I am standing backstage patiently waiting to interview DJ/production duo GTA before they hit the decks at Echostage during their current “Goons Take America” tour. One of the openers is playing an array of heavy-hitting, high BPM future house slammers to a crowd of excitable young 20-somethings; some are wearing clothes, others are wearing their personality, all of them are losing their minds as each track finds a new way to tell ravers to put their fucking hands up. At about 11:30, I get a text from their tour manager. One of the DJs is currently taking a shower and they should be ready in a few minutes. A few more people walk around backstage: roadies, friends, D.C.’s Sweater Beats, and the next act – a hip-hop group whose sound I’d later describe to a colleague as Future meets Rick Ross meets a trill goblin who lives under a bridge which ravers must cross in order to reach their Molly-fueled desires. Oddly fitting as I would discover their name was inspired by ketamine.
At about 11:40, I’m invited up to the green room to meet with Matthew Von Toth and Julio Mejia: the two minds behind GTA. The TV is showing one of the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ movies, there’s a bucket filled with DC Brau, an assortment of Kind granola bars, and enough Monster energy drinks to bring someone back from the dead. Their green room practically looks like a pre-game in someone’s dorm which, to be fair, isn’t far from the vibe the couple promotes at their shows; they’re known for throwing raucous parties. And this is just the start of their evening.
“At least you know I’m clean,” Matt jokes as he puts himself together. The young DJ decides to sport a crewneck sweatshirt, jeans, and a pair of boots which complements Julio’s varsity style hoodie, baseball cap, and sneakers. Style is clearly part of their image – their outfits designed to reflect the house party nature of their sets complete with gold chains and tight No Shave November beards. Later on in the evening, Matt would disappear right as they’re supposed to take the stage. “Where’d Matt go?”
He had to grab his oversized fedora.
After some idle chit-chat, the time was 11:45. They have a meet and greet in roughly half an hour. It was time to get the ball rolling.
zacheser: GTA – who are you?
Julio Mejia: I’m Julio from Miami. 24 years old.
Matthew Von Toth: I’m Matt. 25 years old. I own a car. I live in Los Angeles. And I have two bank accounts.
JM: Checking and savings account.
z: If you had to choose an emoji to describe yourselves, it would be –.
JM: The brown emoji.
MVT: I’m gonna go with the two hands up.
z: That’s a good one. Here’s a basic game: marry, fuck, and kill. Your choices are deep house, techno, and disco.
JM: Damn. That’s a good one. Definitely fuck disco. I mean literally fuck disco.
MVT: Like in a bad way?
JM: I wanna take disco to dinner. Get her drunk. And show her a good time. I wanna boogie all night if you catch my drift. I’d marry deep house. And I’d kill techno.
MVT: You heard it first. Julio killed techno.
z: How about you?
MVT: I’d probably do the same thing, but I’d marry disco, I’d fuck deep house, and probably kill techno.
z: Alright. So, anyone who’s read interviews with you guys before or knows you pretty well knows you met and started collaborating together via social media. Do you think we’re getting too digital in music?
JM: As far as getting too digital, I think it’s just expanding everyone’s reach. Years ago you couldn’t reach thousands of people with SoundCloud or anything like that and we’re fortunate that we live in a time where we can do that. Otherwise, a lot of these artists wouldn’t exist. I think it helps the scene a lot being able to showcase your music that easily with so many people. And you’ve seen it – anybody can go on SoundCloud whenever they want and post and no one’s really telling anyone what to do and there’s no guidelines really.
MVT: You can make an impact just from posting on one place. You can get a lot of feedback. I think it’s really cool. I’m sure it was super, super difficult before then. We don’t even know what it was like before then because we grew up in it. So I can only imagine what it was like, but it’s so much more more accessible. I think it’s great.
z: You used to work for Ultra. How did being on the other side of the curtain informed your guys’ choices as musicians?
MVT: I never worked for Ultra. I went to Ultra. But Julio worked as a hospitality agent.
JM: At that time, I didn’t really know about electronic music at all. All I really gained from working there was a new perspective on electronic music. I saw Diplo and Crookers and a bunch of guys at that time who were poppin’ in 2010 and were killing it. And it opened my eyes to a whole different side of music. I was fortunate enough to just keep in touch with all of those people and get my foot in the door a little bit. Most of all, I gained inspiration more than anything.
z: In 2013, you did an interview with Noisey and you said, “We try to make the kind of stuff we’d imagine would go off in a club.” It’s been a couple of years since then. Music has evolved crazily especially with how most people have received house music and how commercial its gotten. Do you think your mentality has changed at all  considering how approachable and commercial electronic music has gotten?
MVT: It’s opened things up a bit. It used to be a bit narrower and you’d have to figure out different stuff that would have to work. But now since it’s gotten so popular, you can try different stuff and mash different stuff together and it can work pretty well on the dancefloor. I do think that in general more artists and more people should experiment more and be more open to different sounds, different tempos, different everything.
z: So you think, as far as electronic music goes, more people should do what Skrillex and Diplo did with Jack Ü concerning coming together and doing what each person does the best, but finding new ways to approach what they do?
