Douze & Lo Galbo: “Dawn is every teenager’s dream girl. The one you were in love with in highschool but never dared to talk to”.

It’s Spring 1984 and senior year for Dawn, a Michigan teenager with a promising future ahead. But Chris, the new cool kid in town is about to upset all of her plans. This is the setting for Dawn, the original motion soundtrack by Douze and Lo Galbo.

The duo met in 2008 on the early music / social platform MySpace, before Kris Menace brought them together to work on a Douze remix of a WebQueawry track on his Work It Baby label. The pair clicked and began working on demos with their collab ‘We Got The Love’ securing a release on Hed Kandi. They reconnected in 2021 for their ‘Drums Allowed’ project and began to crystallise the idea of ‘Dawn’.

In contrast to its fictional design, there’s an emotive reality to the retro soundtrack of Dawn. Sonically, each track sketches out a different scene idea, guiding the listener to imagine their own unique celluloid version of the movie.

Written and produced almost entirely outside the box on original 80’s analogue hardware, Dawn is an artistic statement; a cohesive body of work ready to transmit the listener into story through music.

Mixmag caught up with Douze & Lo Galbo to discuss the detailed composition of the album, inspirations of Giorgio Moroder and Tangerine Dream, and the growing popularity of the retro synth scene.

Where did the idea of creating a soundtrack to a fictional movie come from?

As usual, we were exchanging demos and at some point, felt the stuff we were working on could use some serious background story behind it. But for all the projects and records we have worked on, we always liked to tell stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. Dawn has just some more detailed parts.

How did you approach the composition – does the idea for the scene come first or a piece of music that you build a scene around? How much detail goes into the writing of a scene?

Everything was in our heads basically. We would exchange ideas like “the main character should have a cheerleading scene” or “we should make a dark track for a scene that introduces the bad guy” and we would then start working on the music. The contrary also happened, we would listen to demos and think about what it inspired and made us feel. If it fitted what we had in mind, we kept it.

The soundtrack is designed to spark the listener’s imagination, so they create their own version of the movie. How did you know when the music was ready to do this?

When we would listen to each other’s songs and think “Wow, that could be featured in a soundtrack”. We had gathered just a couple and then decided to write a full story to help our creativity.

How did you approach the characterisation of Dawn? Is she based on anyone you know (or any 80’s movie you watched) or completely imagined? If the latter, where did you get your inspiration from?

Dawn is every teenager’s dream girl. The one you were in love with in high school but never dared to talk to. We tried to find someone who could look like they could have played in a 80s teenage movie.

You have quoted soundtracks from Giorgio Moroder and Tangerine Dream as inspiration. Are there any specific soundtracks that stand out for you?

We could mention “Midnight Express” as a famous one, but the ones Tangerine Dream made for “Risky Business”, “The Keep” or even for the “Street Hawk” TV show have been the ones that have inspired the most.

The album was produced almost exclusively on 80s analogue hardware. What became your go-to piece of kit when creating the album – was there a piece of gear that you just had to use on each track? What specific sounds and qualities did you want to get from the hardware?

There was not really one go-to piece. It’s the combination of gear that made the project work. Somehow, the synths together provided the right tonal balance. For example, the Roland Juno-60 filtered pad sounds combined really well with the Roland SH-2 bass sound on the two Jogg tracks we did on the album.

In terms of specific sounds and qualities: we used the analogue gear as a reference to our favorite music of the 80s. Everybody has heard 80s music and therefore the synths used in those tracks. Using these synths basically works as a time machine; when you hear that brassy OB-Xa pad sound, you immediately link it to the 80s tracks you know that also have that sound.

The collection of vintage synthesizers and hardware used on the album is impressive. Where did you get it all from? How long did it take you to build the collection? They must be hard to come by, right?

Over the past 15+ years, we have been selling, exchanging and looking for synths and other equipment. For the recording of Dawn, we have rented some synths we never used to try to achieve the sound we were looking for.

The retro synth scene is growing fast. Why do you think people connect with this sound, particularly younger people who may be hearing it for the first time?

It is really interesting to see younger people connecting with the retro synth scene so well. It would be an interesting study to know why this is the case. We have also wondered why, for instance, Stranger Things works so good for a younger audience. Perhaps its 80s magic!

This one is a question for Lo Galbo – how do you feel about the Dutch clubbing and electronic music scene at the moment? Are there any new venues, club nights or artists we should be checking out?

In all honesty, I like to avoid clubs nowadays. We have heard that Legowelt and Shook are working on their first album together. That will be something interesting to check out.

What other projects do you have in the pipeline as collaborators and solo performers?

We will be working on our side projects: a second album for Lo Galbo’s Drums Allowed project and a third album of 3615 Nuits Blanches for Douze. In the meantime, we are still working together on projects for other artists. For example, we have a project named Jogg in the works, focused on aerobics, work-out and running themed tracks.

‘Dawn (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)’ is available now on digital platforms and as a limited-edition vinyl. Stream here: https://linktr.ee/l.o.v.e.ltd