Interview with EVO-K: Your Next Flight Into Music
1. Give us a little bit of your history, when did you start mixing?
My EDM story ;) started in 2005 and found the first boom in 2008 with my debut album, but it was the metamorphosis I experienced over the past three years until my first really substantial work DIVERSE (WE ARE) that officially opened doors to success, giving me an increasing number of fans and outstanding international live acts.
I was madly in love with music since I was a teenager (and even before). Going back several years, my father was a very active DJ in Italy, so I grew up following in his footsteps.
2. What inspires you the most?
My music is definitely inspired by the experiences of my whole life: travels, passion, joys, pain, sex, tears, desires, loves, prohibitions, the world around me… and my need for FREEDOM!
While, in terms of “EDM gurus” I would say: Wolfgang Gartner, Knife Party, Cedric Gervais, John Dahlbäck among others.
Everyday you have to learn and be inspired, if you want to improve yourself.
3. What was the moment you are most proud of in your career?
This year, undoubtedly! I currently have the most amazing tour I have ever done (Save The World Tour 2013), both for the new countries I am crossing and for the kind of live acts I am proposing, the very positive feedback from people is opening my heart!
I also add to this that 2013 is my most interesting year regarding my productions too: my Electro House sound is consolidating to a higher quality and the new releases scheduled for this summer and late summer… really pump up! Besides, I got the pleasure and chance to co-produce some tracks with very talented DJ/producers among which I would like to mention Coldbeat (the Eliezer Hofstaetter from Brazil), Xenos (Italy), YouzarsiF (Russia), Bassman (Italy) and I also have in the pipeline a couple of featurings with the “Italians” New Generation Deejays and the top American Matthew LeFace.
So… stay tuned because we have a lot of irons in the fire!
4. How is the house music scene in Italy? Where is your dream city/country to perform in?
In my opinion, Italian music scene is sadly flat, outdated. I honestly don’t aim to make inroads in Italy because this would mean changing my sound towards something hustler and TOO commercial and consequently lower the quality of the project itself.
Italy has a strange outdated music market in all genres (rock, pop, EDM, etc) that’s why I definitely give all my respect to foreign artists and that’s also why I’m moving my sound to what people outside of Italy like and want to hear.
Actually, my dream city/country to perform in would be the west coast of the US, Canada, and northern Europe, I’ve never been there so it would be awesome to bring my music there for the first time!
Thanks EVO-K, we are looking forward to hearing what you’ve been working on! Like her Facebook page and definitely subscribe to her on Whyd!
Calling All Music Lovers: Send Us Your “Never Stop Jamming” Video
Calling All Music Lovers - Whyd from Tony Hymes on Vimeo.
We are well on our way to becoming the definitive filter for the best of the newest music coming online every single day. Whyd has been growing rapidly, adding music lovers from nearly every country in the entire world. You give us incredible feedback, we listen, and we have always designed the product to do exactly what you want. Thank you for helping us to get where we are.
We’ve been receiving some very nice feedback too, with music lovers telling us “I can’t even remember what I was doing before I found Whyd;” “this is exactly what I needed;” “It’s my home page;” and “it’s official, I can’t live without Whyd.” Nothing makes working on this project more enjoyable than hearing things like this.
One thing we’ve learned, the more people that join us on Whyd, the better the experience is for everyone. So we need your help today to spread the call. Please share this video to your social networks and directly to your friends who are music lovers.
We need music lovers to share the music they find, to interact with us, to propel the community forward, and they need Whyd to get the most out of the incredible amount of new music coming online. It’s a win-win.
By now your surely know our tag line: “Never Stop Jamming.” We want to get this buzzing online, so we are asking our music lovers to film themselves saying their best “Never Stop Jamming” and posting it to Twitter, Instagram Video, Vine, Tumblr, and Facebook with the hashtag #neverstopjamming. The maker of the best “Never Stop Jamming” will be featured in Whyd’s brand new introduction video slated to come out later this summer!
