The Halifax producer duo of PINEO & LOEB are no strangers to collaborations. They’ve worked with the likes of Glass Tiger’s Alan Frew to cover The Beatles, they’ve teamed up with Sparkee to cover The Strokes, Rich Aucoin to cover Daft Punk and more. Now they’ve teamed up with Calgary’s Proper Vibe and Kelowna’s Manteasah for “Daydreaming,” combining a massive bass drop with a delicious sax solo.
If you think that “Daydreaming” sounds like PINEO & LOEB are prepping new material for festival season, you’d be right. Coming off a slew of pop-heavy hits, the duo wants to get back to those body-shaking vibes just in time for The Great Return and get back into the festival scene that they attribute much of their success to.
Working through Kansas-based label OFDM (recently responsible for the release of “So In Love” by Ill Phil and Prayer Handz), PINEO & LOEB began working with Manteasah last year and then brought in bass producer Proper Vibe to top it all off.
Manteasah is the duo of (consisting of Jodie B along with and Justin MacLean, AKA Makemdef, from Chuurch) who PINEO & LOEB first caught performing at Shambhala in 2018. It was a moment that immediately grabbed them, convincing them that a collaboration was inevitable.
“Jodie’s vocals, the smooth sax, the cool dark production vibe from Justin, which is all there in ‘Daydreaming,’ as well…,” recalls Pineo. “The first time we saw them perform like that was this set at Shambhala. We were at this set. This is the set that definitely inspired the genesis of ‘Daydreaming.’
“We attended in 2018 and 2019 just as fans to meet and connect with people, where we saw Jodie and Justin play that afternoon set that we absolutely loved, Justin has played at Future Forest and Evolve as part of Chuurch multiple times and this is his new project.
“The essence of this track is East meets west I think. We knew Justin somewhat from playing with Chuurch at Evolve and Future Forest, so of course, we did go and talk to them in person,” laughs Pineo, “which is the beauty of those festivals. You can see someone play then meet them after and say you absolutely loved their set and hopefully a collaboration is born.”
PINEO & LOEB suggest that, if it hadn’t been for the time they had spent attending festivals, the collaborations of the last year and a half might have been harder to pull off. For musicians, these aren’t just audiences, but communities and networking events and they say that Shambala is their favourite.
“The West Coast and East Coast festival scenes are really so similar, amazing people with amazing values. We’ve been really embraced by the West Coast scene which is an honour to us and this song is a great realization of that connection,” says Pineo.
“[The last year] has definitely given everyone a lot more studio time, so the chance to finally collaborate with people we’ve been saying ‘oh we need to do a track with you!’ for years. We have hundreds of songs and collaborations in the works but everything lined up perfectly for this one to drop right now. We just announced our first festival back after lockdown and are booking a pretty extensive tour for the rest of the year so it’s also perfect timing for our bassiest dance track we’ve ever done.”
Collaboratively, had pieced together the song’s vocals and synths a year ago, they then shared their work with west-coast DJ Proper Vibe to fill out the lower register.
“He was thrilled by it. He had the idea to make the drop really punchy, based around distorted 808 drums,” says Pineo.
But as is true of most things in life, “Daydreaming” really only came together once the sax was brought in.
“The sax kind of made this track click together. We’ve got sax parts on the Fionn remix, Hey Jude, our Kid Cudi remix we did. We joked this is the year of the sax for us. So. there’s a thread between songs,” says Pineo. “We’ve done a lot of pop-heavy tunes lately. So, it’s cathartic for us to do a deep and heavy bass track at this point to balance ourselves out. It’s all about balance for us. We’d drop this in the same set we’d end with ‘Hey Jude.’ And of course, it’s gotta have sax, which all of our recent releases have had. Balance is our whole philosophy, organic with electronic, old and new.”
Taking the song’s collaborative efforts even further, once realizing that all of OFDM’s releases featured graffiti and street, they tracked down Halifax street artist, Prince Fuze for the song’s cover art. The result is an epic image of Victoria the Roman Goddess of Victory.
PINEO & LOEB has already announced that their first festival back with be Intersect in Alberta where they will be playing with Proper Vibe.
“And of course, Jodie B and Justin will be at Shambhala,” adds Pineo. “Which, if the fates allow, we will play at next year after our appearance was put on hold after it being canceled two years in a row.
“It’s so surreal to think that chapter of our lives is on the way out and we’re finally getting back to festival bookings and shows.”