"It started as a joke in the studio," Zevran admits. "Diego would be working on a bassline, and I’d come in and completely flip the drum pattern. He’d look at me and say, 'You just flipped my flop.'"
"The industry tells you to protect your brand, your sound, your style," Zevran concludes. "Diego and I decided to break our brands. That is the work. You flip them. You flop them. And if you trust each other, you build something stronger than you ever could alone." sean zevran and diego sans flipflop work
In an electronic music landscape often characterized by solo super-stardom, transient back-to-back sets, and ghost-produced radio hits, the concept of a genuine, long-term DJ partnership feels almost antiquated. Enter Sean Zevran and Diego Sans. "It started as a joke in the studio," Zevran admits
Their upcoming EP, Counterbalance , due out on Desert Hearts Black later this fall, was created entirely through this method. The lead track, "Rubber Band," was flipped seven times before they settled on a final version. The result is a sound that is neither Zevran’s deep house nor Sans’ melodic techno, but a third entity entirely. "Diego and I decided to break our brands
Unlike traditional B2B (back-to-back) sets where DJs trade USB drives every two or three tracks, the "Flipflop Work" methodology is hyper-immediate. In a Flipflop set, Zevran and Sans physically share a single DJ booth without rigid turn-taking. One might be layering a vocal loop while the other drops the kick drum. They swap EQ controls mid-phrase.
"I don't know how to make a Sean Zevran track anymore," says Sans. "I only know how to make a Zevran/Sans track. Once you start the flipflop, you can't go back to solo." As they gear up for a 12-city European tour, the duo is codifying their method into a workshop series called The Flipflop Lab . They plan to teach aspiring DJs how to abandon rigid set lists and embrace controlled chaos.