Exploring Blurred Genre Lines with Yellow Claw

Yellow Claw dived into their €URO TRA$H alias, Barong Family label recruitment, EDC Las Vegas experiences, and more!

Known for their genre-bending abilities and commanding the dancefloor between a variety of tempos, Yellow Claw has been constantly evolving their sonic production and tracklists for over a decade. From trap to techno and psytrance to rawstyle, the Dutch duo is not afraid to bring underground sounds and popular songs to their fans’ ears. The “two boys from Amsterdam” have turned up the heat across the planet at events such as Tomorrowland, Osaka Music Circus, Countdown NYE, several clubs spotted along Southeast Asia, and of course, EDC Las Vegas.

On the production end, Yellow Claw has been dropping trap bangers on their genre-fluidity spearheading label Barong Family. On this label, they have exponentially grown to recruit talents around the world, especially in Asia. The vocal talents the Dutchies bring onto their tracks have also sung on their young house alias €URO TRA$H, which also received its debut album this year.

Popularly known for playing out their vocal sample of “Yellow MF Claw” to immense crowds, they did just that at their circuitGROUNDS set during EDC Las Vegas just a few weeks ago. But before they took the stage, they sat down with us for a chat. So listen to their new single with Sorn, “Cold Like Snow,” and read on for our in-depth conversation with party boys Nils and Jim.

Stream Yellow Claw – “Cold Like Snow” on Spotify

As a regular attendee at EDC Las Vegas, what’s going through your mind now, right before your set?

Jim: To be super honest, and this is not to suck up or anything, this is the only festival for me that we get those little butterflies. It’s just a special festival.

Nils: We work on outfits like a month in advance and get everything done because we want to get it out of the way. It’s good.

J: We bought a bunch of new sunglasses, we made new music, new intro, it’s a whole thing. It’s also sort of a seasonal opener. We make a bunch of new music and test it out here. It’s a special festival. For me, it is the festival for our community niche genre, however you want to say.

You’re known for blurring the lines between genres. What is your thought process that goes behind the tracklists of your sets? Anything new we can expect here at EDC?

J: I feel we’ve always been flirting with the old school, hard techno sounds since that is so currently vibrant again. It’s good for us.

N: It provides us with a different angle to keep it fresh. We’ve been in this trap thing for so long, and that’s good. That’s what we do best. We’re still putting out a lot of records leaning heavily towards that sound, the bass sound, but it’s still nice every now and then when something new pops up that is so easy to mix and blend and feed off for us. That’s that hard techno sound right now. Five to six years ago, it was that hardstyle-hardcore sound, and now it’s really that. So I guess, yeah, that angle in that set is going to be heavily influenced by that.

J: And that’s something we know really well growing up in Holland. We were both born in the ’80s and saw that stuff in the ’90s really happen.

Photo Credit: Matt Nelson

Speaking of playing several genres, hard dance tracks have become a mainstay in your sets. I also heard your unreleased collab with Radical Redemption last year at Defqon.1. What draws you to the sounds of hard dance, and will you be making more hard dance tracks?

N: Hard dance? Hard dance. We never really call it hard dance, but I guess it is, yeah? The one we did with Radical Redemption, he’s just a fellow countryman. He’s a really nice dude, and we worked with him on the song, and I guess it’s just stuff that mixes really well with the bass stuff we’re already doing and keeps it interesting and versatile for us. That’s the thing, are we going to do more hard stuff? We got a lot of new stuff that is flirting heavily with that sound good to go.

Blurring the lines that define genres is an ideology that is also carried throughout your Barong Family label. What is your current vision for the label, especially with the recent talents you’ve recruited from Asia?

J: Just keep going, keep trying to find young people and help them. Just get their music out there and get their career started or established.

N: Even now, we have RayRay with us from Taipei and SkySky from LA, two really talented girls, DJs, and producers both. It’s also about bringing people along and inspiring them. That’s what a label is all about, just a platform. We were just in the chopper talking about what we should do next, a new studio camp because we always do these studio camps, and it’s the best thing just to feed off each other’s energy and make a lot of music. You get the bass, the core artist, and a couple of new ones; it’s always good.

Speaking of recruited Asian talent, your recent release of “Hey Sensei” and upcoming track “Cold Like Snow” feature vocal talents from southeast Asian artists., How did you go about finding the artists to collab with/feature?

N: Social media, mostly.

J: Yeah, we meet them on tour and then connect through social media. If we go somewhere, we really try to connect. If we go to Tokyo, we really try to connect with local artists.

N: And SHACHI from Japan, we just flew her to Bali to record the video.

Photo Credit: Matt Nelson

Switching gears, in 2021, you both initiated your house and techno alias €URO TRA$H and released a successful debut album ¥€$ this year. Why was this alias made a separate entity from Yellow Claw? Is there an origin story?

J: It’s purely for shows. We love that kind of music; we love those sounds. The Yellow Claw show goes so hard – the BPMs, the kicks, the bass. We didn’t want to mix those two up, and we didn’t want up and down, up and down. We really wanted to keep it separated. People wanted to see the €URO TRA$H stuff, and we can give it to them. They want to see Yellow Claw stuff, and we can give it to them. We’re actually going to double up in LA this summer. We’re playing one night €URO TRA$H, one night Yellow Claw.

Having toured and traveled all over the planet, are there any special festivals or experiences that are most memorable from the past few years post-COVID?

N: Asia took longer to recover compared to America. So when we flew back to Korea for the first time…

J: Also, Chicago, remember that? That was really our first big festival, Lollapalooza. That felt like we were going to another world because after we were in Europe, everything in Asia was still closed, and we were playing in a club there doing an afterparty. We were playing to a huge crowd. I was sending pictures to friends, and they couldn’t believe it!

N: It’s not really an answer to your question, but coming after the whole lockdown thing, seeing it all make a bigger impact again. I completely forgot fifty percent of it, you know?

Finally, coming from The Netherlands, one of the biggest electronic music hubs, how would you compare the scenes, crowds, and reactions between here and there?

J: I would say the Dutch crowds are a little bit spoiled in a way. They’re always a bit more skeptical. People here and out in Asia really go out, go crazy.

N: You see that in the way the people dress; you see that in the way the people party.

J: People here are just living for it.

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