Sound Advice: Eli & Fur

Join Eli & Fur on Sound Advice, the weekly interview series covering artists’ journeys and their creative process. In this episode, we discuss the evolution of the DJ/producer duo’s melodic deep house sound, their 2026 two-part album, and how they’ve used SoundCloud to connect with their fanbase and grow their careers.

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Welcome to Sound Advice, the series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into everything SoundCloud offers to elevate their sound, get heard and catapult their careers. Sound Advice is now available in audio format on the SoundCloud Stories profile.

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On this week’s Sound Advice, we’re talking to London duo Eli & Fur, who describe themselves as platonic soulmates intertwined by a shared sonic vision. The pair met at a performing arts high school, bonded on the dancefloor, and then spun their penchant for emotive songwriting and atmospheric house and techno production into releases on Anjunadeep, Defected, Crosstown Rebels, and their own NYX Music records label.

14 years since they started the Eli & Fur project, the duo looks back on their musical roots, from dancing to Maceo Plex and Maya Jane Coles in East London lofts to pop songwriting and touring. They share how they’ve stayed creatively aligned for more than a decade by trusting their instincts, refusing to chase trends and making music when inspiration strikes.

Eli & Fur also discuss their ongoing obsession with how the sunset hour transitions into late night — which heavily inspires their recent albums, ‘Dreams At Dusk (Part I and Part II)’ — and they talk about some techniques they use to jumpstart ideas in the studio.

Plus, the two share more about how they like to use SoundCloud, from uploading DJ mixes and finding tracks for sets to sending out demos and putting together albums. This is a candid conversation for producers, DJs and anyone who's building a creative career on their own terms.

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LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE OF SOUND ADVICE FEATURING ELI & FUR

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‍LISTEN TO ‘DREAMS AT DUSK PART II’ BY ELI & FUR ON SOUNDCLOUD

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Things We Talked About In This Episode of Sound Advice

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The Slow Evolution of Eli & Fur, and the Release of Their Latest, Two-Part Album

• We begin the conversation with Eli & Fur reflecting on recent months, and touring the release of their latest album, ‘Dreams At Dusk Part II.’ Here, they talk about how they like to structure their year, between studio work and touring, so that they feel prepared to focus on both, and create a sense of balance in their creative lives. They also talk about how to grab the moment of inspiration when it strikes, especially when it’s not during studio time. 
• Over the last nearly 15 years, Eli & Fur’s careers “moved very very slowly,” they say. But that pace has worked to their benefit. After releasing dozens of singles and EPs, at a measured pace, they started releasing albums in the 2020s. Now, ‘Dreams At Dusk Part II,’ their latest, is an amalgamation of the sounds and live performance skills that they’ve honed over those years.So how has that time to grow inspired the new album? 
• “We’ve been playing bigger stages, and a lot of our music is sort of more downtempo, more emotional, less clubby,” says Eli. “So we’ve released a couple of different, faster-tempo tracks.” She talks about how their track “One That You Love” marks an energetic shift, and how their process — across songwriting, production, recording and vocals — has all grown in recent years. 

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Eli & Fur’s Early Days of Connecting Over House Music and Creation 

• Eli & Fur met in performing arts school in London, and connected over their shared passion for house music. Here, they talk about their early days together, how they became closer friends, moved into making music together and evolved their connection through creativity. Inspired by acts like Maceo Plex, Tale of Us and Maya Jane Coles, they were drawn to “groovy house with vocals and emotion,” says Eli. “We wanted to make music like that.” 
• Here, they go into more detail about their early music-making pross, working with acoustic guitar and live instrumentation, playing around with their vocal powers, and how they searched for a sweet spot between pretty vocal melodies and darker club beats. 
• Starting out in a new music career will have its challenges — so what did Eli & Fur do to navigate the industry from the beginning? As they explain, the fact they’re a duo made a huge difference to how they grew their sound and direction. “We had each other to lean on,” says Eli. “There have been many times, especially early on, when one of us got low, the other one would be like, ‘No, it’s okay, we can do it.’”
• As they both reflect, that closeness helped them navigate external feedback, industry norms and difficulties with trying to find their unique space in the dance music world, working through these challenges to find their niche. One way they did this was to focus on their DJ work as much as their production, and to make sure to include their original material in their recorded DJ mixes. 
• Here, they go into more detail about how they would use SoundCloud and a social media strategy to highlight those tracks as key set moments, and promote their production and DJing in tandem to the audience. 

