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10 questions with Style of Eye
Pickadoll and Dirtybird regular Style of Eye has remixed the likes of Lily Allen, Empire of the Sun and Moby. He talks to us about monitoring, muting, mastering and his first steps into analogue territory.
With releases on the highly-vaunted Pickadoll and Dirtybird labels, Swedish native Linus Eklow, aka Style of Eye, has remixed the likes of Lily Allen, Empire of the Sun and Moby. His Essential Mix on Radio 1 was regarded as one of the finest ever and he's constantly touring Europe and beyond. He took a moment out of his busy schedule to chat to Sounds/To/Sample's Barry Mcmanus.
What has been the highlight of your year so far and what things do you have coming up?
One highlight was when I dropped my remix of Empire Of The Sun at Fusion Festival in front of a huge crowd. It was my first big festival show and it felt like time froze. Recently I´ve been producing Maskinen, a swedish progressive rap group. Watch out for them.
What's the key ingredient in a great track? Breakdown? Style of production? Bassline?
I´d say it's a mix of all these things. It's the song as a whole that matters. Sometimes a bassline will sound pretty poor on its own, but in the context of the mix it will make perfect sense.
Who's currently rocking your world as a producer and why?
Boris D'lugosch is one I really respect. He has returned virtually overnight with a totally fresh sound. That kind of reinvention requires a lot of heart and adjustment to pull off.
When building a track how do you normally work? Do you start with the drums and build your way up from that?
It's almost always different. Sometimes I begin by building a beat around the kick. At other times I start with a sample, a bassline or a melody. Laying down a solid beat can be inspiring but if you're making something more melodic it can shut down options: you may end up in a situation where your melody line doesn't fit with the beat you've mapped out.
Do you use mainly analogue or digital soft synth sources? Do you think analogue still really makes a difference?
I´ve recently bought my first analogue synth, the Sequential Circuits Pro-600. It opens up a whole new hands-on approach to production, which is something I'm not used to. I'm mainly sampling the sounds from it. I record something like five minutes of tweaks to a beat track, then import the file into my DAW and cut it up there to find the best sections. I like the way two notes are never the same. But up until now I've been living on soft synths, and they will still be my main sound source.
What's your opinion on processing the mix bus? Leave it clean or drive it to the extreme?
It depends on the project. I find it inspiring to have a single bus compressor but I rarely send a mix to mastering with loads of different plugs across the master bus. Mastering studios have far more knowledge and better tools to make a mix louder than I do.
When mixing, what do you find the hardest thing to get sounding right?
It's difficult to digitally inject life into instruments like horns and violins.
Any advice on monitoring? Quiet? Loud? Do you prefer flat and boring speakers or headphones or big phat and chunky monitors?
I'm using a pair of Snake monitors that I got from a friend, and I´ve still kept my very first studio monitors, a pair of Alesis speakers. For me the most important thing is to get to know your speakers and how the sounds you make with them translate into the clubs or onto the radio. I mix by switching back and forth between the two pairs, with one of the pairs much flatter than the other. When mixing vocals I mix as quietly as possible to get the best picture of how the vocals are working in the mix.
Any arrangement secrets you want to share with us?
When I´m finishing up projects, I mute as many parts as I can and see how many of them can be stripped from the arrangement. I stay intuitive and dont follow any rigid formulae. I like my songs to sound as organic as possible.
And finally, have you got any advice for aspiring young producers out there?
Take an interest in all kinds of music. I always stay open-minded to different kinds of music and culture and as a consequence learn things in the most unlikely of places.
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More from Style of Eye: www.styleofeye.se
(c) 2009 Sounds/To/Sample