TWOMINDS Preview: Burns & Tubbs

Originally published in Newzician Magazine Issue 3, 2024.

This weekend, Twominds Festival hits Christchurch’s Spencer Beach Holiday Park for its fourth iteration. The festival, first launched in 2023 as a boutique dance haven, has grown in intervening years to become an event of genuine international repute. Among the 80+ acts are international heavyweights SHY FX (UK), MALA (UK) and CC:DISCO! (AUS), but the bulk of the billing is made up of acts closer to home. Since their first days, Twominds have been consummate champions of Aotearoa talent, and it’s only fitting that their fourth Festival lineup still aims to showcases the depth of talent that runs deep on these shores.

With Friday fast approaching, we thought it best to get you acquainted with some of the local talent that will on show. Eden Burns and Christopher Tubbs, both accomplished DJs in their own right, have built a powerful partnership under moniker Burns & Tubbs. The two DJ and producers released Volume IV of their Burns & Tubbs series in August 2025 on German record label Public Possession. Back in 2024, Flynn interviewed the pair about their flourishing creative partnership and surprising friendship for Newzician Magazine Issue Three.

Photography by Jean Pierre Guillotin

Christopher Tubbs is legendary in the New Zealand electronic scene. Though for a long time Tubbs was based in London’s Camden Town, Wellington has always been home. The Disc Jockey came up alongside names like Zane Lowe in the kiwi expat community in the UK during the mid-nineties. By the turn of the century, Tubbs had ticked off most clubs on any DJ’s bucket list. Most recently Tubbs has been known for his 6 hour sets he has been hosting at clubs across the country over the last few years. Eden Burns is almost 25 years Tubbs’ junior. Eden’s initial releases under his early project Sandboards attracted the attention of label and friends of Tubbs, Feel My Bicep. More recently the DJ has become hot property with his Big Beats Manifesto series released via the Munich based label, Public Possession. As the Big Beat Manifesto goes: ‘Big beats are the best, get high all the time.’ Since then Eden has played at clubs spanning from Madrid to Jakarta, and recently relocated from Wellington to Melbourne for the foreseeable future. The improbable pair have been collaborating on a series of records called Burns & Tubbs, the latest addition, Vol. III was released in February this year. I was lucky enough to chat with both Eden and Christopher in the lead up to the release and hear from the two collaborators and friends.

Burns and Tubbs had their first encounter at one of Christopher’s famed all-night-long, ‘Body Electric club’ nights. “I went along and at the end of the night chatted to him,” recounts Eden. After meeting in-person, their artistic relationship transferred online, that was until Eden moved his set-up to the capital. Eden recalls it all happened very naturally. “We were doing some stuff remotely for a bit, and then I moved to Wellington and we started working together. We just got along, and the more we hung out we realised how much we have in common music-wise. I don't think anything was really planned.”

“It really wasn't that formulated,” says Chris. “We met for a coffee, then we just thought, ‘should we have a day in the studio?’ It went well, so we had another day in the studio. Suddenly, before you know it, we had a record!” Chris believes it’s because they both come from a similar place musically. “Eden and I have a lot of touch points musically, like we both love Italo Disco, we both love Post-Punk, we love that kind of early eighties New York sound. We love that left-field interpretation of American dance music from Europe. People who have interpreted those kinds of Chicago and Detroit tropes in their own weird and wonderful way from Belgrade or wherever. It's interesting because we are so multigenerational but we touch on those things. We also like the same clothes and all sorts of odd things.My wife thinks it's hilarious because he is so much younger than me, but we just get on.”

Chris describes collaborating in the studio as almost like setting the mood for a date, it’s all about trying to find the right vibe that both people feel comfortable in. “I don't always get it right. But I try,” Chris jokes. “When you collaborate with people, you are able to look at things that you love or aspects of your passions that perhaps you haven't thought about for a while and look at them through a different lens to how you may have previously because you are sharing that experience with a collaborator.” Eden has had a different experience with collaboration. He states: “I typically haven't worked with many people, and usually it's just someone sending a half done track and then I add my bit and they do their thing, but working together in the same room is nice.” Unlike Eden, Chris has always been a collaborator. “To be completely honest, a lot of that stems from the fact that I have a terrible attention span,” he admits. “So learning software is just like a no-go for me. I've always worked with people who are really good engineers, but nothing quite like Eden.” The value of collaboration is a sentiment echoed by Eden. “Chris is definitely the ideas man,” Eden says. “If there were two of me in a room, it might be a bit messy. Even when we were sending things back and forth, he'd always have an idea of what he wants and where he wants it to go. Doing it in the studio, aka my bedroom, he generally comes up with the idea and then it's me going mental on Ableton just trying different things.” From the sounds of it, Eden is a sight to see in the studio. “Eden is so fast in the studio, it’s almost like he is telekinetic,” Chris enthuses. “He is just a blur on Ableton. It's unbelievable to watch, I've never seen anything like it.” 

