Growing up in a family of musicians, discovering electronic music and focusing on that genre as a producer, how important - or not - is your sound equipment.

We cover how the revenue model from streaming services is broken, and its negative influence on the way artists create their music.

How he experienced his first-time collaboration with a more established producer, Dense, to create their album Wave Soaring.

Yet the most surprising part was hearing that his music got deplatformed from streaming services, and how he handled the situation to get it back there.

Enjoy!

Feel free to reach out to Dennis here in the comments below, or there:

* Spotify

* Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/moonkinsounds

* Bandcamp: https://moonkinsounds.bandcamp.com

* Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/moonkinsounds

Transcript

**Christophe:** Thank you Dennis, for joining this interview.

so, we know each other because we've been spinning fire together for a while. this is how we really know each other.

**Dennis:** That's

**Christophe:** But then, as part of this community, you just showed us, To me and our group of friends that we were also producing music and you released an album it was in the middle of the pandemic Wave Soaring and we even had a release party So, I would love to know How was your life or, in what phase of your life were you, where you started producing music?

Maybe, you were a DJing before or something. It's quite common for producers of electronic music to start with DJ, but I don't know if it was the case for you.

**Dennis:** Well, so music has always kind of been in my life, You My father was a musician. My brother and sister, they've always been singing or playing or acting.

And, I was playing the guitar or I was playing the saxophone or piano as a child, basically. But, when I started to produce music, I had started to go to festivals. And I really wanted to understand like, whoa, this is a completely different type of sound, architecture, you know,

Cause I came from the world of, reggae and hip hop and R&B. Soul, even rock, you know, my music taste is wide, Um, but as I started to go to festivals, I heard these soundscapes, these rhythms, that were really unexplainable to me. I work as a software developer, and I have this engineering mindset. I want to understand how these things work. And, I just started to mess with some audio production software. It was fruity loops or FL studio. I've been messing around with it before, making some hip hop beats and stuff like that.

But nothing, nothing really serious, nothing that I would, care to stick my name on really or tell people that I've worked really hard on it. You know what I mean? Never gave it really a lot of time. But as I went into the electronic world, I started to learn so much, Because there's just so much to learn equalizing, compression, limiting, mastering, clipping, distortion, analog emulators, and different types of synths, and how the hell does a synth even work, you know?

It's an amazing machine. I'd say 2015 or 2016 is when I started doing, okay, now we're doing electronic music production. Now I'm doing like ambient downtempo style of music, that's the sort of genre that I decided to get myself into.

I would say it's about 2015, 2016. 2015 is when I started to go to the festivals. Ozora, as I know you are familiar with Ozora, Because you've been there, right?

**Christophe:** No, I haven't been to Ozora. not that one, but I think starting 20 12 or so I discovered electronic music festivals as well.

**Dennis:** Yeah,

yeah.

**Christophe:** and I really got into it, and I think that's why we ended up sort of participating and being in the same social circles in the end. And we met and stuff.

**Dennis:** Yeah,

**Christophe:** It's through this kind of, the same tribe, I would say.

**Dennis:** Yeah, it's magical. Music brings us together, doesn't it?

**Christophe:** So

going from the festivals, you got really into that kind of music. And, it makes sense to discover the production side of ambient electronic music in that case.

**Dennis:** Oh

yeah.

**Christophe:** I guess, of course, when we get into that, we get inspired by some artists that we admire, their music that we really love. And do you have any names in mind that really were your inspiration?

**Dennis:** Yeah.

**Christophe:** What kind of artists really inspired you for example, the Wave Soaring album or even a little bit before?

**Dennis:** Absolutely. The Wave Soaring album was my first, high production release, basically, where we put a lot of time into it. we hired, a mastering engineer Lab's Cloud is his name, which has been a, uh, inspiration as well. And, I did this album together with Dense.

Dense, is also a, down tempo producer. He's kind of more, into the progressive landscape of things. I apologize to Christian if he thinks that I'm mislabeling him. But, that's the category I have you in brother.

I was alluding a little bit how I got started on this journey. I can just say that, I had a day of lots of inspiration and I stumbled upon a DJ set that Dense had produced. I think I may have even listened to him live at some point,

in Germany, but I stumbled across his SoundCloud and I was listening to a two hour mix of down tempo and it was just transformative, really.

So then I started to listen to his music. I started to reach out, fast forward a couple of years later and we're making an album together I just want to say huge shout out to Dense Christian for Collaborating with so many, new and up and coming artists.

that's really a blessing so that's how Wave Soaring came to be and The inspiration for it was a lot of, Dense, Lauge, Baba Gnohm, Desert Dwellers, Bluetech, Suduaya, uh, did I say Astropilot? There's so many. I can't name them all.