MVT: That’s a huge thing with electronic music. Collaborating with other people. It makes you expand everything. Your sound. Your ideas in general.
JM: Expanding your fan base, too, I think really helps. For example, we did a track with Martin Solveig [“Intoxicated“] which made most of our fans go, “What?” At the time, everybody was listening to our trap songs, but “Intoxicated” was a completely different vibe compared to anything we’d done previously. It’s kind of what we wanna do. It doesn’t really matter what kind of music people know you for; we like to make everything. People from all demographics can appreciate music for what is and not care about who’s making it.
z: You guys released an EP titled Death to Genres and your sound has been linked to everything from moombahton to Melbourne bounce to future house. Would it be naïve to suggest that you deny categorization as DJs and producers?
MVT: Yeah. The only categorization we’d go for is just high energy. Especially when you’re going out to have a good time. Depending on what we want for the night, we like to have a lot of high energy and music can have that no matter what tempo you’re playing which is what we try to make our fans and the world understand. There’s so many sounds in the world. Why not be open to them? Other than that, when we make songs, categorization is still important because whether you’re looking for music or you need to play a certain track, you need to know what it’s called.
z: So which one is more important: the act of creating or the creation itself?
JM: The act of creating. Â I feel like that’s how the actual intention is expressed. A lot of people derive different things off the final product, but if I were to sit here and be like, “This is what I was thinking when I made ‘Intoxicated,'” it could change everyone’s view on how to view the track. If we were to tell you that it came along from a punk rock song or something like that, which we were listening to and inspired by, people would be like, “What kind of element did you take from that?” And they would take more appreciation to that aspect of the song. If I were inspired by this punk rock melody to write this song, they’d be like, “Wow. That’s dope. I get that.” Because you hear the catchiness, you hear the cadence relates to that specific kind of music. I feel like that’s what people think is cool or at least I do. I feel it adds a personal touch to your music; it differentiates people from each other.
MVT: I’d agree.
z: The way that house music is viewed now, especially with music coming from the UK, it seems people have adapted their taste a little more. You said in an interview with Virgin that Miami had a “very pop culture based sound” which I would agree is really true. But has the sound shifted due to the flood of music coming in from Europe?
JM: I would say so. The thing is, we don’t really spend that much time there anymore to know. But I think, for sure, they’re playing Disclosure all the time on the radio. It’s more of a national thing, too. I feel like everyone in the U.S. has adapted to the deep house and UK garage sound. That’s just the state of music in America, I feel.
MVT: Yeah. But I still think it’s mostly because dance music in general has become the pop mainstream.
JM: That’s kind of the most accessible thing. I think Disclosure, for example, is the perfect blend of R&B and dance which is great because I feel like people get attracted to that idea and I feel like that’s what U.S. radio is. It’s a blend of those things and more.
z: So five years ago, did you think house music would get as big as it is now?Â
JM: Yeah.
MVT: I thought so just because of the fact that it was such a new sound that hadn’t reached that level yet. I knew some form of it would get popular. If you think about it, what is dance music now compared to what it was five years ago? There really isn’t anything now where people are going, “This is the next big thing.” Five years ago, it was at that level where it was about to explode.
JM: I think for me, my biggest realization it was starting to become part of pop culture was the Crookers remix of Kid Cudi. The “Day ‘N Nite” remix. I remember because I listen to Kid Cudi, I listened to the original, and the remix was the one that was getting played all the time on the radio. Then I was like, “Okay. Now things are changing.”
z: For you guys personally, when was the game changing moment?
MVT: We were doing one gig a month and then suddenly out of nowhere, we were told we were going on tour for three months with Rihanna. Around the world. We were like, “Holy shit. 60 shows. This is crazy right now.” That was around the time we felt things were getting crazy. They’ve gotten crazier and crazier.
z: On the road ahead, are there any dream collaborations you’re thinking about?
JM: Us and Pharrell. Us and Daft Punk. Us and Swizz Beats.
MVT: I’d like to do something with Ludacris.
JM: Us and Chief Keef.
MVT: A lot of people. I like Sam Smith’s voice a lot. He’s really cool. Julio likes Lana Del Rey.
JM. Yeah. Lana Del Rey.
z: Or as some people call her, ‘Lana Del Bae.’
JM: Yeah. Super fine.
MVT: There’s a bunch of people. Really, anybody who’s open to making something cool.
z: A full-length studio album at some point?
MVT: We’ve been working on one for a while now. Still in the process. We haven’t quite thought of a date to come out. We want to make sure we’re comfortable with everything. We want to get it right and take our time. We’re still going to be putting out EPs between now and then, so there’s still music coming out right now, but the full-length we want to get right.
z: Last question. Life or death situation. French fries or tater tots?
JM: Tater tots.
MVT: What?
JM: Tater tots all day for me. I love tater tots.
MVT: French fries. There’s more times I’ve had better french fries than really good tater tots.
JM: I feel like every time I’ve had tater tots, it’s always been way better than french fries.
z: Those are strong words.
MVT: Those are strong words. Fighting words.
You can currently catch GTA on their “Goons Take America” tour, which ends at the Hollywood Palladium on November 28, and you can download their most recent EP, Death to Genres, on iTunes.