What is the inspiration behind this Album? How did you come up with the name?
The inspiration for the original song was Anushka Menon’s divine vocals on her first single ‘Falling’. After my remix for ‘Falling’ came out during the lockdown, i sent anushka a dreamy synth pop inspired instrumental which went back & forth through the internet & was built further around her voice (a demo recording at the time) after which i sent the project file back to her and was perfected by Aditya Ashok. With his impeccable technique and skills as a producer & mixing engineer he made sure all the original elements glued in the mix & added a few key elements complementing the arrangement, mixed in the vocals perfectly and made the song ready for playback.
‘Hide’ combines elements of 80s synth pop with a modern psychedelic take on the production and the lyrics describe the triumph over our deepest fears. No matter what the challenge is, we rise up to it and face them head on. No matter the doubt we have in ourselves, the fear of the unknown, we won't know till we try and we won't let that challenge keep us from moving forward. As the lyrics go “I won't, hide away from you” we came up with the name ‘Hide’ for the song.
How did you overcome challenges with this Album? If there were any.
The main challenge behind the scenes was the fact that we had to go back & forth with emails to make certain changes or get on calls to brainstorm since it was the lockdown. Even though we had never even met til after the song was finalized & mastered, we still managed to work around the challenge.
How did you decide on artists who would remix/collaborate? And what do you think of the end result?
As a DJ I tend to not stick to a certain type of music, my sets are genre fluid so I had a few artists whose music I have played out in my head for this remixes album so I hit them up and asked them if they would be interested. To celebrate the one year anniversary of the release, we compiled the reinterpretations of the song, each track is a unique expression of the artists! The album features remixes from D-Code & Psylence, When I'm Human, Don Jiro, Sentient, Xrvy, Big Trouble & a variation in production (VIP) of the original.
An instrument or device that has been monumental in this Album? And why?
For my production & live sets I use Ableton Live and it plays a major role since every live instrument (I sometimes use the bass & ukulele) & vocal/sample recordings are routed into the DAW and all post processing, mixing, mastering & rendering is done through Live. I also use a lot of stock plugins & instruments for my production but I did use VSTs like Serum for a few sounds on the original, to be honest the vocals were the driving force of this song (in fact there’s a whole synth layer on the original track built with chopped vocals through post processing) and the remixes album proves it since every artist has sampled the vocals so differently, from chops to post fx to the use of vocoders so for me the voice itself was monumental in this album.
How soon can we expect your next release and what is that going to be about?
My next release is going to be towards the end of July with Filth Inc. on their next V/A compilation. It’s a floor stomping hard groove banger and I have sampled a very popular track from the recently released Spiderman movie that will pleasantly surprise the audience on the dancefloor & keep their feet moving. For my next EP on my community driven homegrown label - Bøne.FM, I'll be releasing an atmospheric electronica EP in August and I'm really excited for everyone to hear it as it goes back to my roots. I have evolved from making post-electronica on my debut EP - ‘Samplitude’ to the more club friendly leftfield techno/breaks/d&b on my last release - ‘Elektrømagnetik’. ‘Artmøsphere’ goes back to my original style of production with a much more evolved production technique & cleaner sound that I have developed over the years.