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How Eli & Fur Use SoundCloud to Connect With Fans, Find Music and Prepare Albums

• Eli & Fur have long used SoundCloud to not just host their music and DJ sets, but to connect with their fanbase and grow with them. A major benefit of having that direct relationship with their listeners on SoundCloud, they say, is that it focuses their attention on their own craft and how the fans react to it — and stops them worrying about or being distracted by what everyone else is doing in the industry. 
• “I think building an online following is just really important, and also just communicating with the people who are excited about your music,” says Eli. “We’ve always had very direct contact with our fans and built our fanbase [around] literally just listening to what the people who like our music want. It's very easy to get confused by all the noise.”
• As the duo has established themselves as DJs, producers and performers, how has their use of SoundCloud evolved? Here, they talk about hosting recordings of live DJ sets and mixes, and using SoundCloud’s algorithms and other features, like recommended tracks, to discover new music, interesting edits and remixes to play in their DJ sets. They also shout-out the free download feature, which allows them to easily collect these tracks and incorporate them into their sets. 
• “People are very creative,” says Eli. “You can find somebody that nobody knows about in a really cool way on SoundCloud; it’s like, ‘Wait, how has this person got no followers yet?,’ and then [later] you’ve seen them grow.” Fur agrees: “It’s more organic.” 
• The duo also likes to use SoundCloud as part of their album-making process, including re-ordering tracks in their private playlists to get the album sequencing just right, and send those private playlist links to their peers and friends via SoundCloud direct messages for feedback.

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Eli & Fur on The Inspirations Behind ‘Dreams At Dusk Part II’ and The Live Experience

• Their latest album, ‘Dreams At Dusk,’ has been released in two parts. Here, they talk about the inspiration between that decision, how the sounds, moods and tempos of the albums differ, and how they visualised and worked on the albums in order to compliment each other. 
• One of their key inspirations was their favorite time to play on tour, sunset, and how the balance of dusk and darkness has informed their songwriting. Here, they give examples of their tracks “Desert Skies” and “Strange,” and how they worked on them in the studio.
• As touring artists, Eli & Fur have seen the industry change a lot over the last decade. Here, they talk about their experiences, the lessons they’ve learned along the way, and how they’ve slowly evolved their live show to feel more unique and compelling. What really drives them, though, is the emotion. 
• “You know that collective feeling of energy with people on the dancefloor, when you're playing a song, and it's like you don't even have to speak to anyone, but you all feel it? That, for me, is the best feeling in the world — it’s why I do it,” says Eli. And Fur agrees: “It gives me goosebumps,” she says. You can find out more about Eli & Fur’s upcoming tour dates here.

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Links and Extras 

Follow Eli & Fur’s journey on SoundCloud.
Press play on Eli & Fur’s 2026 albums, ‘Dreams At Dusk Part I’ and ‘Dreams At Dusk Part II.’
Go back to where it all began with Eli & Fur’s 2013 debut release, ‘Nightmares.’ 
Explore some of Eli & Fur’s wide-ranging influences, including Maceo Plex, Tale of Us and Maya Jane Coles, to name a few. 
Listen to the Hopecore playlist on SoundCloud.
Never miss an episode and follow the official Sound Advice playlist on SoundCloud.

Getting The Most Out of SoundCloud

Learn more about using DMs to connect with fellow artists and potential collaborators.
Learn more about how to make a custom playlist on SoundCloud.
Learn more about unlimited uploads, available with an Artist Pro subscription.
Learn more unlocking access to unlimited distribution, available with Artist Pro.
Learn more about getting heard with SoundCloud’s updated algorithm, available to Artist and Artist Pro subscribers.

To discover additional features a SoundCloud Artist or Artist Pro subscription offers, visit here. To catch up on past installments of Sound Advice and make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes, visit here.

_{CREDITS Host: Vivian Host, Executive Producer: Mike Spinella, Producer: KC Orcutt, Audio Engineer: David “DibS” Shackney, Coordinator: Trevor McGee, Editorial Associate: Lauren Martin}