Interview: In conversation with SOBSTORY
Electronic music artists TCTS and PARX join forces on an exciting new project
When SOBSTORY launched in early 2024, there was an air of experience about it. While it was cryptically presented, with little information about who was behind the project, it was incredibly polished for what appeared to be a debut release.
Almost six months on, SOBSTORY is now known to be the passion project of friends Sam O’Neill and Alex Cramp - otherwise known as electronic music artists TCTS and PARX - who have amassed more than 170 million streams in their respective artistic projects.
There was a reason behind their stealthy new outfit - they wanted to put the tunes before the names.
As TCTS, Sam is a huge artist in the house music genre, with a show on KISS Fm as well as a decade of releases that have earned him tens of millions of streams across music platforms, 750k monthly listeners on Spotify and live shows at Miami Music Week and Printworks and Amnesia in Ibiza.
A BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra regular, Sevenoaks house producer Parx has collaborated with some of the biggest artists in the electronic music arena, while as an artist has also released his hit cover of the well-known CeCe Peniston classic Finally, which continues to clock up streams (currently at a cool 33 million).
Doing exactly what they want to do is the ethos behind SOBSTORY, and the duo have already had releases on labels Shall Not Fade and Norman Cook’s Southern Fried Records.
Their creative flow has been led by a love of underground sonics, club culture and old Rinse FM YouTube rips, with influences ranging from techno and rave to breaks. There are no rules. We got in touch to find out more.
CENE: We know about your solo careers, but what were the first steps with SOBSTORY?
SAM: It all dovetails really nicely into itself. Alex and I met years ago in the toilet queue at ADE [Amsterdam Dance Event] and then we just became really good mates. We thought we would like to start working together as well and we released a PARXS x TCTS record on Ministry of Sound, which was great. We’ve just been in the same circles.
ALEX: I’d say it’s more important to know we’re mates first. If we go to the studio together it is with the intention of going to the pub straight afterwards.
SAM: Haha! I think we’re doing that this Friday, aren’t we?
CENE: That’s where the best work is done. Right?
SAM: Yeah, exactly.
ALEX: I think I’d just signed to the same label. And while the toilet queue is not the best place to introduce yourself, it worked. And that was about eight years ago.
CENE: So working together was always going to happen… how did the project start?
ALEX: We signed an EP to Shall Not Fade and they were creating this compilation and asked us if we had a song to put on it, but they needed it that day.
I think we made Wanna Feel a week before and we were literally just ‘F*ck it. Like, that’s gonna have to do’.
I sent it to Abbie McCarthy at BBC Kent Introducing because I know her. She played it to Jaguar [BBC] and then the label got Pete Tong to play it, and all of a sudden it caught three Pete Tong plays and about five or six Radio 1 plays!
SAM: I don’t think we had even signed the contract at that moment! Haha!
CENE: Was that nerve-racking?
SAM: It was quite a buzz. Obviously we’ve been producers for a little while and done our own stuff, but then this just felt so easy in terms of the creation of the music and getting it out to people and people feeling it. The whole point of this project was to write the kind of music that we really love, with a bit less radio focus than our other things we might be involved in. And, ironically, radio immediately wanted it.
CENE: There’s that thing of the moment you relax about achieving a particular goal is the moment it arrives.
ALEX: Yeah, the music happened naturally because we love loads of music and types of dance records. In our world of being slightly more commercial, you are aiming for major labels or certain gigs, but we just love the more underground stuff.
The music wrote itself and then all of a sudden Radio 1 played it - we really didn’t think that would happen.
CENE: When SOBSTORY launched, it seemed like you were keeping your other projects away from it. Was that a conscious decision.
ALEX: Yeah, it was. There was just no need to have those two names put together - we wanted to start fresh. We’ve got contacts to use, but there was no need to have the PARX and TCTS thing linked to it.
SAM: Yeah, 100%. It’s quite easy to get pigeonholed.
I was aware that I didn’t want someone on the radio to be like ‘He’s done this and this previously, so let’s put him in this box’. We actually kept it way more under wraps. Now a few records have been out, we’ve been a little bit more open about it publicly. I just kind of wanted to give it its fighting chance initially and just for people to take it on measure of the music rather than on what they might have seen me or Alex do before.
