DZDZWRWR: October 2019
Meet this week’s artist: Tonia Nee
Our favorite work from Tonia Nee: Disruptors 015: Tonia Nee - You're Not Crazy. The System Is.
Why we love Tonia Nee: Tonia Nee is not one to shy away from the harsher and heavier sounds. As a familiar face in the London techno scene, she has made appearances in parties like Jaded, Corner, and BLANC. More recently, her collaboration with End Train in “The Day I Didn’t Want to Wake Up” has landed a release on Mørbeck’s label “Code Is Law.” Tonia is also the founder of the event series Synthapise, a non-profit dedicated to raising funds for animal rights and individual causes. Tonia is a master at crafting journeys through her sets, and we’re certain you will agree too.
Where you can find Tonia Nee: Soundcloud, Facebook
This weeks sound
Sets
Paula Temple at Katharsis 2019
It’s that time of the year when you listen to Paula Temple’s Katharsis set over and over again!
Linn Elisabet @ Norbergfestival 2019
An experimental yet danceable mix with the right amount of techno, noise, and melodies.
Albums
High Speed Violence - Underworld
Hard ravey tracks bursting with a heavy dose of trance. Our favorites are Above Ground and Sound Of Speed into The Night.
Brooklyn favorite Buzzi ends his Reshape series with a 13-track album full of old-school-inspired high energy goodies. Our favorites are Leaving Planet X, Hold Me Tight, Pain Hotline, and Ah 2.
Articles
Nadja Arast (Viscerale) Interview
Viscerale, one of our favorite DJs, eloquently tells her story of DJing and how she approaches playing her signature sound.
An Interview with ASEC
ASEC is a new Berlin-based label founded by its namesake, ASEC. Although fairly new to the techno scene, ASEC has already received support from renowned artists such as SNTS, Stephanie Sykes, and Amotik. His style of music is geared towards those who appreciate hypnotic yet raw dance floor-oriented music. We're excited to be able to interview one of Berlin's rising artists and labels and don’t forget to be on the lookout for his future releases.
Can you tell us your motivations behind starting your label?
Like most Producers, I'm someone who's been making electronic music since I was a kid – making music through naivety and exploration, never really chasing a release. As my skills improved over time, and not feeling the need to go after labels for releases, I was able to be patient in developing my skills, sound palette and ultimately present a stronger, more personal vision of electronic music.
For me, starting a label seemed to be the best vehicle to channel this sort of approach.
How do you approach making an EP or making a track? Do you view them as two different things?
I want to make sure that anything I present comes from the same vision and is stylistically consistent. I find this is more difficult when writing singular tracks and as a result I tend to work in batches.
This is probably because I come from a background of writing and recording music with traditional instruments. In those kind of scenarios, you would spend multiple days recording various parts and this generally ensures consistency of sound palette and vision.
That said, consistency breaks down over many levels of granularity. Consistency of releases, of a label, of your entire career etc.
Ultimately, What we're talking about is being able to play a record and correctly guess who's name is in the credits – I think all artists should strive for this.
The response from your first EP has been very positive and you've already garnered a lot of early support. Has that changed how you've approached writing and releasing your tracks?
As someone who hasn't chased releases, strong DJ support is an interesting one. Hearing your favourite artists drop your tracks on a system, as a brand new producer, is a great feeling.
That said, support is an endorsement of artistic perspectives. Instead of changing my approach, I think a better path would be to further define my sound and try to take more risks.
Has there been anything that has surprised you about starting a label? And do you have any advice for people who might want to start one as well?
The hard part is making good music, it always will be. Most likely, you'll need to have 9-12 months of product ready to release before distributors will talk to you.
In my opinion, the next most important thing is choosing a distributor. Generally, good distributors will have an understanding of the tactical kinds of business questions that you can't answer by reading the Ableton Live manual. Questions like Vinyl or digital, release frequency, promotion methods. I definitely benefited from having an experienced distributor to help me figure this out.
That said, you have to be confident in your musical product. Everything else is secondary.
What's next for ASEC? Do you have any plans for the future?
I just announced my 2nd EP, “ASEC002”, which I will release on my own label on October 30th.
Whilst the first release was solid, the second was somehow a more artistic project so I was pretty happy to see positive reaction from producer and DJ colleagues.
As for the near future, I'll continue to move slowly but I'll be involved in a few interesting various artist releases around the beginning of 2020.
Links: Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Instagram, Facebook
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Proofread by Anastassia Gliadkovskaya