It's impossible, really. Carbon based lifeforms. you're all in there, guys. yeah, that's The inspo.

**Christophe:** Yeah, it's basically artists that I really like a lot myself,

**Dennis:** I know, we have the

**Christophe:** yeah. Uh, we We both love ambient electronic

and, in that genre for sure. we like the same artists but before you release that album, I know that your most streamed track on Spotify is from before it's from 2019.

It's a remix of Zero Cult's Moonlight Run.

**Dennis:** Yeah.

**Christophe:** you have, a successful track on Spotify that people have listened to quite a lot.

that was before that album.

**Dennis:** I know, it's crazy. that one, I think it has what, like 58, 000 plays or something like that, approaching 60, and I think on Soundcloud, it is, around 20k as well, which is, not an insane amount for, a well established producer, but for somebody like me, who's like, messing around and up and coming, that's imagine 50, 000 people around you.

That's shit. That's a lot of people. And I know it's not, unique listeners. It's Probably just you and me, listening to the same track over and over again But yeah, that was the first and still to this date, I think most successful release

**Christophe:** there is some guitar playing on Moonlight run. Is it, played, by a real guitar player, or is it some.

Sound from Ableton

**Dennis:** Oh yeah, absolutely. first of all, I should say that, this track, Moonlight Run, it was a remix of the original Moonlight Run made by Zero Cult, who has also been an inspiration for me.

it was a remix contest, and anybody could join, more or less. You downloaded the stems from them, or you would send the stems, I'm not sure how that worked.

anyway you receive the stems, if you're not like a producer you perhaps wouldn't know that a stem is a part of a track it could be like the vocal it could be the bass It could be the kick the drums the percussion the ambience all the building blocks of the track.

So then what producers do is you mix and match, maybe you reverse something, maybe you flip the EQ upside down, or you apply heavy compression or lots of effects, and then you get a completely different sound, especially if you layer your own sort of flavor on top of it.

**Christophe:** Yeah.

**Dennis:** So, the mission was to take all of his stems and make a unique sounding track.

So, I spent a lot of time doing that, applied my own flavor. And then, just as I thought that, oh, I'm probably soon done with this track.

it sounds great already. so my mother, has a thing for musicians, I guess. My father was a musician and, she's met many other musicians since. And the partner that she has now They've been together for about, uh, 11 years, his name is Andreas, and he is an amazing guitarist and, singer songwriter.

Andreas Lång, by the way. And he is very lång. Lång means tall in Swedish.

**Christophe:** yeah

**Dennis:** But he is an amazing singer songwriter and guitarist and he can just jam to anything. And, he was listening to my music and I said Hey, yeah, go for it.

I'll record what you're playing and, maybe I'll use it, who knows.

he's never heard music like this before, so he doesn't really know quite what to play. But, over a couple of takes, I get a lot of material that I can use to Again, it's sort of like stems I can mix and match and, pick the best parts and make sure I EQ them correctly.

And, maybe I'll take something that he played in the end and put it in the beginning or the middle. Maybe I'll layer those layers on top. So it sounds like multiple guitarists. So yeah, as to your question, it was Andreas Lång who played the guitar. And, I took the creative freedom to, arrange it and produce it in the way that I felt was best for the track.

at the end of the day, I'm 100 percent confident that, That guitar that he did, it definitely, seals the deal with people when it comes to listening to that track. It adds that, human flavor to it. That soul, that voice, you know, guitar is something that we've had around cultures for centuries.

**Christophe:** Yeah and honestly it integrates

extremely well in the track no it's great it's a great part of it I really like it

**Dennis:** I'm glad to hear that. yeah, looking forward to do some more stuff, with him. We recently got him a loop station, so I know he's at home, enjoying the tools basically that electronic music producers have been using for years.

**Christophe:** so I listened to Wave Soaring a couple of times I have a definitely favorite track on this one.

Bird's Eye View. That's my favorite track on that album,

**Dennis:** uh huh. Uh

**Christophe:** I was wondering, what about you?

**Dennis:** Oof, Well, I definitely also have my favorites. but they don't seem to be the same favorites that people have for some reason. I don't know why that is.

the track

that I really like, although going back to it today, I would do some stuff to it, definitely, but it is the final track of the album, which has, oddly, the least amount of plays, so. Yes, Kurast. I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the title as well.

What is Kurast? You know, I don't know. that doesn't grab me as a listener perhaps. fun story, Kurast. I don't know if you ever played Diablo 2.