ALEX: Plus, having some secrecy does sometimes actually help. People are more intrigued to listen to it, especially at the start when you’re sending demos. You want to have that ‘Oh, who are these guys?’.
CENE: For a project that essentially started this year, the amount of listeners you’ve accumulated is impressive!
ALEX: It’s all been a bit of a shock. I think it’s just because we’ve just released the songs we thought were right to release. We’re sitting on 15 to 20 songs, but we’ve just picked the ones that tell the story properly and what sonically sounds like we’re developing where we want to go. And Spotify got on board, New Music Fridays, and other things.
SAM: We’ve definitely approached this project in an artists-first mentality. We want to make bigger bodies of work, like doing an album at some point, and basically make decisions that are purely down to the music. We have a bit of experience under our belts and been around the block with labels and we kind of know how the scene often operates. We’ve been very close mates for a while, but this is the first time we’ve kind of got our heads together and considered what we actually want an artist project to look like.
Do we want to pump out club bangers, or do we want to make more arty bodies of work where we give ourselves the opportunity to flex our production muscles a little bit and work in different BPMs and make a techno record and then make a dubstep record and then make a drum and bass record?
A lot of people have said to us they can kind of feel that it’s quite natural and authentic.
CENE: Is there a timeframe or a grand scheme that you’re putting on the project?
ALEX: Just making good music and getting it on the right labels. We’re probably going to do a five-song EP with Southern Fried, so that’s cool. And the music is pretty all over the place, which is sick because it’s like it’s an old-school body of work, not just the same song repeated five times on an EP.
SAM: We’re really keen to have a label home that we trust and that gets what we’re trying to do and isn’t there 24 hours a day saying ‘Guys, can you get on TikTok, blah, blah, blah’. We’re so sick of that. It’s just really a music-first process. And we were just partnering up with labels that get that and agree with that sort of approach. The goal right now is just building it and getting it out to a wider audience.
CENE: So how did it start out with Southern Fried Records?
ALEX: Unlike a lot of labels, they didn’t care that we had no music out already, or that we didn’t have an Instagram and stuff like that. They just loved the music and wanted to sign it. Knowing how labels look at your numbers, and social media, and your followers, that was just so fresh. So we just signed to them. Shall Not Fade was at the same time, which made sense because they’re a club label and the first couple of releases needed to be played easily in the club.
CENE: Southern Fried are well known in that genre, plus they have Norman Cook’s name attached…
ALEX: I think that’s probably why they get it, because the owner has been all over the place in his music and did whatever he wanted to do. They’re very much an old-school approach in a modern world.
SAM: The industry is data-driven now… it’s all just very algorithm-based and obviously we get that - it’s how major labels operate and how business works. But there’s also those indie labels who are kind of pushing back on that a little bit. And like everyone that we’re partnering up with, they all understand that. No one’s trying to lock you in for exclusive deals. They understand the ecosystem and that a rising tide lifts all ships - and if one wins, then we all win.
CENE: If someone sings along to the lyrics when you play it live, then you know you’ve won.
SAM: Job’s done - exactly. If you connect with the fan, genuinely, that’s worth any number of streams.
CENE: It’s hard to have a career in music these days, so to be able to start at a passion project is amazing!
SAM: It’s a total privilege, that’s what makes this so nice. We’ve made dozens of decisions in our careers beforehand where you know you need to pay the bills and maybe do something that you don’t 100% want to do. It’s not an easy industry by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s nice that, with this, we can make those decisions based on the music.
ALEX: It’s so important at the start of a project to not think about money. I ended up doing it with PARX, and it’s hard, when you’ve got a mortgage or rent, and then you’ve got studio fees to pay, especially now when you don’t really get paid from streaming. We’ve made those calls before, so I think we’ve learned from them. With this project you know that for probably two years it’s not going to be an income, but that’s fine. The main thing is just getting music that we’re passionate about out to the world. And if we get paid later on, cool. If not, we’ll keep doing it anyway.
