BONKA | Behind The Decks

Written By Gene Convery & Shane Price

These Brisbane boys are are HUGELY known for their mashups and bangers. After the huge success of their last release “Focus” earlier in the year, they have now followed it up with with their latest single released this week “All Your Love”. With its summer vibes, this is set to light up dance floors all over the world. We sat down with the duo behind Bonka, Lachlan and Connor, and had a chat!

Come with us as we step Behind The Decks with BONKA

Welcome home, you are in the middle of a tour, how has it been so far?

Connor- It’s been pretty wild, to be honest! We kicked off this tour a couple of weeks ago, every show so far has been insane! Everyone is giving really good feedback for the new record and it’s just been really wild. A lot of drinking though, that has been ruining Lachlan and I. But it’s been a lot of fun though, I’m not complaining, my body might be but I’m not!

I love how many regional shows you boys are doing, is that something you are focusing on?

Lachlan - Regional shows have always been a market that we want to try to tap in to; there are so many regional venues that are amazing to play at! Everyone plays cities, but there is an infinite number of rural towns/small cities, that have amazing nightlife, but a lot of DJs obviously don't like leaving the fancy hotels and the nice cars, but we take it out bush. The crowds are always so responsive to our music and they always go hard.

I am loving your recap videos, is this something we will be seeing more from you?

Connor- Heaps of recaps actually!!! Every time we tour we take our photograph with us to capture all the craziness. We want people to feel like they are on tour with us. Most of all we want to capture the whole experience so people can see us have the time of our lives doing what we love.

Shane- I watched the one after Suncorp and WOW, that looked crazy.

Connor and Lachlan - Yeah not going to lie, it was more than crazy! I think the video doesn’t really do it justice, it doesn’t really show much of the aftermath, the next day it was biblical; it was trouble, bad day.

Shane- Like a scene from the hangover?

Connor and Lachlan - Way worse! It’s like The Hangover movie only comes out every year, we got one every weekend, it’s a nightmare.

Ok let’s talk Music. You dropped “Focus” earlier in the year with huge success. It was a very different track for you boys, are we going to see you experimenting in different genres?

Lachlan - Well actually, our heart lies in the club and festival scene. The driving force behind our inspiration and music, in general, is always going to be the club. It seems that the scene is moving away from club tracks and focusing far more on house inspired vocal tracks. We are going to start playing both sides of the fence really; we have a lot of club records that are finished, but in the interim, we are going to be putting out radio records. So it's trying to hit both markets at the same time; the crossover between commercial and club music is that if people hear your commercial records and love it they become fans and they'll come to your shows. At the shows, they'll hear our club records, then maybe they will listen to them on Spotify, maybe they'll buy them or maybe they will show their friends. It's just a way of capturing a wider audience, so ultimately the more people that listen to your music, the further we can take this wild ride.

Your new track “All Your Love” is sick, well done! You had such huge success with “Focus” did you feel any pressure when creating “All Your Love” or did it just flow on?

Connor- It just flowed on! Honestly, with “Focus” we were blown away with what great feedback it got. We knew we had to do a follow-up, we had the vocals and music ready for 2 years and every time we listened to it we were blown away. From that point we knew we could do something with it and we an instrumental sitting there and it was perfect. We went back and forth on Skype with The Romantic Era and it was a really smooth process, which was really good. We're really happy with the outcome!

It has all the makings of the soundtrack to the summer, tell me how did the track come to life?

Lachlan- We have a lot of ideas going around in our heads, we had an idea of what we're hope to produce with "All Your Love" . Obviously when we released "Focus", it did well on the Australian market and then started to do well over in the US, so we knew that the clubesque sort of sound with the big brass backs, the boppy flow, and as you were saying, the more summery vibe and things like that were an absolute MUST. It all came from the amazing work done by the team and The Romantic Era, without them and their vocal arrangement, the track would be soulless. Just like with "Focus" before it, we are over the moon with how it turned out!

Lots of artists say after working on a track for so long, they cannot listen to that type of music any more. What’s on your personal Spotify lists at the moment?

Connor- A lot of variety actually; a lot of pop, a lot of bangers too actually haha. Just a lot of everything and also we have playlist every month with just tracks we are loving and vibing at that time. A lot of the tracks we actually play in the club. It's basically a playlist you could use for pres or at the gym. So a lot of everything.

We have some of the best festival lines-up we have had in years coming to Australia this summer, what festivals will you boys be heading to?

Lachlan- Wildlands!!! Crazy line up!!! I mean I wish we were on the lineup, but now I can go as a fan so I'm cool.

Shane - I have a feeling you guys like to turn it up at the festivals if you are playing or not.

Lachlan- Yeah, I don't mind not playing sometimes because you don't have the responsibility of having coordination, or having to speak properly, so it works out good.

Finally, we ask all our artists the same closing question. What’s the craziest thing you have seen from Behind the Decks?

Lachlan - This one's for you Con!

Connor - I’m actually having a blank, craziest thing we've seen from behind the decks...

Lachlan- Oh Con, you know exactly what you are going to tell them, you know that story, it's something I've done.

Connor - Oh yeah I was behind the decks, I saw it haha!

Lachlan- Let's just say it was pretty wild... I drank out of a prosthetic leg from an Army veteran. He was literally in a wheelchair and came up and we were playing Thunderstruck and he was like “I want you to have a drink” and I was like “I'll do it.” He said “use my leg” and literally popped it off and I thought to myself “this can't be happening right now”, it was pretty wild and everyone cheered me on. We went back to the same place months later and he went to do it again and I told it that it was a one time only its never happening again.

It was great getting to chat with the boys and seeing them doing so well, as always please hit the boy's social links below. Check out their tour dates and to see what the boys do best!