Dr Honey

Hi Dr Honey. First of all, thanks for doing this mix for us. I’d like to start by asking what tools did you use to create this mix.

We have two ways of doing our sets. Sometimes we record directly on our Pioneers at home, and on other occasions, we do it on Ableton Live, which we used for this session.

Does this mix have any sort of theme?

We wanted to experiment a bit by mixing New Wave and Nu Disco tunes, two genres that are catching our attention at the moment, and mix them with some Progressive House. We think our sets stand out for not being purists and moving around genres taking listeners into different musical waves, which we wanted to highlight in this set as well.

Cami is responsible for the art direction of the duo, photography, visuals, covers etc.

The Dr Honey project was born in 2019 and just last year you launched your first single. What a unique moment to launch your project! Everything started in Bogota, correct? How’s the electronic music scene there?

Yes! Honestly, when we started Dr Honey we didn’t expect the times we are living through. It was right after the launch of “Loud”, our first song, that the pandemic started. However, this time allowed for the project to mature, as we had time to work in honing our sound, doing courses, and working on our live set-up, which would not have happened if the pandemic hadn’t started.

The scene in Bogota is growing exponentially, there are more and more collectives invested in improving the experience at their events, and we’ve met a lot of DJs and producers who are extremely talented, and who’ll make Colombia proud.

Also, since Colombia has been one of the few countries that allowed events to take place, it’s become a boiling pot for artists who wanted to get back on stage, and that’s put the country on the map recently.

Colombia has become a bit of a hot spot for international talent during this year, as they allowed small gatherings, which let Dr Honey play some of their new productions to a live audience.

Was that what inspired you to start Dr Honey?

Not really. Our dream to become DJs was born from many years of parties, just like a lot of the people who have started on this path. But it was when we started living together in Bogota that we decided to start it. What started as a hobby, little by little became our passion and a way of life.

After months playing as Dr Honey we realized that we wanted to showcase our own sound, play our own songs, so we decided to get started with producing our first single, which happened simultaneously to one of the most difficult experiences of our lives, we lost our small sister. She became our biggest source of inspiration and healing through music. Each one of our songs is a deep reflection of our emotions, beliefs, and perspectives related to themes like death, energy, dreams, and the other side.

I’m so sorry to hear that. It must have been a terrible loss.

It seems that the international scene has received you with open arms. From being included in famous playlists to articles on DJ Mag. What are some of your highlights?

Dr Honey has gifted us a lot of joyful moments, since we started we’ve been meeting our goals little by little. There are so many moments to highlight, but some of the most surprising ones have been getting included in the Latin American and Spanish editions of DJ Mag, as well as getting nominated for ‘Best Electro Song’ and ‘Best DJ’ in the Premior de Nuestra Tierra, a competition that has a lot of prestige in the music industry in our country, and where we got a chance to represent the techno scene for the first time, alongside great international artists like Shakira, Black Eyed Peas, and others.

The Cover or Dr Honey's latest single 'Collateral'.

I quite liked the illustrations and aesthetic of your single covers. Is it one of you two that handles the creative direction of the duo?

Yes, that’s correct! Each one of us takes care of different functions within the group, and Cami is our Art Director, she is the creative mind behind our visuals. We think that one of the things that we love most about Dr Honey is the total reflection of our personality, not only in the music but in our visual identity as well.

And you are sisters. How amazing is it to work so closely with your family… I suppose you get along well? Is it easy to work together?

Yes, it’s really fortunate to be able to work together. Since we were little we always got along, we’ve always been very united, and always dreamed of doing a project that was ours. Being such opposites has helped complement each other perfectly in this project. It’s as if we were the left and the right brain, and together we accomplish what we want.

Cami and Lau during a recent video shoot for one of their singles.

I imagine it’s been an interesting time to launch this project, right when the whole world came to a complete halt due to the pandemic. Have you been able to play your singles live yet? This has been a common theme I’ve seen other artists who released music last year struggling with…

At first we had to do a lot of virtual shows, however, in Colombia, it’s now allowed to do small events, where we’ve been able to play our music to an intimate crowd. Everything we learned from playing our first singles is now implemented in ‘Collateral’, our newest production, as we got to understand the dynamic with the crowd and what they are looking for in an electronic music party.

Each time the crowd has been a bit bigger and we can’t wait for large-scale festivals to come back. We’ve got a lot of music to showcase.

Do you have any plans to play live or tour?

For now, we have some dates in Bogota, but we are starting to plan some trips both within Colombia and internationally. There’s a couple of countries that we want to visit soon, Mexico and Argentina, which is where our bigger listeners and followers are. We hope that for the last part of the year we can organize one of these trips.

How’s the future looking? Any project you can tell us about?

Well, a lot of music is coming out this year! We are super happy because we can announce our next EP is a collaboration with High On Mars, DJs and producers from Iran, who we admire. It’ll come out in a Spanish label called Reload Records founded by The Yellow Heads, who we are going to play in July in Bogota. We’ve also got two remixes, one of them for HINO, good friends from Mexico. And lastly an EP with Böjo, which we are starting to work on now.

Where would you like to see Dr Honey in 5 years?

We’ve got a lot of dreams! We can see ourselves playing Primavera Sound, Sonar, Awakenings, and why not a set for Cercle, showing some of the magical landscapes of Colombia. We also would love to collaborate with Hidden Empire or Township Rebellion, we have a lot of music and we rank on the Top 100 DJs on Beatport. As we always say, it’s good to dream big.

Great! We hope that’s the case. We’ll be on the lookout! Thanks for your contribution to the mix series!

Thanks for the invite! We’ve loved to share a bit about ourselves.

Dr Honey 'Collateral' is out now. Support them by listening below.