London-based production trio Billon may have had the best summer yet. Formed just under a year ago, newcomers Ed, Robbie and Rupert impressed industry notables like Skream and Annie Mac with their hybrid take on house. Coming off the July release of their first EP Turn it Around on Rinse, we caught up with Billon to chat about their growing success.
For readers unfamiliar with you, could you introduce yourselves in a few words?
Billon is 3 people–myself Ed, Robbie and Rupert. We started the Billon project about 8 months ago when met after moving into the same studio in Finsbury Park, London.
 You each have individual projects as Drop Lamond and Cinematic. Production-wise, how do you complement each other in the creative process?
In the studio we all just keep swapping round at the controls until we feel the track is finished. We all have our strengths but the best part of being three is just the energy you get and that keeps things flowing, it makes it very easy to finish tracks quickly and make decisions.
In what ways have your efforts with Billon affected how you each approach your individual projects?
Music is all a big learning process, you’re always learning. Whoever you can think of, everyone is always learning, changing the way they do things, looking for new inspiration so that’s what you get from collaborating you learn new things and apply them.
As a new group, how was the process of getting your EP together and then getting support and airplay from Rinse and even BBC Radio 1?
That all happened pretty naturally, we had two tracks, ‘Turn It Around’ and ‘Hurt Me’ that we felt were strong, so we decided to just get them out there so we got them mastered and put them on Soundcloud and sent them to a few DJs including Skream who got straight back saying he really liked them and played them on his Radio 1 show. A friend of ours also sent those tracks to Rinse and they asked us to do the EP. A few other DJs have been really supportive too like Mistajam and Bondax…Thanks guys.
Just from glancing around your Twitter pages, I see that other well-known artists such as Skream have supported your music. Do you have any mentor-like figures who have made this process easier? Who do you admire in the industry?
We definitely feel lucky that some well known people like Skream have supported our music from the beginning, it’s really encouraging when people you respect like what you are doing. There are lots of people who have helped us, but because this is a new project we had to put in a lot of work before anyone else started getting involved.
In the promo blurb for your EP, Rinse placed your sound in the context of the “London-flavoured take on house,†lightly comparing you to the likes of Huxley and Dusky. What is your vision for Billon and how do you see your music contributing to the music community at large?
It’s a compliment to be compared to people who we respect but at the same time I actually think the reason our music is getting a response is that it doesn’t sound like a copy of anyone else. I think we can contribute by making music that is honest, well crafted and respects what it has been influenced by. If that makes sense. For us making music is about experimenting and having a good time. Its all about the buzz you get from making something that feels original.
Can you talk to us a bit about the remix you just did for Yasmin? Annie Mac featuring it on Annie Mac Presents SoundCloud had to be an exciting moment for you.
Well Robbie and I actually produced the original version of “Thinking About You” for Yasmin, we did it over a couple of nights with Yasmin just for fun after a session working on another song for her. She uploaded it to her Soundcloud and it got an amazing reaction. As we had produced it and recorded the vocals etc., it was easy to remix. It was already at house music tempo because the original song is a disco track. Annie Mac heard it and it’s really great she supported it like this.
Can you tell us a bit about Lola Coca, the vocalist featured on “Hurt Me?â€
We met Lola through one of our managers, we had already tried a few vocalists on “Hurt Me” with no luck as we wanted to recreate a pitched vocal sample and expand on it. With Lola’s voice it just worked perfectly.
If you can share, what other collaborators have you been working with?
We are working on our next EP now and in the process of finding vocalists, booking in sessions etc, there are a few people that we really want to get but nothing is 100% so perhaps best not to say. We have just done a remix for Clean Bandit that’s out now and another for Joel Compass that should be coming out very soon.
Besides music, what else in particular are you each into?
Films, books, philosophy, food, weird diets and nutrition seem to be something that we end up talking about a lot.
Is there anything exciting coming up in the next few months that you’d like to share?
Well our next release that we are working on at the moment should be coming our around October time and the remixes we mentioned. We are also about to start getting out DJing so please check our Facebook page for dates.