Ophelia Records has been around for five years pushing the boundary of melodic dubstep and promoting emotional and epic artists through the scene. But amongst Ophelia’s dubstep identiy Gem & Tauri have emerged, a more melodic house duo first known as openers for Seven Lions only a few years ago.
Gem & Tauri are Emma and Courtney, named after their astrological signs with Emma a Gemini and Courtney a Taurus. They’ve both floated around the electronic music scene for over ten years as Emma is Seven Lions’ wife and Courtney is an avid Burning Man fan, soaking up the environment, culture, and music.
And they’ve recently begun their own musical and tour journey, bringing their signature melodic house and progressive trance inspirations, venturing out on their own to support the Ophelia label with a fresh new sound.
We sat down with Gem & Tauri at the Beyond the Veil Tour show at LA Historic Park to talk about their new music, their inspirations, and what it’s like working so closely with their friends at Ophelia:
EDM Maniac: So “Waking Up,” your new song with Notelle and Luma just came out yesterday. It’s darker and deeper and more Tale of Us than melodic dubstep. What inspired the venture into the sound?
Courtney: This has been a big deal for us because we put more into ourselves into this song than any of the previous releases. There’s no Jeff [Seven Lions] in this song, you know? And it’s very much us.
Emma: We love you, Jeff.
Courtney: Yes, we love you Jeff, and we love your production, so it’s been really cool to learn how to produce music completely on our own and it’s been a really fun journey. As Emma learns more about songwriting and I learn more about production, we also evolve.
Emma: We’re still finding our sound, so I’m sure it will change over the next couple of years.
EDM Maniac: You’ve both been in the scene for over 10 years and have watched it evolve into what it is today. How has it changed for you now that you are on the other side of the decks?
Courtney: We get to curate all of our friends in one place all the time. Hosting and having the people I love all in one place is my favorite part of all of this.
Emma: It’s so funny that you say that because I feel more overwhelmed by being with so many of my friends at our shows because I like hosting people. To have to be like, “Sorry I’m on the clock” is the opposite for me. You [Courtney] thrive. And if I’m hosting, I want to give my full attention to everyone.
Courtney: It’s also a little nerve-wracking still. I think as we get more used to this, it won’t be so scary where we’re so nervous to see everybody, but we’re still in the beginning and are very nervous.
EDM Maniac: So your duo’s only been touring for a few years, but you’ve performed at Avant Gardner, the Gorge, and EDC Las Vegas. How do you hope to impact the scene in the future?
Courtney: We wanna bring more women to the stage. We need more women in house and, I mean women are kind of dominating techno already, but that’s our goal.
Emma: Go off ladies! I wanna be more inclusive in what we bring to the industry and take a page out of Jeff’s book and not be so strict about what genre we’re making or playing and blend all types of house together and make it fun.
I mean we love playing oldies even so we try to make edits of the cheesy old man jams. Like “Brown Eyed Girl” type. We will be bringing Fleetwood Mac back.
EDM Maniac: What is your favorite memory with the Ophelia crew?
Emma: Every night of the Pantheon Tour. Coming out of quarantine, we hadn’t seen everybody in so long, and then getting to play music with our friends every night. When “Pantheon” would come on, every single artist would come on and jump around.
Courtney: The back-to-back at the end of the night and we would just jump around with the bottle and dance it was really fun.
All images from Gem & Tauri Music
