Artist Interviews 🎶 Studio Tours 🎛

Hello music people 👋

Today in the spotlight, Silence Castor

Currently in the United States, he got burned out on the band life and decided to focus on making music on his own 🎶

Interview & Studio Tour

Who are you and what is your relationship with music?

I'm Nate Hicks aka Silence_Castor and I produce Ambient Electronic up in Vermont, USA.

I work during the day as a designer/developer, so music has always been one of the last passions that I was able to keep alive outside of work.

It's a huge stress reliever and outlet for me.

I've been playing instruments and making music since 2001, ranging from a trumpet back in school band, piano with my Mother, and eventually Electric Guitar and Bass. Guitar eventually became my main instrument and I had a few bands through Highschool and College. A little over 5 years ago, I got a bit burnt out on the band life and decided to start writing music on my own again. This was around the same time I purchased my first synthesizer. And the rest is history!

I quickly became enamored with synths, samplers, and sequencers, quickly building up a fun setup consisting on Elektron, Sequential Circuits, some guitar pedals from my past, and a small eurorack build. Today, I put out my music on all streaming hubs, work frequently on collaborations with other producers on Instagram, I'm in a few record labels, and I've even started writing soundtracks for short films.

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

So even though I now have an Octatrack, the Elektron Digitakt is still my bread and butter.

I love how portable it is, how powerful it is, and how quickly you can start building a song on it. The workflow really clicks with me, and I really admire how they've kept up with actual substantial firmware updates (including adding a master compressor with sidechain, a second LFO per track, and the ability to choose FX routings on the 2 Audio In's). I often bring it with me on trips (even outdoor camping trips), and can power it with a tiny power brick.

If I ever had to sell everything but 2 pieces of gear, the Digitakt would be my first pick, closely followed by my Prophet Rev2. I think those 2 pieces of gear together are insanely powerful.

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

This is a tough one, because as we all know... most of this gear is pricey. I'd say the least expensive piece of gear that gave me the most results is a hard tie between the Alesis Micron and the Korg Minilogue.

The Micron was literally my first synth and I bought it used from a friend. It fully opened my mind to the world of synth sounds and waves. On the other hand, the Minilogue was my first ever fully analog synth with more "synthy" controls, like ADSR, Filter, Env, etc. The original Korg Minilogue is an absolute dream and I plan on getting another one eventually.

Walk us through your process for creating and producing music.

It's often very sporadic and rarely syncs up with when I actually want to work on music.

When inspiration and motivation finally align, I tend to jump onto the Samplers first and curate a nice little library of sounds (drums, backing samples, noise/bg sounds). On the Digitakt, I will focus on drums, one hits, and any cassette/vinyl samples I may have pulled from my collection (if you can afford a used cassette player/record player and have a sampler, DO IT).

The Octatrack on the other hand primarily gets used as a performance mixer these days. I will run my Digitakt into the A/B in and my synth voices into the C/D in, then using templates made by the Octatrack God, EZBOT, I get full control over the mix of both sides, transitions and fx, and the ability to grab quick 4 or 8 bar samples from the incoming audio.

The last part I usually pull in is any synth voice. I tend to lean into the Prophet for beautiful leads, chords, or phat bass, then the eurorack/Bastl Softpop2 for added synth parts or any parts the Prophet isn't covering. These parts get baked into my Digitakt project as MIDI tracks, so that everything is saved for recording or live play later on.

The final step I take past recording into the DAW, is bounding parts down to the Octatrack to be played live. This step eliminates the need to drag my entire setup to a show, allowing me to use the OT as more of a turntable with the song all laid out.

Then I can just hone in on transitions, builds, drops, and FX.

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

One I always come back to is recording either 1 part, or the whole mix, onto 4-track cassette, then resampling it from there.

I love doing this, because you get a lot of nice noise/artifacts, the sound gets warmed up a bit, you can push the capacitors in some old cassette recorders to get a very satisfying soft clipping effect, and you can even physically degrade the tape itself to texture your sounds.

On top of all of this, using cassettes gives you the option to make tape loops, which are super fun to work with.

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How would you describe your style?

That's a tough one.

I'd say my style is experimental, but with a lot of focus put on society and some of the more questionable things we do as a species.

I tend to try and do this by creating some sort of alternate warped reality as a setting. I feel that this gives most people a better chance at seeing the subject from an outside perspective.

My hopes are that they can take those new perspectives back into every day life and be more willing to question things and be more open to change.

What is a big challenge you have as an artist?

My biggest challenge as an artist is definitely creative block and outside noise.

When I first started into art, I was doodling constantly and illustrating in a vacuum. I didn't share my art with anyone until the end of highschool, when I got to be in Art AP. I went to college for Graphic Design, and there I learned the true pain and beauty in critiques. Now that I make music as my primary creative outlet (especially now that I SHARE my music online), it has become increasingly difficult to keep putting out music.

There are so many at home producers now and IG is full of desktop setups and DAWless jams. Many days, I'll sit down at my desk to start a project and instead of just riding the inspiration wave, I'll be in my head asking "will this perform well on IG?" or "this person did this or that, maybe I should to." Luckily, I go in and out of waves of this school of thought and soon after, I often get back to my inspiration wave. I do my best to harness those moments and get as much new music made as possible, before the intrusive thoughts come back.

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

Definitely!

I suddenly found myself picking apart songs and kind of reverse engineering them in my mind. We'd be listening to some new Clark, or even some oldschool 1970s tracks with early synths on them, and I'd be sitting there figuring out the oscillator wave shape they were using, what was being LFO'd, whether or not there was a LPF or HPF being used.

I think all of this knowledge and these eye opening experiences gave me a lot more confidence in myself.

One tip on how to spark creativity?

Nothing works better for me than breaking of 1 piece of gear from my setup and sitting down with it somewhere other than my desk.

This is huge, because it gives your brain a break from trying to wrangle all the parts at once. I will often pull the Digitakt, Octatrack, or Eurorack off the desk and spend a night jamming with it on the dining room table, on the carpet with my Cat, or even out in nature.

I think the limitation is what really pushes me.

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

Ask The Dust by Lorn

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

instagram | spotify | soundcloud | deezer | apple music | youtube | facebook

Gear List

• Sequencers:

  • Elektron - Digitakt | Octatrack

  • Arturia - Keystep 37

  • Eurorack (primarily Erica Synths)

• Synths:

  • Sequential Circuits - DSI Prophet Rev2

  • Bastl - Softpop SP2

• FX:

  • OTO - BOUM

  • Hologram Electronics - Microcosm

• Mixing/Recording:

  • Tascam - Model 12 | 424 MKII

  • Audio Technica - AT-LP120XUSB

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