Beauz dishes about their roots, love for Avicii, and the origin of their name [INTERVIEW]
BY ANASTASIIa RIDDLE
Bernie and Johan Yang, known as BEAUZ, are a DJ duo that’s been setting trends all across the globe. Their iconic psypop tracks quickly became viral, gaining them a dedicated following. The brothers bring out incredible energy and drive during their sets, making the crowd go absolutely feral.
But in between their packed touring schedule, music production, and gym sessions, they also manage to do artist talks and meet up with up-and-coming producers during Open Door Sessions organized by Neon Owl.
The duo spoke at the panel in Atlanta earlier in the day, where they shared their knowledge, listened to demos, and gave feedback. And then they made their way to District where we sat down with them and learned about their inspirations, aspirations, and how they became a TikTok viral sensation.
Beauz performing at District Atlanta October 5, 2024 - Photo by asp.films
Atlanta EDM: Tell us a little bit about yourself. I’ve read you are classically trained but what exactly attracted you to EDM?
Bernie: Alright, so the story started in 2012 when I was in USC in Los Angeles attending university. And my friends brought me to my first ever EDM rave, which is Beyond Wonderland in SoCal. And that rave basically changed my life. I was so intrigued by how the DJs can play the kind of music they played, which was so foreign to me because we grew up in Taiwan and the whole EDM culture and music was super fresh to me and I was immediately drawn to it. So after that, I immediately bought a DJ controller thinking that I can make music on the spot with that controller. Unfortunately, I found out that I could only switch from one song to another one, and so I did more research and I found out that we had to download a software called DAW, and so I suddenly remember Johan has an experience making hip hop beats on FL Studio while he was in middle school, which is really random.
Johan: Yeah, I was a fan of DJ Khaled, the Runners, they're the production group that did all the hip hop hits then. So very randomly, I did some Fruity Loops, FL Studio experience. So Bernie recruited me. He was like, "Yo, didn't you have some experience making some music like that?" I was like, "Yeah, I guess I do.
Bernie: "Yeah, so you want to make some music like Avicii?" He was like, "Who's Avicii?"
Johan: I knew DJ Khaled. Anyways, of course I found out who Avicii was and it was amazing.
Bernie: Ever since then, we started making music together for one year and then he went off to college. I started learning production on my own with Logic Pro and then eventually switched to Ableton, but it was all a hobby while I was in university. I did what made my parents happy, which is getting a degree in economics and mathematical finance. I also did an internship, which made me realize what I don't want to do, stuck in a cubicle looking at the clock everyday thinking when is it going to be over?
Beauz performing in Los Angeles for a sold out 360° set September 28, 2024 - Photo by photosbydutches
Atlanta EDM: How did you come up with your name? Is there a special meaning?
Bernie: Yeah, so actually it was a very random occurrence. I think everything in our career is always almost meant to be. It's like God's plan, basically. One day I was just trying to look for a name for ourselves, so I was typing in random words in the dictionary on Apple computer, and then this word came up B-E-A-U-X, beau, which means a stylish young man, a dandy, and it's actually a French word. And then I saw the way to pronounce it. I thought it was "Beauz." And then we initially started with BAUX and then people told us that, "Hey, that is called 'Bo, not Beauz." And we're like, "Oh no, but BEAUZ sounds better." So we just switched the last X to Z.
Johan: Yeah, X is not going to stop us. We're going to call it BEAUZ no matter what.
Atlanta EDM: You’re basically the godfathers of the psypop genre. What drew you to this combination?
Bernie: So actually the first ever psypop embodiment was "Count The Hours," we received the top line from Nevve, and then we gave it a lot of tries. We went from future bass to trap and all sorts of directions. So it was like five versions before I finally came up with an idea of doing a double-time trap and psytrance infused body of work. So once that happened, we got assigned to Armada, but then it didn't really do well internationally in the beginning. Everybody was like, "What the hell is this?" So we were kind of disappointed in the beginning, so we just kept doing our thing, kept releasing other music, and then the pandemic hit and guess what? A friend from China told us our song "Count The Hours" was blowing up on the Chinese TikTok, which is like again, God's plan. So at that time, the whole world's music industry was dead. So after finding out that "Count The Hours" was viral in China, we decided to just book a one-way ticket to China. We didn't know anybody there. We didn't have any family members there. So it was just me and him. We booked a 16-stop tour in China and the rest was history. And we have the privilege of saying, Hey, we're not just chasing trends, we were the trendsetters.
Atlanta EDM: Who inspired you the most when you first started producing and who is your inspiration now?
Bernie: So for me, in the beginning it was Avicii, Skrillex, Calvin Harris, David Guetta, all those OGs. And then for the longest time I was trying to be them, the pop EDM zenith, the pinnacle of pop EDM. That didn't really work out for us for a long time until we really found our sound. And I have to say, our current hard techno sound is inspired by Ben Nicky, Creeds, Darren Styles, all those three are my current favorites and I just can't get enough of their sets. They're just such pioneers in the genre and we're super happy to get their respect.
Johan: Yeah, and also all these hard techo acts that are killing it. Absolutely murdering the scene right now. I think there is a magic kind of sense in their kind of work, not just their music that really is on Spotify. It's their whole persona, the brand, the performance. They all became one. So I think that's something I want to learn from them. Like Sara Landry, Nico Moreno, they're all killing it.
Beauz performing in Los Angeles for a sold out 360° set September 28, 2024 - Photo by photosbydutches
Atlanta EDM: Tell us about your production process, who does what in the studio?