Burns & Tubbs vol. III pivots away from the earlier two installations. “For the first record, I wanted to make an album that had a feel of what you would hear at Body Electric; quite psychedelic, dub disco, very percussive,” says Chris. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do for that first one. I'm really excited about this record. It's very summery for the most part, very down tempo. So it will be very interesting to see what people make of this one”. For one, the tracklist is much more condensed than previous editions. The record is kicked off by lead single ‘Where Were U In 92?’, and tailed by two mixes of ON&ON, featuring Chris’ good friend Nathan Haines. “it's definitely a much more balearic sort of record,” Eden tells me. The balearic beat is an Italo Disco sound established in the ‘80s. “Chris came with this sort of vocal sample that's on the main track.” Eden says, referring to the song ‘Where were you in 92?’ which samples the vocal performance of mid-nineties jazz act, Paprika Soul. “That song took ages to get done. We made lots of different versions and then sort of settled on the one that just came out. With that track, Chris had that vocal sample for yonks and was very, very determined to do something with it.” The remainder of the album’s runtime, the two mixes of the track ON&ON, are like chalk and cheese. “Nathan Haines recorded some flute and we flipped parts back and then chopped that up,” explains Eden. “We must have spent a year going back and forth and then one day it just came together. I'd rather do as many versions as possible and get an idea whether it will be good early on, there's nothing worse than making something that's not great that you keep adding to, you kind of end up polishing a turd. I just try to trust my gut. Chris and I do a full listen through, if the time goes by fast, that's usually a good sign. If the six minutes listening through it drags on, that might be a bad sign.”

Listening through their separate discographies you get the sense of two artist’s working in different ways towards a similar goal. The different volumes of Eden’s Big Beat Manifesto jump between new sounds in a sometimes frenetic fashion. From what I have heard from Chris, he tends to hold out a hand before leading you off the beaten track. Together the two are like salt and pepper, each bringing a different perspective to the table, but equally important and perfectly complementary. “Chris is sort of controlling the chaos and steering me in the direction,” Eden explains. “When I work by myself it's just chaos, it's almost like a mad painter, throwing paint at a wall in a blackout state. I just make music very quickly and just go a bit mad. With Chris, it's nice because it's a bit more relaxed and I don't get super distracted, it's like, ‘alright this is the mission and this is how we're gonna get there’.” Chris believes it comes from the differing stages of life. “I'm a different age and I probably like more structure generally, I have a family, so I have less time. As much as that is true, I do try and keep it as low key as I possibly can with Eden.” Chris feels like working with Eden on Burns & Tubbs is a true collaboration, "The impetus has always been very much on me to come with all the ideas… until I worked with Eden.” Chris gleams, “Eden has so many ideas, he's so creative. It works amazingly because he has great taste, you know. There's never any of the things that hold the workflow up. With other people I’ve had times where you end up spending a half day on snare sounds! With Eden I might just say ‘hey what about like a mid eighties, Italo drum sound’ and before I've even got to the end of the sentence, it's already up. That is the amazing thing about working with him, he's just very intuitive and has great taste.” 

