Recondite returns to his Plangent label in January 2022 with a hugely personal seventh studio album, ‘Taum’. The 11 expansive tracks were written between his Berlin home and the Lower Bavaria hinterland of his youth. In capturing the array of emotions he was feeling during the pandemic and mixing up both pastoral and urban influences, the album is his most diverse to date. It takes in classic Recondite tracks that are deep, melodic, and meditative as well more edgy, darker beats inspired by his lifelong love of hip hop, grime, and trap. With ‘Taum’, Recondite takes his signature sounds further than ever before.
To celebrate the impending release of ‘Taum’ on his Plangent label, Recondite shares five essential studio tips to find your own sonic signature.
1. Be open to experiment
For me, it has always been helpful to be open to trying whatever comes to your mind when producing. No matter if that means going completely in the box and digital, or all analog with no computer. Exploration is super beneficial, especially if you are in the early days of creating music. For me using field recordings has always been a rewarding approach in that matter.
2. Finish stuff!
Luckily, from day one, I was quick to ‘finish’ tracks. This doesn’t mean they were perfect or couldn’t be improved, but I always saw each track that I bounced as a stepping stone, especially in the first years of producing. This way I was able to put an ending to tracks and projects, have closure and move on and focus on new things that kept me going and brought me further.
3. Sound is inspiration
Auditivly pleasing environments really can do magic for finding interesting creative musical ideas. This does not mean that you must have the most perfect studio situation (in fact those do not always have great sound in my opinion), but you need to feel comfortable with your listening environment. If you love how the bass sounds on Apple AirPods, then you should start with them.
4. Create internal filters
Narrowing down the personal taste of music, and really being aware of what touches you musically and what doesn’t, has been key for me. I always try to reflect on the music that reaches me emotionally, and I try to think about what particular aspect really touches me. Like this feeling, I can create a filter web in my mind that allows me to understand better what type of music or frequencies really do the trick for me. The tighter the filter knitting gets, the more I know what I want to create. This especially was something I unconsciously developed in the years before I started producing, and is helpful up until today. Tip 5 in this article is kind of like a follow-up to this…
5. Try to be ‘unbiased’
This is the most tricky one in my opinion. I feel like it doesn’t help your creativity, satisfaction, workflow, and productivity if you compare your work to other people’s work too much. It is a very fine line because musical influences from the outside can be inspirational, but they also can bias the approach towards your own productions. If I put too much focus on others’ work, I end up getting no satisfaction out of what I do because I feel like I am losing my uniqueness. Also, my emotional ear experiences fatigue if I intake too much music by other artists, especially within the genres that I appear in. This is the main reason why I find it extremely difficult being a steady creative, productive musician, and live act (which only plays his own work), and being a prolific and exceptional DJ (who plays mostly other people’s work) at the same time.
Recondite’s ‘Taum’ will be out digitally on January 14th, and vinyl on March 25th. Purchase your copy of the LP here.
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