Bernie: So we both come up with ideas, but I do have a knack for picking up the right sounds, and I also have immense patience in doing that. So I'll be the one that finishes the track to take it to the professional level for DSPs to distribute, and Johan will feed me ideas. He's the idea guy. He always can help me think outside of the box.
Johan: I would say to break it down, generally Bernie is the director, the final decision maker, whatever that we put Beauz brand on, he has to say yes, it's done. So no matter it comes to visuals, music, merchandise - 'in Bernie we trust.' And that's how teamwork works. Because in a 50/50 relationship, usually you get headbutts a lot of times with ideas, conflict of interest. But if you have a captain of the ship and you kind of trust the captain, the captain will also trust their staff and the people who are helping them steer the ship to a better future. So because of that, Bernie will take lead on almost all the directions, and then I would fully trust him.
Bernie: And after 10 years, I can probably say that I have a very distinct taste palette. I am very sure what I like and what I don't like. So it wasn't always like this. Back then, I liked everything and it was very hard because a lot of times Johan would feed me ideas and I'm not 100% sure about it, but I still like it. But nowadays, I'm very sure of what we like and what direction we want to go.
Johan: Sometimes I would feed him a lot of things that are probably not in line with our sound, but because I still like everything, I'm still being inspired by everything. And honestly, that's the job description that I grew into after 10 years. I'm supposed to break some boundaries or do things that don't really make sense so that Bernie can have probably a little bit more inspiration in his work and he can lead us to a more mature sound.
Bernie: But other than production, we're not just musicians, we are actually entrepreneurs because I edit all my reels. And I would say nowadays social media is as important if not more important than the music itself. So I would say the main reason that we are here today, selling out hundreds of tickets in Atlanta, the first time we're here, is that we really worked hard. We really drilled in on social media, and besides the social media, we wanted to make sure the live experience is also amazing. So Johan took up the task of doing visuals ourselves.
Johan: So if you took the time to watch the whole performance, I would say 90% of the loops, we made it ourselves. I made it from scratch using 3D modeling software, Blender. And then from there, of course I just give all my loops to Bernie to look and then see if this is the general vibe that BEAUZ wants to go for? And then we just put together a sequence of visuals. So the reason why I picked up visuals is also because we're entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs have finite resources. When you're talking about the tour, we're going to have some income, but then we need to make sure everybody has the best experience. How do we do that? We're going to hire another team of 3D modelers and then visual designers? That's going to cost us a bank. We're probably going to have to sell our pants or something like that, which is not ideal. So for us to keep our pants on, we took up the task of learning how to do visuals. In the beginning it was really crap. I would show Bernie, and he had nothing to compare it to, so he would be like, "Wow, this is great." And then I started giving him the second loop and third loop and fourth loop. And he was like, "Yo, the first one was shit." And I was like, "I know."
Beauz speaking at Open Door Sessions Atlanta October 5, 2024 - photo by photos.sean.89
Atlanta EDM: If you got to curate your own music festival lineup, who would be the headliners?
Johan: The 'Baddie Up' festival for sure. And then our main target audience is the baddies for sure.
Bernie: Well, definitely invite all our good friends, good collaborator buddies, JKRS, who did our song "Loco" with us. We also really like Nicholas Julian, he's a hard techno DJ who's a little harder than us, but I think he'll make a really good lineup with us.
Johan: So generally because of the new turn of the sonic scape that we're going for, the sound that we're going for, that's why I feel like we're doing all kinds of original self-releases and stuff. We really want to brand our new sound to be a very distinct path, to be this very distinct sound people can identify with. And if we do a festival, it's going to be in line with the same kind of concept, but we want to give opportunities to people who didn't have an opportunity in the past or in the beginning. There's a lot of artists who are just talented. And then when they send us work, we remember the times when we were struggling and we're like, we just wish that there is an umbrella of people with the same mindset, with the same sound who can band together and share resources.
Beauz performing at District Atlanta October 5, 2024 - Photo by asp.films
Atlanta EDM: You guys are super into working out. What’s the most underrated machine that people tend to ignore?
Bernie: The cables. Oh my God. The cables. The cables are the best because you can really feel the stretch whenever there's an opposite resistance. And I feel like it just makes me feel so good when I'm stretching the muscles after a huge push workout. What about yours?
Johan: Rear delts!
Bernie: But that's not a machine. That's dumbbells.
Johan: Yeah, it's not a machine, but you can use a machine to work your rear delts. So the good thing about rear delts is that when you're working your shoulder, a lot of times you need a long time for the rear delts to grow, to be three-dimensional. Right? So the key here is rear delts. If you work on your rear delts, your back here is going to be very, very nice. It's very nice. And carvey.
Bernie: The thing is most people neglect the rear delts when they're working on the shoulders. They usually just do the shoulder presses and the lateral raises. They really do the rear delts last. But we always start with the rear delts.
Johan: So that your side profile looks nice and thick. I love that. Instead of your shoulder being broken in the front and nothing in the back. That's weird. Don't be weird.
Beauz performing in Los Angeles for a sold out 360° set September 28, 2024 - Photo by photosbydutches
Atlanta EDM: Do you have a message for your ATL fans?
Bernie: ATL HOE! ATL HOE! Anyway, ATL Baddies really showed up tonight. Honestly, our ATL debut was beyond amazing.
Johan: I just want to let you guys know, tonight is probably not the first night hard techno gets here, but it will be the night everybody remembers that hard techno is officially introduced to Atlanta. We're going to bring our show back bigger and better every single time. Y'all know the drill. Baddie up!