**Christophe:** wait, let me think. I didn't play Diablo 2. I played 1 and 3. But I missed the 2 and a lot of people said it's a great one, by the way.

**Dennis:** Yeah, Diablo 2, Lord of Destruction was the best out of all of them, and Kurast is the city, the sunken, marshlands city, where everything is swamp and jungle, and, voodoo, and, mystical dark spirits and stuff like that and I think that track for me captures that feeling of Wandering around in a dark jungle with lots of Lizard men and spiders and snakes all around you, take a listen to it again and try and see if you

can place yourself in that space and see if it helps But yeah, I really like Kurast.

I really like, Discoverance. I really like Starboard. I like Mermaid's Call. I like Bird's Eye View. I like all of them, really. And I'm proud of the album. Although, it gets so caught up in, life in general that, I don't really think too much about it.

I created this awesome album that people seem to like. Yeah, definitely want to make another album or a couple of singles. They're actually in the works right now. Oh yeah,

**Christophe:** at it. I think that's

**Dennis:** yeah, I'm getting back to it for sure.

my attention is usually split between work, flow arts and music production.

And at the same time, trying to take care of my body and, relationships and stuff like that. But, I feel a U turn is around the corner, so to speak.

**Christophe:** That's cool. one thing I noticed as well. When I look at the album covers of both, Moonlight Run and Wave Soaring, I think they are great, and I imagine that you did it yourself, right?

**Dennis:** okay, so let's go with the Moonlight Run. the Moonlight Run, I chose the font myself. And then I had a really good friend of mine, Johannes, make the character, the moon kin.

**Christophe:** mean, Johannes Falk, our common friend, or

**Dennis:** our common friend Johannes Falk Yeah.

he designed the moon Kin,

it is a owl with antlers and it is, reminiscent Of the character from World of Warcraft. I'm a pc gamer I used to play a lot of games. So this is from The

World Of Warcraft back in the day.

I used

**Christophe:** Yeah, the Druid, right? They can, shape shift in Moonkin form,

**Dennis:** that's correct, that's where it's from

**Christophe:** That's great.

**Dennis:** Loud and proud

**Christophe:** But the rest, the background as well, you had to just create it yourself, I guess, on the album cover.

**Dennis:** no, this one, it was a commission, actually. I said, hey, Johannes, you're really awesome at making, graphics, and I love your style. What do you think? Do you feel like you can make my next, album cover? Moonkin, for the Moonlight Run. so he made all of that himself.

I just chose the font, basically.

Uh, and I told him, this is sort of what I'm going for and then we went back and forward a couple of times. But, that's 99 percent his work

**Christophe:** Cool. Thank you, Johannes. All right.

**Dennis:** he is, he is the man. He is, definitely a man of many talents. And then the second album, Wave Soaring, that one is me. I did get some help from my beautiful then partner, Emily. She has a very, visual mind. And, she gave me lots of, cues and tips and, guidance.

And, she has a ability to bring forward something, very uniquely looking or, you know, well put together. you wouldn't have wanted to see my first initial drafts, on how the album cover would look like. they're not my proudest work. Let's put it like that.

**Christophe:** Yeah, I also have myself a creative side, for example, it has been into creating lamps, custom lamps

and, I'd really love to keep the pictures about the first designs because I love to see the evolution.

Ernest Hemingway famously said the first draft of everything is shit I love that quote. I really relate to that because There's no magic in creativity or in creating great art, it starts with a shitty draft So it's just to dispel the myth, that maybe artistic people they come with this amazing thing Immediately it's just totally wrong

**Dennis:** Yeah, shout out to Emelie definitely and Johannes and yeah, everybody that's supporting me always

**Christophe:** When it comes to collaborating with Dense in that case How did it feel was it harder than just to create tracks on your own? was it enjoyable did it bring some pressure to collaborate with another producer.

**Dennis:** Yeah, definitely Because I'd never done this before. I can jam with people, I can have fun. But, when we're saying to each other, okay, let's start this thing Let's do an album together. Okay, so what does that mean? what kind of commitment is, either of us looking for, what kind of flavor are we looking for?

is this what you want? Is this what I want? And, it was definitely challenging. you asked me if it's easier to make music on your own and yeah, it is because, you just have your own self to, worry about and if I delete this part of the track, nobody cares. That's what I wanted to do anyway, but if I delete that part of the track when, we're kind of sharing the track, then it becomes a different story. and how much of me can I put in there? cause it's a balance, I guess. Like I could have completely taken out all of his stuff and put in all of my stuff.

