What are your influences, past and present?
Hmm... the first band that I liked as a kid would have to be (no cliche intended) The Beatles. Before them, I just wasn't into music. My parents are both British and have loads of their vinyl records, so it was/still is great fun to listen to those. When I first got into production, I mainly listened to DJ Shadow, Moby, and a few other trip hop artists. Nowadays, being in the electronica scene, I like to take a wide variety of influences as the genre is very malleable. Sigur Ros, Telepopmusik, and Jon Hopkins are all artists I listen to out of the genre, and in, my favorites would have to be Shazam, Breakbot, Bag Raiders and PNAU/Empire of the Sun.
If you could tour with anyone who would it be?
Tough question! Shazam and Breakbot both are the artists I listen to the most in the scene, so they're front runners. Both are outrageously talented producers/DJ's, and always have a great vibe in their remixes/originals. Empire of the Sun would be right up there too, though!
What sort of hardware/software are you on?
I used to be PC based running FL Studio, but a relatively short while ago (October of last year) I switched to Mac and Logic Pro 8. With Logic, I use a lot of its factory plugins as they're superb (ES1, ES2, EVP88 etc), and I recently bought Native Instruments' Komplete 5 which has been great to work with so far. On the hardware side of things, I've got an Access Virus TI Snow (which is a great, powerhouse of a synth), an M-Audio Axiom 49 MIDI keyboard for playing stuff in live, a Presonus Firebox audio interface, and KRK Rokit 8 monitors for listening. I've also got a guitar and bass that I use occasionally for productions, but not often in all honesty.
How did you get into production?
My friend back in Middle School got me into it. We were both really into playing guitar at that point (neither of us were that great), and music in general. One day at school, he told me about some software demo he downloaded the night before and how with it, he could make music on his computer. I rushed home that day to download it (FL Studio 3.0) and try it for myself. I had no idea what I was doing with it (I thought I was DJing up until 9th grade), but I was still having a ridiculous amount of fun. I got it for Christmas the next year, and have been addicted since then!
What are your ambitions as an artist?
I want to make an impact on the scene; I want to make quality/innovative/different music. I've been spending quite a lot of time trying to develop my sound and I'm getting slowly closer to what I'll be happy with after each new track. Once I'm happy with the sound I've got, I plan on making original material for a few EP's... hopefully they lead to something bigger
Where do you think electro is going as a genre?
I think it's just going to become more and more a melting pot for genres. I certainly bring a lot of my old trance-genre-techniques into production, and I imagine a lot of other artists do the same. As electro gets more and more mainstream (look at how Justice impacted Kanye West!), it'll ensnare more and more future-electro musicians, who will likely have had a musically diverse background, which will perpetuate the melting pot effect. Of course I could be completely off the mark, and electro could be destined for a blue-grass-breakbeat-sampled cat-meows style. One or the other.
Robots: friend or foe?
Definitely friend. Ain't no disco like a robot disco!
