84 - Abducted Android

Author

Giannis Kampiotis
June 09, 2023

Artist Interviews 🎢 Studio Tours πŸŽ›

Hello music people πŸ‘‹

Today in the spotlight, Abducted Android

Coming from Belgium, he started making Big Beat music but later on switched to Ambient. Check his YouTube and get immersed in the universes he is creating 🎢

Read Time: 7 minutes πŸ“°

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Interview

Who are you and what is your relationship with music?

I'm located in Sint-Gillis-Waas, Belgium.

My first love was Big Beat music. Slamming drum loops with a roaring bassline. I started out creating rather hectic mashups, electro and drum and bass using Reason on my Mac.

As life progressed, becoming a dad makes you crave for a quieter and more peaceful vibe. Thus ambient music came along and became a second nature.

I started looking into hardware because I wanted to get away from my desktop computer as much as possible, because webdev (my daytime job) was already absorbing too much screen time.

Currently, I'm not earning any money from my hobby, and I like it to stay that way. If a hobby involves obligations, it is no longer considered a hobby and it takes all the fun out of it.

Which piece of equipment in your studio is essential to your production process?

As an ambient creator, of course I am fond of big reverb effects, deep basses en lush pads. My favorite reverberator is the Strymon Nightsky (not in the pics), and for software I'm a big fan of the Valhalla plug-ins.

I use those often in post-fx processing.

Favourite bass synth is the affordable Behringer Pro-1.

For my pads/arps I currently use the Arturia Microfreak, the Waldorf Blofeld and the small but powerful Korg NTS-1.

What is the least expensive piece of gear that gave you the most results?

The IK Multimedia Uno Synth was one of my first little machines, which produces a proper range of different sounds, between bass, lead and pads. Incredibly little thing I would highly recommend for beginners in any electronic genre. Nice little sequencer too!

Walk us through your process for creating and producing music.

Usually i start creating multitimbral patches on the Blofeld. Different layers for different purposes: Multilayered pads and bass.

I'm a big fan of subtle arpeggiator sounds. For those I generally make use of the Microfreak and the cheap, but awesome Korg NTS-1.

Then I sequence it all using the Beatstep Pro.

For FX I use a Nightsky and another NTS-1 as send/return fx on my mixer (apart from the already interesting onboard fx on the Blofeld).

For live jamming, when I want to add some drums, I got my trusted Volca Sample with my own samplebank (largely based on 909 samples) and a Drumbrute Impact.

When recording music to actually make a full track, the drums are mainly used as a sketch, but later on get replaced in my DAW to have better control over the sound.

What is a production technique that you always come back to?

Create a simple patch on just 1 synth, and meticulously tweak it until that 1 sound is something you're really fond of and can be used as a base layer for the rest of the track.

Build on that.

How would you explain your style?

I'm not trying to push myself too much into a specific genre, but I guess one can say I'm in the ambient / psybient type of playground.

I learned that, switching to hardware gear, boundaries concerning genre are fading away quickly.

What is a big challenge you have as an artist?

As I described above, making music, for me, is and stays a hobby. It remains deliberately a hobby. So not making any money out of it, the costs of purchasing gear will always be a bit of an issue.

On the other hand, it forces you to be creative, to try to get as much as possible out of the gear you own. This is a great way to keep focus and keep learning.

Has building a hardware setup changed your perspective on music or life in general?

No doubt!

Switching to hardware gear really changed the way I listen to music. "How is this sound made?", "How do they achieve this?", "How can I reproduce these type of sounds?"

It is also a kind of therapy. Getting lost a few hours in music after a busy day calms me down a lot and fires me up for the next day!

One tip on how to spark creativity?

Don't let other music influence you too much. Do your own thing and certainly don't let negative critics get you down. Create your own little universe.

Other than that, take time to learn your gear and keep on experimenting to find your own sound. And when in doubt, find some cool new presets for your go-to synth to get you going and fiddle away!

A book, movie, article, or album that has inspired you?

Probably a game: Mass Effect (great soundtrack and the general atmosphere it breathes)

Ξ‘nything else you'd like to say?

I think the G.A.S. Newsletter is a great way to find new music.

It is also interesting to find out how others use the gear you own yourself. For that exact same reason I also recently started curateddawlessjams. It is an ongoing webdev project. You can call it a hobby for my hobby :)

Where can people find more of your music and connect with you online?

Mainly YouTube, because it also contains my live jams

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