And, but then the balance would have been skewed. But where is that balance? Where is that fine point where you both feel like you've contributed significantly, to the track?

**Christophe:** Yeah. It

**Dennis:** was definitely interesting. And in the end

I feel like He may have wanted me to go a little bit more aggressive on my end. I feel he may have wanted me to do that. but you know, as I was new And as he is this, well established, producer that, still to this day when I talk about, down tempo, ambient, side chill music, people know about Dense.

So yeah, to do work together with him, I felt honored. I felt, I have to be respectful You know, where to place myself in this new dynamic and really grateful, I should say, really grateful for having had the opportunity to work with him.

Collaboration it's like having a really good conversation, you don't really know where you're going to end up. You're just like jamming together. And, I think the more you converse, the more you collaborate, the more, connected you will be with, the ongoing and the outputs of what's coming out of that creative process.

**Christophe:** yeah, I'm just thinking about it in practical ways. Is Dense based in Sweden

**Dennis:** No, he is in Hamburg.

**Christophe:** Yeah, Germany.

**Dennis:** Yes. Or is it Berlin? I think it's Hamburg. It could be Berlin also.

**Christophe:** when you collaborated, was it back and forth or was it, sort of, simultaneously via, I don't know, via zoom or I don't know how

**Dennis:** Mhm. Yeah, no, we would send, uncompressed audio to each other, back and forth,

**Christophe:** it was back and forth then. Yes.

**Dennis:** better ways now. like you can stream really high quality digital audio. I think uncompressed streaming digital audio you need to set up some stuff for it to work.

It's not really consumer friendly, but it's possible. It's possible, but we were sending uncompressed wave files back and forth I'm doing my stuff, he's doing his stuff, and back and forth, back and forth.

**Christophe:** Alright,

When you look back into basically your time at the studio, whether it was working on your own tracks or just as well collaborating with Dense on that album, can you think of some moments that are standing out, whether it was good moments or even bad memories of that time, just producing?

**Dennis:** Okay, so I'll start with something which isn't necessarily bad. I think it's natural progression of, one getting to know your art and, how much. energy investment or financial investment you put into something. So, in the very beginning, I was trying to make good sounding tracks with, the worst possible equipment.

And that is not to say that equipment makes the music, But you definitely need to have a standard that's, good enough, for you to be able to, hear what you're doing. How are you actually, affecting the output by listening to your music through like really shitty, 20 Logitech speakers, it's not that I didn't have the money, it was more that I thought that, nah, it's not necessary, the tech doesn't make the music, But yeah, friend of mine, Gustav, who's been with me all my life, about, what, 20 years or so, he was living with me at the time and he's like, Dennis, how do you think you're going to produce, you know, Dense quality?

Suduaya quality Cell CBL quality on those shitty speakers right there?

Uh, I'm like, dude, you don't know, you don't know music. You don't know that the tech doesn't make the music. But, in the end it seems he was right. At least to some degree. Uh, once I started to, invest a little bit more into the production, proper set of headphones, decent monitors, then not only did the music sound better, because I was able to hear what I was doing better, but I was also kind of, Letting myself know that I am ready to take the next step.

I'm ready to put down some money on this actually. and that gave me an additional boost to continue and go forward. This is like me investing in myself basically.

**Christophe:** Yeah, exactly.

**Dennis:** So that's a memory From the studio and it's not necessarily good or bad. It's just an insight that I've gotten

**Christophe:** Yeah. let's talk about the music industry.

Streaming services like Spotify are super important these days. have their existence been good or bad for you?

**Dennis:** I don't know what it's like for people trying to make a living off of. The streaming, services. I can suspect that you would have to adapt to these streaming services and you have to learn, I guess, how they work, really. How do you get into their, algorithms, like what they decide to, put in people's feeds

So has its existence been good or bad for me? I think it's been good for me I haven't been reliant on The financial compensation for me, it's been a platform like Facebook or Instagram it's giving me a easy low threshold to reach out with my music. So yeah, I'm pretty happy about it. I mean, do I wish that I got You know 10 cents or one krona for each play at Spotify. Fuck. Yeah that would

be great.

I think, the music industry, will have to change at some point. I think that, artists are coming to, a point where they don't really feel compensated enough. And they will want to have, different types of compensation models than what the, large service providers can provide.

**Christophe:** I don't know if it's still the case, but, a while ago, the compensation, the payment to the artist was by the number of streams and not so long ago, the stream was counted when it was over 30 seconds.