As a collaborator, having your own intrinsic motivators allow you to work together and create something that you both enjoy but for different reasons. Since returning to Aotearoa, Chris’s passion has been his residencies and club nights – the aforementioned Body Electric at 121, later at Meow, and now at b.Space. “At the end of the day, I’m a club DJ,” admits Chris. “The thing that drives me is having a night where I can create a community that shows up every month and I can take them further and further down the rabbit hole.” Music creation is what motivates Eden. “I think it just comes naturally. I almost have to do it,” he concedes. “The motivation for making music isn't too hard to find, but with performing, I definitely have periods where it does get a bit tiring and it's not getting super exciting anymore. But just finding cool music, whether it's online or going to a record shop and finding something that you really want to show people. It's that feeling of discovery, when you find a song and you're like, ‘no one knows this!’ and it’s so good you have to show everyone. I think it is that sort of feeling that keeps me going. I'll be in some periods where there seems like there is no music, it all sounds the same or whatever, then just one song I come across is great and instantly I get the itch back for it.” In a way, Chris’ Body Electric club nights are a room full of people sharing in the exact experience Eden describes. “Body Electric was always good underground music but as the night went on it got trippier and trippier and it ended up very psychedelic,” Chris recounts. “If you had gone to the first one and then gone to the last one, you'd be like, ‘whoa, what's going on here!’ But people were so regular with it, the dance floor would be full within 45 minutes. Each time there were the same faces but there'd be slightly more people every month until it reached a critical mass. It was just a dream for me to play records that you could just not play anywhere else and people would trust you. When I first played them people would be like, ‘oh, what is this? I don't know about this one!’ and then fast forward 6 months and people are whistling when you play it, and those really left-field tunes would become anthems. I'm driven by residencies, being able to create a community and take those people on a journey over a period of months and years, so they are going through the same process of discovery that I am. For Eden, it draws on schoolyard nostalgia “It's like back in the day when you were at school and you find an awesome song and you're like, ‘damn, I got to show my mates this, this is so good’.”  

Both Eden and Chris have played up and down the country recently, giving them a chance to check out local talent from across the motu. “There's always new DJ names that I don't recognize and I'm intrigued, I wanna know what these people do!” Exclaims Chris. “The good thing about where I'm standing is the people who are really great tend to come into view as they work their way up and at some stage they'll play on the same night as me or something.” 

“There's lots of stuff going on. I guess there's more DJs than there ever has been.” Eden says, “Guys like Colter Carson from Christchurch. He seems to be doing some wicked stuff with Craigslist Sound System. Those guys are super cool and it's definitely the same sort of sound as what I'm into and what Chris is into. I think there's something for everyone and that's the great thing. There's just so many different little pockets of people with different interests in genre or whatever or age groups. I don't know where I quite fit in, but it's great to see this.” I wanted to know if much has changed for Chris as his name has worked its way up the bill. “I saw this Great Post by CC Disco the other day on Instagram talking about her Chez Moi Australia tour,” he recounts. ”She was talking about how nice it was to do warm up sets again, and that totally resonates with me because I think a lot of DJs starting out see the warm up as a bit of a boring rite of passage that they have to do because they're not recognized yet, when actually the warm up is an artform! Anyone can get up and bang out some big tunes, especially now in the digital age. But a good warm up, woah, that's the sign of someone who has got some chops, who can create a mood and keep it simmering. So when it is time to pass on to the peak timer or whatever, you're just giving them a completely open playing field. That's what it's all about.” It’s a great mindset for any artist to be in, where they are thinking how they can best put their skills into practice. It’s probably not much of a leap to Imagine this might be the motivation for his 6-hour sets, setting himself out a playbook and trying his best to nail it. The role of the warm up is definitely underrated, and it’s great to know there are guys like Chris who have got their eyes out for the young talent grafting hard away at it. 

Although the record has been a big focus for both Chris and Eden over the last few months they have still had time to focus on their own individual efforts. “I'm trying to put together a little Asian jaunt for Eden and I after the record comes out, but the main thing for me is the club night,” says Chris. Eden has been very busy working on new music. “I pretty much finished another record which is gonna be four tracks with each track a collaboration with another friend. I've got another album that I've been sitting on for almost three years now. It's been demos that I've tried to get singers on and stuff but have never quite worked out. I think that's just gonna get released as the unfinished demos maybe. Then on top of that I’m touring again, Europe later this year and then Australia and Asia throughout the year as well. I think I need to write down some goals!” 

What you instantly gage from both Eden and Chris is a deep rooted love for the music they create. Chris and Eden are each other’s perfect foils. Like Haring and Basquiat, they are two unique artists who can tap into an artistic language in different ways in order to convey a convergent theme. Their ability to bridge a generational divide transcends their collaborative process. There are times on Burns & Tubbs Vol. III where I am thrown back to my childhood, of long drives in the car with Dad, listening to Moby or obscure House tracks on servo CD mixtapes. Together, Chris and Eden have built a fresh and explorative brand of House Music that means that even a 2000s baby can reminisce about the inextricably balearic sound of the summer of 1992. 

Photography by Jean Pierre Guillotin @jeanpi_g