Interview with Lightfoot: Hip Hop from Boston
1. Can you tell us about yourself? How does your personality show up in your music?
My name is Lightfoot, and I’m a sample-free hip hop producer out of Boston MA. I grew up on all sorts of different music, but sometime around high school, I really fell in love with hip hop. I’m not just talking about rap music either; I really fell in love with the whole culture. The DJs, the b-boys, the graffiti, it all took a pretty strong hold on me, and my growing appreciation for the culture made me want to be a part of it.
I wasn’t great at drawing so Grafitti didn’t work, I didn’t have good enough equipment to DJ, and dancing was never going to happen for me, so beat making was the obvious choice. When I first started making music, I was really influenced by artists like MF DOOM and Mad lib, so my beats were very “boom bap” and sample heavy. I loved that traditional hip hop feel, so it was important for me to replicate that in my music. As i continued to make beats however, I began stepping away from sampling, and really tried to force myself to make original productions. This was due to the ever evolving legality issues with rap music as well as my own desire to feel more satisfied after making a beat. As I shifted my methods I also departed from only listening to underground hip hop and started expanding into other genres such as electro and indie rock. I then began to mesh all of these influences together whenever i sat down to make a beat.
I always try to make my music emotional (probably because I’m an emotional dude) and I always try and make it interesting, but ultimately I just make music and try and let things happen organically, and hope that I come up with something good as a result.
2. When did you start producing music and when did it click that you had to pursue it seriously?
I think I made my first “beat” (i use that term VERY loosely) when i was in 8th or 9th grade. I ended up with a copy of fruity loops somehow and decided to do some exploring. The results were pretty bad, but they were my first so they are cool in that respect. I did this on and off for about 6 or 7 years until i finally met my mentor and good friend The Arcitype. I started interning at his recording studio, and was able to see how a professional producer operates. It blew my mind and gave me so much inspiration that I ended up quitting my job and focused all of my efforts on music. It lightened the wallet tremendously, but it allowed me to really hone my craft and in doing so find what I truly love to do. I haven’t looked back since, and have been enjoying every second of it.
3. What’s the Boston music scene like?
The music coming out of Boston is pretty awesome. There is a wide range of material that fits almost any palate, and a lot of it is pretty unique. Unfortunately A LOT of it is unknown, even to people who reside in Boston. That is the real downfall of this place. We don’t really have an active listening community here. People have their cliques, and their specific artists who they support, and rarely depart from that. This makes for poorly attended shows, and hard for newer artists to break out.
Boston is also particularly hostile to rap shows. It seems like every day another venue closes its doors to hip hop. This is due to a number of reasons (which may or may not be valid), but it makes it very hard to navigate and expand in the hip hop scene here. You kind of just need to cross your fingers and hope you meet the right person who will introduce you to their scene, which may or may not be a good one. All in all, the music itself is great. Some of my favorite artists come from Boston, so I will always be a fan of the music this city produces. My main beef, and quite frankly only beef, are the promoters and venues in the city. They don’t allow for this place to breathe and evolve the way it should. I love Boston though, and I will always be a part of this city musically.
4. What should we look forward to from you in the near future?
I’m actually currently wrapping up an EP I have been working on with my rapper homie Andrew Milicia. Collectively we go by “Remains”, and our EP is titled “Ei8ht Se7en”. I’m pretty excited for the drop and eager to share our work. The project will be available as a free download on Bandcamp. Andrew is a super talented rapper/lyricist/songwritter, and i love the beats on the record so it’s definitely something I’m proud of. I also have a bunch of other projects in the works, but everything is still in the early stages so I can’t speak on them just yet. I’m certainly staying busy though, so there will be plenty of music in the future. In the meantime you can check out my instrumental album i put out last fall called “The Rudimentals” which is available on iTunes/Spotify/Pandora. Cheers!
Thanks Lightfoot! Make sure you take a listen to his work on Soundcloud, like his Facebook page, follow him on Twitter, and of course subscribe to him on Whyd!