So it doesn't matter if you make a track that is two and a half minutes, or if you make a track that is eight minutes long, you're going to be compensated at the same amount.

**Dennis:** Mm hmm.

**Christophe:** doesn't make sense, to me. I think, if you listen to a track for eight minutes and two and a half minutes, it's not the same,

right? that's one of the issues, in my opinion,

**Dennis:** That's really interesting. And, when you say that, I immediately start to think about this new genre. That has popped up which is lo fi I was checking through some playlists the other day and I noticed that all of the tracks are like, One and a half minutes two and a half minutes something like that this new type of music seems to be trending to a lower duration I saw it in house music as well.

**Christophe:** I know in the days it used to be like, 3 and a half minutes or so per track on a, 12 or 15 track album. But I think that was because of, how much, audio data would fit in there. So that's what the labels were sort of aiming for.

**Dennis:** And now the duration seems to be adapting to the streaming services, financial compensation algorithm.

**Christophe:** I'm sure it does,

**Dennis:** Wow, I had no

**Christophe:** if it, if, if it still, hasn't changed their revenue model, the stream is, whatever the track, that is, played

for

over 30 seconds. it is crappy. So, you could, for example, make a track that is, the sound of a fireplace You make 31 seconds And then people can loop it and then you make shit ton of money

**Dennis:** Yeah, it's cheap results,

unfortunately.

**Christophe:** unfortunately I don't know if it's unfortunate but so called functional music which is extremely low cost of production Not really creative, but it just helps you for example, just focus It's been very successful financially, to be honest.

**Dennis:** I've seen that as well.

Ambient music is like you say, functional music. I listen to it every day when I'm about to round off my day and go to bed

**Christophe:** I remember listening, to a full live recording, which was a single track, It can be beautiful music. But if you want to generate some revenue, it's the worst idea because if you have an hour and a half long track, you will be compensated the same as if you

you have a track which

**Dennis:** Yeah. It doesn't make sense.

So I wanna ask you a question because I know that you've, been involved with the tech industry I know you've been messing around a little bit with the Spotify, APIs

Have you seen any new revenue, models coming out of the cryptography space, the NFT space,

**Christophe:** I haven't followed, but I remember you mentioning audios, maybe a year ago or something, but to be honest, I didn't look into it in the end. so I have to say, I know less than you

on that, but I was looking more specifically into how Spotify works. That's correct.

that's why I've looked into the revenue models for artists in general, their revenue channels. How do artists, earn a living? does streaming, how much or how little is streaming for them?

It was more there that I looked into the music industry.

I wanted to just, uh, still on Spotify because you mentioned, some months ago that's your album or maybe your whole music was

**Dennis:** It got cancelled, brother. It got cancelled.

I got de platformed from Spotify.

**Christophe:** I would love to know the story.

**Dennis:** Damn, guys, why did you cancel me off of Spotify? I didn't do anything. No, but, what was happening was that, I got a call From my good friend Gustaf when he was in desperate need to listen to my music, he's like what the fuck Where is your music brother?

And I'm like, It's right there on Spotify then I go on Spotify and I see all my music is grayed out or specifically the wave soaring album was grayed out if you were lucky enough to still have it in your playlist, it would be there grayed out, but you couldn't search for it.

and, I start to write to my record label, Synchronous Recordings. guy over there named Chlorophyll. he wasn't quite sure what happened. but he decided to look into it and, his distribution provider turns out that they have received. Either from their internal monitoring or from Spotify, they receive a flagging that the activity around the listenings, of our album was suspicious or unorganic or artificial. I think artificial is the term that they use, it was removed at Spotify, it was removed at Apple Music. I think it was only, on YouTube music. So thank you YouTube for not deplatforming me. but yeah, artificial streams. how did that happen? I don't know, but chlorophyll, the head of the record label, in the end, he couldn't really do anything.

about it. then he told me well, you might as well take over the distribution of the release. so that's what I did. I have all the raw audio files and I uploaded them through my service. And, uh, distributed them myself using the same unique numbers, the id, the IRCs, the UPCs, and they were able to like, merge the releases. So fortunately it's back up, but it took a month or so going back and forward. these companies, tech companies, they become so big that they're, unapproachable.

**Christophe:** No, it's totally true.

**Dennis:** You can't really get your ticket in somewhere. You can't talk to anybody about it. you're just an error log.

And, I would love to see like some new sort of, platform, which is run more by communities rather than. You know, conglomerates, syndicates, and it's really sad that somebody could, I guess target me with, artificial streams in order for, I don't know, so the end result was that my music got, removed.

