Interview: Five Minutes with Lunar Plane

Emre & Mert Altinok discovered their passion for producing music while developing an electronic music streaming platform in 2014, following which the identical twin brothers went on to found Lunar Plane.  The two, not just pretty faces, attended Yale University where they studied biomedical engineering and economics. 

Imprints such as Stil Vor Talent, Parquet, 2DIY4, and Steyoyoke signed some of their early work before joining forces with Desert Hearts Black. Focussing on heavier sounds, musical exploration, and the depths of late nights and early mornings the pairing between Lunar Plane and Desert Hearts Black seemed a natural one.

Learn a little more about the Turkish twins in our exclusive interview below.

Hi guys, thanks for taking some time to answer our questions. It looks like you’ve both had a busy year so far. What have been your highlights?

Yes, indeed. This year has been quite busy with producing and releasing new music. Our highlights have been making it to Beatport’s Top 10 charts four times this year up until now and our track Olappa making it to #1 in Afro House charts. Finally releasing an EP on one of our favorite labels, Stil Vor Talent, was another exciting development of 2019.

How does creating music together impact your family dynamic?

Our lives have always been about sharing, doing things together and supporting each other. We just love creating something together because it feels right, as we’re quite similar in terms of musical taste. Music definitely complements our relationship and help us have a joint impact on our world.

You’re currently touring independently until the summer of 2020. How have these tours affected your ability to produce music together?

To be honest, we never really produce music together sitting side by side. We usually have around three tracks each that we work on, and we just swap them by sending the projects back and forth. Most of the time we write each other extensive comments about the tracks. We have found out that this system works better for us, because there is a higher level of focus that you can reach only when you’re alone and completely immersed in music. We both need that to create our best.

Tell us about the electronic music streaming platform that you developed together.

It was an electronic music only streaming platform where you could pick out what you want to listen to based on simple parameters. Instead of hundreds of genres, artist or label names we had sliders for Chill/Heavy, Happy/Dark, Plain/Melodic and Vocals/No Vocals. After configuring these, the user would be provided with a playlist by our algorithm. As we don’t have musical backgrounds, analyzing music for this project laid the groundwork for Lunar Plane.

Having experimented with melodic techno, progressive house and electronica, do you see yourselves branching out into other genres in the future?

We don’t like to define our music with genres or one specific sound because this would limit our creativity. We like to be free of genres and produce the music we want, especially the music we would want to play at our shows. We can say that driving basslines, strong lead melodies, organic drums and a touch of ethnic music are common elements of our tracks. To sum up, we currently make electronic deep melodic progressive ethnic house and techno, whatever you want to call it =)

Tell us about the inspiration behind your upcoming release, ‘Phantom’?

Our friends over at Desert Hearts Black told us about their project, and we immediately wanted to be a part of it, because not only do we feel their musical vision, but also they’re great people! They asked us to deliver some darker and stronger tracks with a focus on sound design and synth-work, and Phantom EP is what we came up with.

What was it like to work alongside Desert Hearts Black?

It’s been a great experience as they’re a lovely team, and we’re already friends with most of the members. They definitely have that community/family feel that probably helped shape Desert Hearts.

What can we expect from you in 2020?

We won’t stop exploring new sounds and creating, so expect to see some fresh tunes, and now that we’re touring separately, we will be performing for more people and enjoying our music with them!

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