Probably seeing Justice, which is funny because that wasn’t really a DJ set. I would assume these days the majority of kids are inspired to learn DJing from people not actually DJing. Here we went out and bought turntables etc and later find out Justice was probably just banging out an Ableton set. At least Justice actually DJs and we saw a real Justice DJ set later on so I guess there’s that.

Having a specific “sound” is important in the EDM world. What would you describe your sound as?

Liam: Alternative dance. Even though we always think about the dance-floor our music has a lot of pop influence and we want it to work in a pop format. We listen to a lot of house and techno but guys like Max Martin and the Swedish pop movement are major influences as well as a lot of classic 80’s pop and electronic music — the kind of stuff you might hear on a John Hughes or Miami Vice Soundtrack.

If you could play a b2b set with any artist, who would it be and why?

C: Probably Antal Heitlager — he’s got such eclectic taste and great selection. I’d love to train wreck some rare vinyl world music mixes with him. Not sure how much he’d enjoy it though.

L: Daft Punk and Justice because we’d get to just throw on a really long Ableton set and go hang out behind the cross and shoot the shit and no one would notice.

Who are your influences as an artist?

Each other.

What about the Electronic Music Scene specifically speaks to you?

The rawness and the adventure.

If you could pick 3 artists to listen to for the rest of your life, who would they be and why?

MAKJ, Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike.

Which artist was your introduction to Electronic Music?

All the artists on the Jock Jam tapes. Our intro to electronic music was whatever Eurodance anthem was playing when the whistle stopped at hockey. Then we bought some Moby and Fatboy Slim albums and the rest was history.

Is there a show, event, or festival that you have attended that sticks out as memorable?

We got to see Soulwax live in Toronto at a festival that was really undersold. It was raining and there was maybe a couple hundred people there. This was around 2007 or something and no one at the festival really knew who they were including us. They were having some technical difficulties and people actually starting booing them. I’m sure they pegged us pretty quickly for the unsophisticated kids that we were because they told us to “eff off” and then I think they took a bit longer than necessary to fix everything to punish us — Then they finally started and literally just blew the place apart. Watching them play with a drummer, guitarist, all the vintage hardware and the lights all synced up to everything was epic. Was the best show we’ve ever seen and the best live set-up we’ve seen.