I don't know that I would be such a target for, de platforming or whatever. Or maybe somebody held a grudge against the record label that we were, publishing through, or I have no idea, but to think that it's that easy to disrupt somebody's, creative content that is out there, is a bit concerning to me

**Christophe:** Yeah, yeah, I understand

for sure.

**Dennis:** Um, um,

**Christophe:** mentioned, I wanted to, I got interested in creating, a premium content platform for musicians based on the Spotify data. So in order to do this. You connect with the Spotify API And I made an application to have an official account You know, API keys To have an application in production Where people can sign in with a Spotify account And I never got any reply from that application I got a confirmation that it was received But, uh, Spotify never replied to the application.

it's just to confirm that for me as well, for a lot of people, a big company,

I would say you're just one more paper on their pile of things to do and, you get forgotten.

**Dennis:** You're not big enough for them to care, really,

**Christophe:** Yeah,

**Dennis:** They don't have those resources, And it's not incentively aligned with them, too. spend time on just one person really. they still want to work with the record labels, of course. and they're going to be happily accommodating their needs.

Perhaps not all of them, but most of them, I think.

And yeah, I'd just love to see a new decentralized platform in which you can, more directly. interact with your community

I think people would love that. I think the fans would love to get closer to their artists as well.

**Christophe:** Yeah.

**Dennis:** And be able to influence, the upcoming album or just, you know, I helped this guy, finance this album. I feel great about that.

we'll see how it goes. I'm hopeful.

**Dennis:** one thing I've always wondered, when it comes to getting yourself known in the music industry. I always thought that making remixes, and collaborations seems to be a great way because you sort of combine both audiences, your audience and the audience of, the artists that you're remixing or the artists that you're collaborating with.

**Christophe:** I think it's a good way. to spread your music. What do you think?

**Dennis:** Yeah, definitely. coming back to the Moonlight Run, release, it was a part of a remix contest. And I do think that I did receive, some buzz, and some audience from Zero Cult for the fact that, it has Zero Cult in the name of the track. So I think I did get some of his listeners to find it.

It will help the search terms as well. And, it's more likely to end up in, a playlist, of some

sort. if you have a connection to, a broader, network, community, the artist and the fans, they're a network.

And if I can hook myself up to your network or Zero Cult's network that's going to, help spread what am I looking for, the flow is gonna widen, it's a good way to increase your audience.

**Christophe:** So, is this, uh, is this something that you're going to consider in the next tracks that you're going to produce to try to leverage this cross pollination by collaborating or remixing?

**Dennis:** well, I think about collaborations, quite a lot. I do. I don't have anything lined up. But, I do definitely want to collaborate. I want to collaborate with live performers, live artists, people that are really good at performing live, but maybe they don't have, the technical skills to produce and release a album or a single somewhere.

And in which I would definitely want to add my flavor on top of whatever it is that they are producing. that is something that I would like to do. But for my next releases, I wanna finish up on some re releases that I had planned for a long time ago. They've been these, you know, 99 percenter tracks that never seem to be able to get done.

I think they're pretty much done and they're coming out this summer, I would say.

**Christophe:** Yeah

**Dennis:** but yeah, if you know people who want to collaborate, I'm looking to make more fun music, more, happy, more live, maybe some live instruments, acoustic, handpan, singing.

it was playing a Ecstatic dance set not too long ago and which I noticed like I love playing this style of music, and I love seeing people dance and explore to this kind of music.

But my music doesn't really, accommodate this type of situation in which I find myself more and more lately. So, I want to make more happy music, I want to make, not to say my music is unhappy, but it's not necessarily the

**Christophe:** It's more down tempo. Yeah,

**Dennis:** exactly. I like to say my music, it should work well in the foreground and in the background. But now maybe I want to make some more, foreground, music. So let's see what comes out of that.

**Christophe:** you like to play your own tracks when you do a dj set or it doesn't make really different for you

**Dennis:** to play for, A chill out dance floor, or a chill out situation, for instance, we have our own festival, Stockholm Flow Fest. Usually, when people are tired, nobody is, on the decks any longer, and people have been spinning fire, and they're really getting tired.

I will be the one to like, okay, my time to shine. Okay, now I have my music that will fit for this situation in which we just want to chill, you know, but we want to listen to some nice tunes while we're doing it. then I will play my music. 100%. and I do have some tracks that work for the fire space as well, people spinning fire, fire performing.

but for this ecstatic dance set, it didn't really fit to add my down tempo stuff into it, but I will always see if I can use my music in my DJ sets. Absolutely. I think I do have something. interesting and beautiful to share. It's just that I'm very also conscious of the container in which it's being shared.

