From the thunderous drops of dubstep to tropical house’s love of acoustic instrumentation, the electronic music scene is always craving its latest bold reinvention. By concocting a cocktail of Caribbean sounds with big pop hooks, trap and the thumping energy of EDM, Montreal-based duo BANX & RANX are perfectly placed to be the leaders of the genre’s next big movement.
They call it Electro Caribbean Music, or ECM: uplifting, summery vibes which shimmer with island rhythm and the kind of immediate choruses that can translate right across the globe.
BANX + RANX possess an innate connection in which their shared skills create something more compelling than what they could do on their own. The duo – Soké and KNY Factory – have both enjoyed an unconventional journey which seems perfectly fitting for their equally unconventional approach.
Born in France to an Indian father and a French-Canadian mother, KNY Factory was raised in Guadeloupe, a French island territory located in the Caribbean. As a child, the first music he listened to was ragga, reggae, disco/funk and he is still a huge fan of Jamiroquai to this day. He played rhythms on the island’s traditional gwo ka drums before discovering his love for singing (in creole) as well as producing dancehall, reggae and hip-hop in his teens. His crowning glory at the time of a 76-track mixtape, which he produced and mixed himself, that compiled music from Guadeloupe’s biggest underground acts in 2004.
Moving to Canada in 2008 allowed KNY to delve further into his passions – house, dubstep, trap and other electronic music with a tropical and dancehall flavour – as he also focused more on his solo productions and his own albums. Not that Guadeloupe was prepared for the tracks he’d take back there on regular visits. “I needed to show people on my island that this stuff exists,” he says. “But at parties and clubs people were literally running out of the dancefloor, like, ‘This guy is out of his mind!’”
In a parallel existence, Soké’s early interests evolved at a precocious rate. Discovering Michael Jackson and 90s dance music at the age of five soon gave way to his early teens deejaying at illegal rave parties with far more specialised sounds like Israeli psychedelic trance and hardcore techno. At the age of twelve, he started producing trance music and became enamoured with drum & bass, ragga, jungle and other inventions from the UK.
In Canada, however, electronic music was still really underground and Soké was drawn more to creating than hanging around the darker club scene. He started rapping and producing hip-hop and dropped multiple albums and mixtapes. It was hard for him to picture an international career in French-Canadian hip –hop, so he threw himself into reggae. He subsequently landed a record deal and a reputation as a leading light in the world of French-language reggae. The huge popularity of Soké’s remix of Bob Marley’s ‘Is This Love’ was a particular breakthrough, with many praising a rare Marley remix that respected the original while still striving to offer something new.
Eventually their paths converged and the pair soon realised that they had something special. An experiment in blending KNY Factory’s love of drops & dancehall with Soké’s reggae rhythms resulted in the first BANX & RANX track ‘Crime Scene’. As KNY Factory recalls with a smile: “That night I was getting back home kinda drunk and listening back to his SoundCloud like, ‘Man, I need to do something with him. We have to start a band!’”
As well as their own productions, the pair focused on revamping and refreshing dancehall with their own mixes – it was a strategy that not only allowed them to start to build a following, but that also helped to bridge the chasm between the roots of their music and the new direction that they wanted to take it. It was a concept that was soon embraced by fans with the BANX + RANX remix of Bob Marley’s ‘Jamming’.
An even bigger opportunity would soon follow. They chanced upon an old beat that they had composed alongside their friend Gary Wide that they’d long forgotten about and decided to progress into a fuller production. Somehow it found its way to Taio Cruz who developed the idea further – a development that the duo only discovered on the same day that KNY got the BANX & RANX logo tattooed on his arm. And yet the track still kept evolving, and it eventually ended up as Olly Murs’ Gold-selling hit single ‘Kiss Me’.
“That’s really not what we were expecting for this record,” laughs Soké. “But it was a good decision, and we then had plenty of options.”
What resulted was a hectic time of producing tracks for Sean Paul, Lady Leshurr, Fuse ODG, Stylo G and Kiko Bun, and also a deal across the Atlantic with Parlophone Records in the UK.
“We had a lot of offers,” emphasises Soké. “And it was interesting because we weren’t really looking for that. It was out of the blue: ‘Hey guys, would you be interested in a record deal?’”
“These guys are proper music people,” adds KNY. “We were chasing the right home to be with, someone who understands the project and who can bring it to the next level. And it was really cool to have people in this business who actually care about the music.”
BANX & RANX commence the Parlophone deal with the single ‘Lit’ which perfectly encapsulates their cross-genre attack, with rumbling dub bass, a flood of creative production embellishments, trap drops and a striking attitude-heavy topline courtesy of Ayak Thiik. What’s more, they have a huge amount of other new productions waiting to be uncovered which also fuse Caribbean grooves, North American production and international-thinking choruses.
“We’ve learned so much in the past year-and-a-half,” concludes Soké as his colleague nods in agreement. “A great beat is cool, but it’s really all about the songs. We also want to build something big at home by encouraging the local industry. Maybe we can help to make Montreal the new Toronto, which is very possible because there’s so much talent there.”
