Basel based twins Dersu and Diego Figuiera have been spinning funk, house, disco and boogie across Switzerland and Europe since their teens and now converge together as Alma Negra.  Coming from a musical family with strong Cape Verde roots, percussion, groove and swing is at the heart of the music they love. As dancers, drummers and latterly producers it is the foundation of what they do.

Growing up in Hip Hop  culture, the twin’s love for Black music is strong. Later house music from Chicago, New York and Detroit got them the basis to explore the genre’s cross cultural heritage from jazz and dance that emerges from Cuba or Brazil to the West Coast of Africa, through the Middle East and beyond. The duo has brought his sound to clubs and parties including Fuse (Brussels), Le Sucre (Lyon), Zukunft (Zurich), Claire (Amsterdam), African Acid Is The Future (Berlin)

We got the opportunity to peep inside this duo’s studio space, and see the top 5 tools in their arsenal!

1. Doepfer Analog Modular System

Mario is responsible for our live band and is also working on productions . His focus is mainly on sound design, wonky rhythms and electroacoustic experiments, but it’s still in research. Some modules like the CG Products are perfect to play your modular with percussion through Mic Preamps. I’m very in love with the analog modules and sound processing with tubes.

2. Monostation

The Monostation is a very underrated synth in this context, because it has Eurorack CVs (so you can control with it your modular), an internal sequencer and almost the same sound engine like the bassstation and on top of that programmable scales to play the synth with the pads

3. Bassstation

The Bassstation is a super nice Synth, not only for basslines. we also need it as a midi controller for plugins and use the nice filters from it .

4. Percussion

Percussion is the leading and most important element in our productions. We record a lot of conga drums and Djembe but also much different shaker and everything that makes a nice sound .

5. Guitar

The guitar we use mostly to create ideas and melodies in an early process of a new track. But recently I’m getting curious to record and it gets more and more important for new tracks.

PURCHASE

Turn it up & enjoy!

–DuBeats