5 Minutes With… Peter Makto & Gregory S
Peter Makto and Gregory S are a duo gathering momentum at an astonishing rate following a number of sublime releases and highly successful events to run alongside. Having just released more killer tunes on their own imprint of TrueSounds Music with the Truth Seeker EP we caught up with the pair to chat further about what is in store for their ever growing fan base.
How and where did you guys first meet – what draws you to each other?
Greg: It was long long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… 
Ok Ok, seriously, Peter and my music enthusiast brother were classmates at a technical school and they were good friends so he spent a lot of time at our place. In spite of the age difference we got connected through the music and I followed him to catch his early DJ sets all around the country. It was around the early 00’s. A few years later I also started collecting vinyls and joined Peter’s event series called TrueSounds (This is how our label got it’s name) After a few years of constant DJing in Hungary and some European countries, we decided to start creating our own sounds.
What labels and parties were you into when you first discovered electronic music? Is there a good scene in Hungary?
Peter: My first touch with the electronic music was around 1992-1993 in the high school. I’ve got some local DJ’s mixes on tape from my new classmates. I am older than Greg so I could be a member of the rudimentary party culture here. 36hrs events, illegal parties, any kind of raves with the local pioneers who brought the new vibes on vinyls from Germany, Austria, UK. My connection is the HOUSE MUSIC that’s why I still remember for the big labels like : MANIFESTO, TWISTED, SHARP TOOLS, STRICTLY RHYTHM. Around 2001 – 2004 I stuck on the deep house. I totally missed the big explosion of the GU series, I missed the Bedrock fever in that age because I always attracted towards the slower, deep smoothy or dirty jazzy house sounds. Kevin Yost is one of my big favourite and Plastic City is more for me than Plastic Fantastic.
Greg: When I first discovered the electronic music I was around 12 so I couldn’t go anywhere. At that time I was amazed by the sound of the KLF and the early Thunderdome CDs. When I grew up I started discovering the techno scene (The Advent, Chris Liebing etc) , but besides that my biggest influence was without question the sound of the Global Underground label at that time. I became addicted to Sasha’s early sets and of course the GU. CD series. I got the chance to listen almost all the big starts from that era at the clubs in Hungary which helped me a lot to imagine myself in the DJ booth later.
Peter: About the scene, I can say that recently we have really good vibes here. You can find a wide range of events if you come to Budapest. There are some small underground clubs with experimenting programs. The small clubs usually present many new names and new sounds. The big venues present the top names. The only problem is the number of the young people in the country. Many youngsters have left Hungary in seeking a better and new life abroad. It’s a bit “funny” – when we have a good scene, there are less people around us – but this is another and a political kind of topic.
Do you have different or similar musical backgrounds? Who brings what to the table?
Greg: Neither of us are trained musicians, so both of us learned everything in the DJ booth and through our deep devotion to electronic music. But there is a clear difference between our taste of music. Peter much prefers the distinctive and serious house grooves and I am more into the atmospheric kind of house tracks. These 2 sides always create a nice mixture in our projects.
Do you have set roles in the studio so one on bass, one on keys or whatever or is it more fluid?
Greg: I am more of a technician kind of guy, so our usual process is that I come up with a basic idea of a track what I begin creating in Ableton with the help of our additional gears. After finishing some basic grooves Peter helps to give them life with his sometimes surprising ideas. He always thinks outside the box which is a great help to break the monotonic structures.
And in the DJ Booth – who do you play? Is it competitive, do you do one each, half hour each or what?
Peter:
– Usually we play separated DJ sets as a single dj in the same line ups. If we have a situation to play b2b set then we always keep ourselves to these rules :
– it’s not a dj competition
– the set has to be unified
– the audience is the most important
The show has to be out of any damage. If we are in different moods than we change each other after 1hr. We respect the people on the dance floor very much so it is unacceptable for us to make a mistake by any reason.
Tell us about the cuts for your new TrueSounds Music – what inspired or influenced them?
Peter: About TSM012 : in 2015 summer we got many positive experiences and we decided to create an EP for 2016 summer. We think Truth Seeker EP is a colourful house / tech house EP what is perfect for the dance floor. You can feel all the good vibes of the summer in these tracks. Dilby’s remix is an old school dirty house, typical ‘shake your ass’ stuff. Junior Gee’s remix is a happy main time track. The original is good for open air parties, daytime events. We love summer, hope you like the EP!
And what gear did you use on them? What tools and techies were employed?
Greg: In the past few years we have come up with a special “1/3 rule”. 1/3 of a track structure comes from our analogue and other external devices (Slim Phatty, Access Virus, Tanzbär). 1/3 are samples, and the remaining part is made by soft synths.
Whats it like running a label, what are the best and worst bits?
Peter: It’s a new challenge to me. Really hard to build up something new from the zero point. I enjoy all the moments of the managing. The worst moments are when you finally set up the whole year plans, release dates etc etc and finally all of this turn off because of 1 or 2 artists. Some of them can’t keep the deadlines or something shit happens. I don’t have hard feelings for them. I just don’t like changing my decisions. The best? – we are happy to get any support. Charts, plays, comments on SC, private messages. If someone likes our work, our sounds and he/she represents it that is more than enough. It is almost same for us if there is a small name or big one behind the support. We are happy to get it. You know it is always a kind of WOW feeling..
What else you got icing up/are you working on?
Greg: We are having releases on such labels as Ritter Butzke Studio and the Tel Aviv based Take Away in the next couple of months. We have to finish some remixes for our friends and for our label too. Besides the producing part we are working on our label nights continuously. We had an amazing showcase at Sziget Festival and in September there will be a TrueSounds Music Showcase with Hyenah from Berlin.
Do you have goals and dreams and targets of things you would like to achieve?
Of course we have, but luckily we are quite satisfied with our things nowadays which means we are not forcing anything. In long terms, of course we would like to have releases on legendary labels such as the mighty Kompakt or on Objectivity. And we have dream venues and festivals too, not to mention the future of our label. But apart from these things the most important thing for us is to enjoy the journey!
You can grab a copy of their latest ‘Truth Seeker’ EP here.
