The debut album of International Music, produced by Olaf O.P.A.L. springs to mind. "Die Besten Jahre" opened a completely new world for us.

Although, we're probably the proudest of our most recent work, The Düsseldorf Düsterboys' "Duo Duo". We produced it ourselves - which was a lot of hard work, but in the end we managed to capture a beautiful sonic world through the combination of analogue and digital technologies.

We both started with classical instruments when we were kids. Pedro learnt to play the classical guitar, while Peter started off at the piano. When we were 14, we founded our first rock band together - heavily influenced by the indie rock of the mid 2000s and their influences. Pedro's dad is from Brazil, so growing up he listened to a lot of Brazilian music in addition to the household classics like Queen and ABBA. Peter was exposed more to classic 60s music.

Pedro: For me, the most significant factor was Peter seeing me play in the school's Jazz band and asking me to join his band. From there on, we always exchanged ideas about music, sound and production and grew a special connection. I trust him completely. Later, going to our label Staatsakt's offices on a Saturday, and meeting the label's head, Maurice Summen, seems like a funny stroke of fate. He introduced us to our producer Olaf O.P.A.L., who has an incredible production and mixing background, and became sort of a mentor for us.

Peter: For me again and again "The Velvet Underground“ has been a great inspiration for my music making in bands. It’s their playfulness and the radicality in composition and sound that doesn’t stop to impress me.

It’s old but true: Learning by doing. If you start recording and mixing you might be frustrated at the beginning when things don’t immediately sound like you imagined them to. Don’t worry, with failure and experience you’ll learn to get there. Also you don’t need tons of equipment. It’s crazy how good your recordings can be already with a decent interface and a laptop. But if you have the money: Go and buy at least one good/weird outboard gear. If you have a great preamp or effect pedal it will make your productions more unique and it’s so much fun to mess around with outboard gear.

We have worked with headphones from the start. They are part of every point of the recording and mixing process. Obviously, they are essential for overdubbing. Since so many people are consuming music through headphones nowadays, we believe it's essential to include them in the mixing process as well. Also, they give you the freedom to work wherever you are. Lastly, we want our Masters to always be free of clipping. Unfortunately, mastering engineers rarely seem to agree with us on that point - so it's essential to have a pair of great headphones to detect possible flaws in the Masters.

After several weeks of producing with the LCD-X, we are clearly relying much more on headphones for the mix than we used to before. They are extremely comfortable to wear for hours, so we do not only do the fine adjustments and reference listening with the headphones anymore, but they've become much more present in every step of the way - from gain staging to EQing to the master chain. But the most important thing is that we really trust them. If it sounds good to us on the LCD-X, the mix really is ready to go. Without a doubt.

The biggest and most recent project we are working on with the LCD-X is the third studio album of International Music (Endless Rüttenscheid), which was released in the fall of 2024.