Track of the Weekend #47: Disclosure - “F For You” (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs Remix)
We’ve had a bit of a lag for the past couple of weeks missing a couple of weekends but we’re back and this track is lighting up the whole Whyd web, and especially the Hot Tracks.
Added by Green Room Session, Disclosure's track “F For You" is the type of music that is likely to be enjoyed across Whyd, but it is actually the remix and touch of class provided by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (TEED) that rocketed the song to the heights it has reached now.
It might seem a little strange that a guy already named Orlando Higginbottom would want to go by another name, but no one is going to criticize his brontosaurus obsession. TEED has been taking the world by storm recently, and this track elevates us all with him.
Interview with Noiseness: Your Choice For Noise


JEPPE
NIKOLAS
Some Awesome Whyd Taglines
Since the new profiles launched a while ago, we have seen some incredibly creative design with the ways that people present their images. But there are also music lovers adding inspiring, funny, and thought-provoking tag lines in their bios. We snapped up a quick selection of some of the best, check out the profiles to see who is responsible for bringing it to Whyd:
“Press play don’t press pause”
"I used to be jean-luc, then I stopped"
"Fondue & jazz the ultimate combo”
"Music is a serious thing whatever the style or the fuck you’re doing with it!"
"Who can define good music? I’ll buy him a beer."
“‘Hope will never be silent.’ Harvey Milk”
Never stop jamming!
Eurokéenes 2013 Recap: -M-
BY: LAURÈNE STURM
Eurockéennes 2013 is already over. To keep this sweet flavor in our mouths a little bit longer, we’re bringing you a report of a few of the concerts that put their mark on this edition of the festival.
For Thursday, I would have thought that Jamiroquai would’ve held the public in suspense. It was a show for the sharks, as clean as it was cold. We preferred to move towards the king of French pop rock, who has kept that title since 1998, -M-. It was admittedly not easy to renew the magic after so many years, with the somewhat disappointing family album “Mister Mystère,” but the album “îl,” with its rock tone, is more in continuity, like the title track “Mojo.”
But what about on stage? As always the show was full of energy and generosity, and a little more simplicity for the artist that doesn’t have anything to prove. Only Mama Sam, the afro beat and the voice of Cyril Atef missed a bit. It was then the giants “big people of Boromo” that invaded the stage before the crowd was finished with Mama Sam’s ceremony (but you knew, with the “shhh” and a hand in the air).
Even if, as we said, Cyril Atef and Vincent Segal were branded -M- the new musicians who played on this album were remarkable. Lawrence Clais, the drummer based in hip hop, brought sharper strikes and Brad Thomas Ackley, his bassist, armed with an even stranger instrument than the famous old red electric cello, we basically had some sort of key guitar or “basstar” on the stage. Their sounds, but also their attitudes, help to give this album a touch of virility, even as much as the singer himself.
The real surprise? The umpteenth version of “Machistador,” a colorful reprise that ended in a downright disco, with a mash up of “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.” As you can see from this video of the 2013 tour, it is rather energetic and quite well done to re-enchant a flagship title that seemed tired.
To sum it up, it was electric live rock, that makes everyone want to let go and forget their cornflakes complex!
For info and the latest tour dates, ici
Interview with Burning House: A New Musical Venture
1. Separately, you are known as Chief Xcel (Blackalicous) and General Elektriks and you worked together in the past. How come you finally created Burning House?
Every time we would get together to make music, cool stuff would seem to happen, so we thought we should make it official, find a band name, and make a record. You know when you meet someone and you can just tell you’re on the same wavelength by the way the conversation just flows? Burning House is the musical equivalent: we fire up the gear and ideas just start flowing. The process is a lot of fun, which I think you can tell when listening to the album.
2. How does working together as Burning House pushes each of you out of your comfort zones and into a new place of musical creation?
