Nick Middleton and Duncan Smith met on Galiano Island; the two soon started attending music festivals together, and then playing music together as The Funk Hunters. Now, the electronic DJ duo is going to be performing at Canada’s 150 birthday party bash here in Victoria. Not bad for a band that started out playing house parties.
“We started essentially as DJs, and that turned into making simple remixes and bootlegs and edits of songs, and now that’s gone right into us making our own original music; it’s been a huge evolution for us,” says Smith.
The Funk Hunters have been working on new music, which they plan to release on an album that will probably be dropping in 2018. They have also remixed numerous songs for artists including Imagine Dragons, SkiiTour, and Delhi 2 Dublin; as well, the group released an album last year with Chali 2na, one of the founding members of Jurassic 5.
“For me, it’s about trying to find the soul in all music, regardless of what style or genre it is. Something that really speaks to you, has that feeling in it, that’s the most important thing,” says Smith. “We’ve been working on a lot of music that fell kind of under the radar; we aren’t releasing it at the moment because we’re just putting it together for a bigger album that will probably be coming next year, filled with original music; it’s a complete array of styles and genres.”
The duo has performed at festivals all over Canada, but Shambhala, which goes down annually near Nelson, is the music festival that has had the largest impact on the band. The two have been attending the festival since its early days.
“Shambhala is always kind of home for us, but it’s always a privilege to be able to perform at music festivals and to be able to see the different vibes that each of them have, whether you’re in Europe or Australia or America or here in BC,” says Smith. “We’re pretty spoiled in Western Canada with the amount of music festivals that exist here. We’re super stoked to be in Victoria for Canada Day. It’s pretty cool to be part of the Canada 150 celebration and to throw down on Victoria’s Parliament Hill, and then rock the aftershow at Sugar.”
Funk Hunters (at Spirit of 150)
7 pm, Saturday July 1
Free, Legislature lawn
spirit150victoria.ca
10 pm, Saturday July 1
$22.50, Sugar Nightclub
sugarnightclub.ca