01 - Atlas Castle

Giannis Kampiotis
August 12, 2022

Hello music people 👋

Today we're featuring Atlas Castle.

We'll see how he makes his tracks, why he LOVES his Digitakt, embraces limitations and what “keep it simple” means to him. 🎶

Read Time: 4 minutes 📰

Atlas Castle's Setup

Gear List

Elektron Digitakt
Novation Circuit Tracks
Waldorf Blofeld
Dreadbox Typhon
Mackie Mix8
Focusrite Scarlett 2i2

What's the one thing in your studio you can't live without?

That’s actually an easy one! My studio and workflow can’t live without the Elektron Digitakt. This is the ONE piece of gear that I will always prioritize in my workflow. When I started researching “How to make electronic music without a computer?”, the results were really overwhelming. I was suddenly introduced to a world of new vocabulary that made clearly no sense to me back then. Subtractive Synthesis, Polyphony, Multitimbrality, LFO's... (the list is still long and unmastered xD).

Trial and error, research, and most importantly, persistence are definitely leading my musical process.⁠ My first approach to the DAWless world started with the Digitakt. With this device I learned how to keep things interesting during a live performance within one pattern. I'm still embracing the learning curve today.

What's your process?

Writing a track for me resonates with embracing limitations. Jamming with the hardware is really different compare to producing in the DAW (for me - this is all very subjective). I allow myself to work and produce with a very limited selection of samples and synths. And for the rest, I’m seriously just trusting my instinct and live performer feelings on this. All my tracks are Live recording sessions.

When I listened to the two first DAWless tracks I released back then, my formatted producer brain was thinking “no go...”. But then my live heart took over thinking “damn, I’ll definitely trip to this during a live show!”

How would you explain your style?

When I first started my journey as a solo artist, my style and genre was really broad. I could go from house, downtempo, electronica, soundtrack and epic in one track.

Now that I’ve spent more time behind the engines trying to define an artistic direction and sound, I’d say that I’m aiming toward Techno, Minimal and Ambient music.

I love to use the chromatic key on the Digitakt to find melodies with percussive samples. I would generally add a lot of overdrive, reverb and delay on top to create raw and hypnotic atmospheres and rhythms.

Has this journey of building a hardware setup changed the way you think about music or life in general?

It definitely did. Limited my creative process to my setup really made me more efficient. I’m now mixing directly on the engines while being limited to 10 tracks only. I used to get lost in mixing session with over 30 layers of track when I first started writing music in the DAW… that’s was really killing my creativity. I wasn’t good at it.

Instead of thinking outside the box constantly and getting lost in all my plugins, I decided to find new ideas by repurposing the box (my creative process).

It’s the idea of working inside of systems in ways my mind is not use to deal with. It is the notion that maybe the way to look forward is look backward and recover something that I’ve lost in my creative process.

Being limited in my actions while working with the Digitakt really triggers my creativity. I had really mixed feelings while going through this process. Between incomplete, under-produced, excitement, and surprise all at once.⁠⁠

What’s your ONE tip on music-production or creativity?

“Keep It Simple!” - This is definitely one of my main approach as well. I found out while building up my sets, that the whole progression could become really technical. There’s so much to do if you want to keep yourself busy with the engines. But at some point, if you struggle with your performances because of too much techniques in your safe environment, imagine how you will be struggling with a room full of people listening to you?⁠ I’m slowly but surely stripping down my patterns and transitions.

Do you have a question in mind that you think we should have asked? Or anything else you'd like to say?

I will be releasing my second album in October.

When I’m not active behind my machines, I happily run my own independent music label & collective: Petite Victory Collective. PVC, is keenly placed to explore the intersection of music and art through interdisciplinary creative collaborations that blur lines between ecology, sustainability and hardwares.

I'm always happy to connect with genuine souls and jammers, so feel always welcome to reach out.