If there is such thing as a ‘good stress’, then this is the feeling that the ‘Shadow Demon Anthem’ gives you. In our interview with illswrth/Silver Needles we talk about creativity, technical and more personal stuff.Oh, and we love the collage artwork too!
Describe your sound in three words please!
dark, mysterious, energetic
What do your moniker mean?
Silver Needles references the Chinese white tea Yin Zhen Silver Needle, and it is one of my favorite teas. However, I once drank too much of it and felt very uncomfortable, and that experience inspired my to use the name as an alias for the dark and energetic electronic productions of mine.
What first got you into music and how has your music evolved over the years?
What first got me into music was listening to Hardstyle and Gabber music back in middle school. It inspired me to learn how to produce on Fl Studio 10, and I have kept up with producing ever since. Over the years different artists and genres of music have inspired me to try making that genre my self, and recently I have been combining and experimenting with multiple genres.
You have said that in your EP you experiment with different styles of production. This is a brave move. How did you take this decision and are you worried at all about cohesion?
I wasn’t really worried about cohesion, because for a few months now I have enjoyed the idea of making a short project that sounds like different people, as though it is a ‘Various Artists’ release; except instead of having different artists contribute to the project it would only be my production. Cohesion was probably the last thing I worried about, and if anything, I was shooting for something that was actually further from cohesive than many other EPs you would hear amongst the more left-field electronic scenes.
Regardless of the risk, I decided to go through with this idea since I had previously released with the (mostly) vaporwave label Virtua94 that this project was released through. They are a very open-minded, eclectic label that I felt helped with giving me the confidence to go through with it, and helped give validity to the project in the early stages of the release.
Do you have any artist(s) that you’d love to collaborate with?
This is a very difficult question because I am not very good at collaborating with other people, regardless of how much I love their music. However, it has always been my dream to work with Current Value, a drum & bass producer that has greatly influenced me as a producer over the years, and I would love to collaborate with Baths/Geotic, a musician and producer that has also influenced me in areas of music outside of electronic dance.
Your sound in “Shadow Demon Anthem” is intense, saturated with a lot of white noise etc. How much time can you spend in front of your DAW before you burn out? Do you use headphones or monitors?
This depends on the day of the week and whether or not I worked at my day job on that specific day. On a day that I work I can spend about 2-3 hours on my DAW, and on a day off it can vary anywhere from 3-6 hours. I typically don’t spend more than 2 hours in one single song/project however, and switch between different projects to stay interested in the task. I mainly use headphones so I don’t disturb the people I live with, but I will almost always test out tracks on different systems.
If you had to choose one Synthesizer (analogue or digital) which one would it be?
I would probably choose Sylenth1 since it is the Vst I have the most experience with.
Tell us something that most people don’t know about you.
I went to college for Jazz Piano Performance, and dropped out, hahaha.
Thanks illswrth/Silver Needles!
Secret Eclectic 