**Christophe:** So I see two different ways. in electronic music in general, either you develop your network as a DJ playing the music that fits for a given situation or you get more known as a producer making your own music and then you are getting invited to gigs because people want to play your own tracks mostly.

You may of course, include some other tracks from other artists, but you are invited as a live artist.

how do you see those two paths? do you think my analysis is kind of true? And, how do you see yourself maybe there?

**Dennis:** Well, that's a really good question. if I were to just reflect on what you just said, I would say that the dj that just plays other people's music they're very useful because Maybe they have a wider variety and a better sense of, what the crowd really like and you're able to always kind of stay up to date with the trends.

that is one sort of DJ. That's different to the other one that you mentioned where you go in as this is my own music. This is how I perform and that has its own, values to it.

**Christophe:** yeah.

**Dennis:** If I can choose, of course it would be great to, go out there and play the music that you've produced.

maybe not most of it, but like, 50 percent or so. And, especially if you're able to go there and you make that show unique.

we both know artists that produce live on set. They have some, pre made stems, and then they mix and match, and maybe they have some live instruments on set as well, and they're able to, mix that into the performance. So that's you performing while you're playing music as well, as opposed to like, okay, I have a really good selection here of music.

That I really want to show you guys and I'm going to, mix. I'm going to beat match. I'm gonna set them up in an order that makes sense. but, yeah, basically I think as a DJ we get chosen because of our music taste.

And, other people's trust in our music taste. Either way, you will hopefully, have appreciation, coming your way.

**Christophe:** Do you have any memories that stand out, when playing live, Either DJing or sometimes playing your own music.

**Dennis:** you never know what you're gonna get once you get to the venue. what kind of equipment do they have? And I guess this is more a problem for newer DJs who don't really know what to ask for before you show up to a gig so that you don't, leave it up to chance.

But sometimes you can come to a place where they don't have microphones or they don't have monitors so that I hear what I'm doing while in the DJ booth, I need to have, stereo speakers that actually work and it's not supposed to be this, last minute attempt to sort out. I remember one time, I was playing, For Artemisia Fire Gathering in Italy. I think this is 2018 or so. I love the guys, Rocco and the company over there. But, I think at that point, sound wasn't really their main thing. I mean, they're probably the best fire performers in the world, but, sound wasn't one of them.

And, I was also, getting into playing in live settings. So I didn't have, all my gear, I didn't have all my cables and, I definitely didn't have a set of monitor speakers, with me, which was what I would have needed. so I didn't have any monitor speakers.

I couldn't hear what my music sounded like. and the result of that was, it sounded Bad inside of the booth. I guess it sounded okay, but The way things were set up. I didn't have a full range speaker Going out of the DJ booth and listening I think that the bass frequency, something, the phase of it was inverted or some cable wasn't properly plugged in or, nobody was really helping me sort this out.

I was there, I pressed play in the beginning and I'm like, okay, I'm just going to go out on a limb here and I hope that it sounds good out there. And nobody. Came in and told me yo, the music sounds very weird. Nobody until after 30 minutes or so so a it sounded like the bass or mid range frequencies were phase inverted

So it sounds like you're listening to. A really poor produced ambient album. And this was a fire space in which you need to have full power, bumping energy. after 35 minutes or so, somebody came in and said, Dude, are you sure this is what it's supposed to sound like? I'm like, I have no idea what it sounds like. It sounds shit in here as well.

What are you telling me? I don't know. And I go outside and I hear this I'm like fuck

you're telling me I've been playing this for 35 minutes and nobody has been like telling me anything Oh, so then I was able to find or tell Giovanni to come in there, like, dude, fix this, which he did in the end.

And then you can hear the full range spectrum of the sound that I was actually playing. And then people were like, oh, so this is what the music is supposed to sound like. And it goes to say then that people don't really know what they're, listening to really if you're a music producer You would have heard that something is wrong with this track, even though you haven't heard it before but if you're not if you're just there to You know spin fire or listen to some music.

You're like, oh, This is a track like just like any other basically

**Christophe:** Yeah, it reminds me, of, a few adventures. I had my head because I've been DJing like maybe three, four times in my life at festivals, you know, I just co created festivals of the Burning Man community. And, the first thing I did when I start to play the tracks is.

Actually leave the dj booth and go into the audience to actually Listen to the sound because maybe you would have a saturated bass or saturated something maybe it's basically sounds awful when you're in the audience, but you may miss that if you're behind the dj

booth

**Dennis:** 100%. 100%,

So yeah, that's definitely a memorable moment and I have many more. Phoenix fire convention as well.

that was amazing, Again, having a chance to play my music, which I did in there.

and then I have to say actually the gig that I did two weeks ago.

