Guns N Bombs - Guns N Bombshell
When 3D’s Scott Henderson called up Johnny Love of Guns N Bombs the last thing he expected to hear was that they were no more. Well, not exactly anyway…
There’s a moment in our interview where the penny hasn’t dropped on my end of the line and Johnny ‘Love’ Dal Santo hasn’t quite spelt it out on his. As a producing partnership Guns N Bombs is no more, and as a DJ partnership it never really was. The name might still be out there, but it’s not quite as you’d expect it to be.
Love is currently in Chicago working on a “new project actually called Death Face,” he explains. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the last track that came out as Guns N Bombs called Riddle Of Steel, it’s more stuff in that direction.”
Guns formed in 2006 when Love and Filip ‘Turbotito’ Nikolic were both living in the Windy City where Love was throwing illegal loft parties. After a bit of MySpace social networking Love booked Filip to DJ at his 23rd birthday party and their friendship grew out of shared music tastes.
“I was throwing these loft parties in Chicago and the police kept coming after me,” continues Love. “So the last loft party I had got shut down by this huge police raid and I had to leave Chicago because I was going to get arrested. I made a bulletin on MySpace saying should I move to New York or LA and Filip called me that day and said ‘let’s move to LA and make music’.”
It wasn’t long before their first single, catchy synth electro track Nothing Is Getting Us Anywhere, was picked up by Kitsuné and followed up the following year with the release of a nifty remix of Chromeo’s Fancy Footwork. As the duo became an increasing presence on the newly blazing LA DJ circuit they dropped a Proxy-esque monster in the form of their second single Riddle of Steel. It’s talking about this that Love reveals that while he will continue to DJ under the Guns N’ Bombs moniker, producing-wise himself and Filip are moving in different directions.
“Filip is older and has a slightly older taste,” says Love. “He keeps wanting to make minimal techno, which I think has stayed the same and is kinda pinned to a bunch of drug addicts anyway. I keep trying to explore new things as with Riddle of Steel and the whole dubstep thing, [Filip] actually hates dubstep whereas I find it really exciting.”
It’s with this that the proverbial penny hits the ground: “I’m kinda doing [Death Face] instead of Guns N Bombs because I feel like that idea has passed. I actually have maybe six tracks done as Death Face ready to play in Australia when I come there.”
Love insists that Guns N Bombs is “still in existence,” but it’s hard to know what that means exactly. “I was the DJ generally most of the time,” he says, “90 per cent of the shows I was the one who would go.”
WHO: Guns N Bombs
WHAT: Play We Love Sounds, Entertainment Quarter
WHEN: Saturday 6 June