The Audio Dolls, clearly two of techno's hardest working and determined artists, take time out to speak to Elevation Music along with kindly providing an exclusive rocking guest mix! Enjoy.

So for those who don’t know, who are the Audio Dolls?

Well, were a techno / house collaboration from Manchester, Steff Smith & Gemma Furbank. Still fairly new on the scene, but with bags of determination & drive to succeed!!!

You guys mention in your Myspace + Facebook pages that you met online. How exactly did this come about?

Gemma: Well, a few people had commented after meeting me and seeing me play that I reminded them of a gal named Steff Smith. They said we were very alike. We looked each other up having been put on the same billing for a gig and immediately hit it off. She's so down to earth, funny as hell, and as passionate about this stuff as me. We're completely driven, and we both wanted to make an impression on the very male orientated world of DJing. Once I mentioned studio, it seemed like the logical thing to do, both being into very similar styles, we worked. Sub Sonic was produced and went straight to no.1 and the rest is history! Haha!

In the studio, what is your program of choice and what are your top five plugin’s you simply can’t live without?

Well, we both use Cubase and Ableton and both of these programs are huge so we're always learning and discovering new stuff to do. Plug-ins wise, we definitely can't live without Native Instruments Battery 3, it's got some amazing packs in there with some gorgeous sounds that suit us with our tech-house and the darker glithcy stuff for our techno. We love the Native Instruments products!

Mini Moog is a cool little synth with an authentic Moog sound. We regularly use FM8 for synth work too, its really good for getting the right sound you're currently after. A1/Absynth etc, all create slightly different sounds so it's about using the right one for the current sound we're after in the track. Some are a more retro sound. I sometimes wish we had the old samplers though. A friend still has all his hardware and the sounds you get are amazing....

Your production work clearly sits well with the techno crowd but your tracks also appeal to a lot of house lovers too. Do you think the ability to crossover the genre barriers, whether in your sets or in the studio, is a key component to successful music?

Steff: I think it is important to cross over various genre’s as you appeal to a wider audience, but its also important to stay true to yourself and play what you love and have your own unique stamp on things. Gemma & I both were die hard clubbers before we took up DJ’ing & both loved the trance and house scene, so I think we will always have elements of the two in our tracks & sets.

Gemma: Yep, I'd say exactly the same. Genres create barriers and stifle you. I think sometimes it's just to make it easy to section thing's on music sites lol. I think it's more about what you're feeling as opposed to what you're making. Our style's cross barriers, but I feel we still maintain our own personality and uniqueness.

You’ve had some big support with your releases including, I believe, from the legendary Eddie Halliwell! How did you feel when you heard he was playing out your tracks?

We we're over the moon with the support we’ve gained from our tracks! Our debut release Sub Sonic shot to number 1 on Trackitdown and stayed there for over 3 weeks! When we heard Eddie had played it on his ‘Fire it Up’ show we were ecstatic as he’s a massive inspiration to us both! Daniel Portman is also a favorite artist of ours and heavily supports everything we do which really means a lot! 

Finally, can you tell us what upcoming gigs you guys have over the next few months, and what Audio Doll’s releases we need to keep an eye out for?

We’ve had a couple of releases out over the last month... ‘The Bionic Groove E.P’ was released on Techno Mafia Records and is available on Trackitdown & Beatport. And our latest remix of Rich Evee's ‘Down With People’ is currently riding high in the tech-house chart on Trackitdown. Gig wise, we’ve taken the last few months out as Audio Dolls DJ's & been concentrating on Audio Dolls productions, also solo work, radio shows, and other concepts (which we will reveal in due course!)... But, we will be back in November and have a couple of huge gig’s lined up! Were coming back with a bang!!!

Check out more of the Audio Dolls on Facebook and @

http://www.myspace.com/theaudiodolls