Monday, July 16, 2012

Shook Interview



Shook is a fresh producer with an array of fantastic remixes and up and coming original tracks.  His remix of Ellie Goulding's "Lights" reenvisioned the track as a lounge piece that would make any jazz enthusiast's mouth water-- and the electronic world took notice, giving the track 300,000 plays on SoundCloud as of today.  More recently, he's released a collaboration with Ronika called "Distorted Love" and, one of my personal favorites, a track called "Love for You".

Shook is one of the blog's more mysterious guests, so it's exciting to be able to have a few questions with him and find out where his roots are.  Enjoy a short but sweet interview with Shook below, and be sure to check out his newest release, "Garota '92", released today.





The Synth Symp:  How did you get started in music? When did you start doing remixes?
Shook: I come from a musical family, so I guess you could say music is in my blood. My father is a jazz pianist. He used to play old Jazz standards while I was watching cartoons. Eventually the music rubs off on you. I started making electronic music when I was pretty young. My first DAW was a trial version of Fruityloops, a program I still use today. Once I got the hang of it, I found myself entranced, making it hard to stop. Most of the time, I went on all night. The music I produced at that time was really high energy. I think 99% of it is music nobody will ever hear. I was also part of a high energy electronic punk band for a while. It was a lot of fun at the time, experimenting with different moods and styles. But at a certain point, my yearning for creating my own music started to take over again. I had my first official release when I was 17. It was some dark electronic stuff. Looking back, it feels like a journey. I was searching for something more personal; more exciting. In my opinion, making music should be a natural process. Nothing should be forced. I started doing remixes after the release of my first EP ‘The Glow EP’. Right after I put it online, various people started to contact me, asking me if I would be down to do some remix work. I was.

MiniBrutes hit consumer's hands, Finally

After months of desperate questioning of Arturia and local music shops, synth heads are finally plugging in their new Arturia MiniBrutes this past week (at least, in the USA).  Various posts from around the web confirm the excitement, and people seem to be impressed.  There's also been a fair collection of new YouTube videos being uploaded.  A few are below.

Well, was it worth the wait?  Are people happy?  Early reports seem to be a resounding "yes".  Future Music recently ran a review claiming it was well worth the price.  The few complaints I've seen on the net seem to be the external power supply is shoddy, it has a few missing buttons for features (that can only be accessed by computers) and that there are slight issues with software, but nothing that seems to deal breaker for anyone.

Check out the videos below, and be on the lookout for more posts on the MiniBrute.