I wouldn’t necessarily say that we find ourselves out of our comfort zones, it’s more like we find ourselves in a new zone that we both feel comfortable in. That said, this new zone springs from the fact that, as Burning House, we’re not making exactly the music we would be making by ourselves. ‘Walking into a Burning House’ is obviously related to Chief Xcel’s productions and to General Elektriks, but it’s a grown up kid with its own personality. This is what’s so great about taking part in a collaboration: the surprise. Neither X nor myself can predict where a track is going to go, we just watch the kid take us where it wants to go. Letting the song grow and listening to where it needs to go as much as dictating where it’s headed is something you do in any writing or production process, but the ‘letting the song grow’ part is even more accentuated in a collaboration.
3. How would you describe your first track Turn Off The Robot?
Future Funk! We could go into more detail but i don’t know if it would be very interesting, like a cook describing how he whipped up his last dish. I think it’s better to let people taste the dish by themselves and decide what it tastes like.
4. Does your inspiration for the album come from the same places, or are you each drawing from separate sources and combining the result?
We both have a similar taste in both music and aesthetics but at the same time we traveled down different musical paths to get to where we are today. Those paths have rendered different experiences. Those experiences have given us different musical perspectives and that is what makes the sound unique.
5. What should we look forward to in the near future?
We’ll be on tour in Europe and the UK this fall. So hopefully more great music and great live experiences in a venue near you.
6. What do you think of the Hip-hop / Electro funk scene today?
We don’t really consider ourselves part of any particular scene. We just do what we do, make the music that inspires us, and let the listeners categorize it.
Thanks guys! Make sure you subscribe to them on Whyd and like them on Facebook and check out their upcoming tour dates to catch their epic shows!
It’s a wonderful life
If you’re a member of Whyd, you certainly know this man. Tony gives us all the love and attention we need, building and taking care of the Whyd community, one member at a time.
Our tony was getting married this week-end with his beautiful wife, Magali. We’re still under the shock of this unique moment of love and happiness that we celebrated with a lot of emotion.
We love you man. We are thankful to have you in our lives and as a member of our team. Whyd would not be what it is today without your spontaneity, your generosity and your authenticity. Your are a Mensch.
We hope that we’ll continue to ride a little bit together.
Clement P: Winner of the Do You Like That Song? Playlist Contest
The DYLTS Playlist Contest officially ended one week ago, and our all star jury of international music tastemakers has finished voting. We tallied up the results and the winner was clear: Clement P took more than half the votes to claim his position as the winner!
Here’s what some of the jury had to say about his selection:
- “Picked this one because it made me re-discover that awesome Noir & Haze - ‘Around’ track, I had long forgotten about this classy tune. Also because it included a real damn good pick for rooftop sessions : Nicolas Jaar and the mesmerizing “Mi Mujer” anthem (at least in my books). Perfect timing when you look at the weather, the heat, the ambiance etc… “
- “Great selection of songs! Enjoyed every single track!”
- "Quoi de mieux que du Nicolas Jaar pour chiller ? Quoi de mieux que la planante Symbiose de Joris Delacroix pour se laisser aller en fin de soirée à 5 heure du matin (si ce n’est peut-être Pursuit of Happiness choisie par MAOS, je l’avoue, haha) ? Et pour finir en beauté, l’incroyable remix de Solomun dont le rythme colle à la peau et les vocales charment l’ouïe. Du Nosaj Thing et du Boards of Canada en prime, c’est donc la playlist de Clément P. qui a le plus séduit mes oreilles. Parce-qu’à chaque moment sa bande-son et ce sont celles qu’à choisi Clément P. qui semble, à mon avis, convenir le plus."
- "It’s a beautiful mix of very relaxing music and more upbeat tracks. Refreshing to see some classic tunes as well in the playlist! Discovered some songs as well, which is always a pleasure when they’re this good!"
Now comes the fun part, for the prize Mr. Clement P has requested a photo of the Whyd team in Slip Français (see photo above). Which we will certainly provide (to be honest, it’s hard to take pictures of Gilles without his slip français!!) In the meantime, take a listen to this champion playlist. Congratulations Clement!!