It was a ecstatic dance set. It was definitely the most fun dj set I'd ever played before

**Christophe:** That's awesome to hear.

**Dennis:** Oh yeah, it's so much fun, because people are sober, they're there to listen to the music, they're there to connect with themselves, perhaps even each other, and there's no talking, I put a lot of love and effort into, creating this playlist and this journey, basically, from start, middle to finish, in which I wanted to keep you with me all throughout those Two hours, maybe even two hours 15 And I was able to bring everyone with me through that entire journey even though it was late people needed to get up early tomorrow because they needed to host the morning yoga or they needed to Make breakfast for everybody It was a co creative event.

but I was able to keep everyone there and at the end people were like completely floored, from all the dancing and all the Emotion the expression the energy that had been so active in that room That they just needed to fall down to the floor and meditate as I closed the music it felt like this, ceremony it was like a ritual everybody Intuitively went into this meditative deep relaxing space lots of love lots of gratitude and I invited live artists to play we had percussion with me on stage we had a couple of microphones we had singers we had freaking mike rouse and naomi and yusef, Playing live instruments and these are all artists that you could look up afterwards as well if people that are listening

**Christophe:** this is beautiful to hear, but then I have a more technical question on this. I was wondering if you were looping a beat while some of these,

musicians were playing their part or how did you really make this integration with the, live instruments?

**Dennis:** Yeah, I did, some looping, because when they get in there, maybe they need some more time in order to, gain their internal momentum so that they can sync up to the music, and maybe I needed to, repeat eight or sixteen bars or so for them to be able to get into it, maybe I dropped the mids a little bit, the mid EQ so that, Nomi, can sing a little bit better and so that her voice can come out a little bit clearer. So definitely but it was a very live all of it was improvised and it felt so Synchronistic and spontaneous and everybody was just like let's do this and let's co create this experience and I want to do that a lot more so anybody who's listening you're into percussion, or you're into singing, or maybe you have your own loop station, you're playing the guitar or something like that.

hit me up and we'll make some, awesome live acts together.

**Christophe:** I really liked the integration with instruments, during electronic music, for example, Carbon Based Lifeforms, which is my favorite ambient electronic artists, of all, they recently released a live album where they played at Ozora and, they were on stage with a band.

They had a drummer, they had a guitarist and maybe a bass player. And I love that album. I think it's awesome.

Mm. Have you listened to it?

**Dennis:** No, eh, when is this?

**Christophe:** it was released maybe a year ago. It's called, I think, Live at Ozora.

**Dennis:** Okay, no, this is 2022. Dude, I'll definitely check it out.

**Christophe:** Oh, man, I would love to hear, your opinion on this. I think it's a beautiful live album and I preferred that version than I would say a live album of

Purely their own sounds actually.

I think it's a Great

**Dennis:** Wow. I will definitely look into this, today or tomorrow. They're amazing artists and they've been doing space music forever. And I think, if they could start doing More of this then that's attracting even more people that want to connect to you know their music But also, you know that liveness that soul that humanness that I was talking about earlier with Moonlight run where you add some live

music to it as well so I would love to see them in a live setting like this

**Christophe:** well maybe we should go together because either it's their upcoming, concert in Gothenburg or their recently past concert in Gothenburg was with these, instrumental players. So either recently or very soon, their, concert in Gothenburg is going to be the same setup.

**Dennis:** then in that case, I'm definitely coming.

**Christophe:** if we're lucky, it's not passed yet. And if we are even more lucky, there are a few tickets remaining.

**Dennis:** let's check it out, brother.

**Christophe:** I wonder If there are some things that we didn't talk about that you would like to mention when you reflect about what we've been talking about.

**Dennis:** not really. I guess we could have gone into What is it like to produce music? What is it like to, face these, technical challenges, these creative challenges, what does that process look like?

**Christophe:** Maybe, you have a few stories about the Void2Creative challenges or the technical challenges. You mentioned a little bit the technical challenges because you mentioned that when you began, investing a little bit into higher quality gear. It's motivated you and as well help you create a better quality

music. but maybe on the creative side.

**Dennis:** On the creative side. I guess I could just, share with you I approached the technical and how I approached the creative was, I needed to split them apart. I needed to do technical things, and I did it, I needed to do creative things, but it was really difficult for me to do them at the same time.

So what I did was I studied the technicals, I would take a track that I knew and I would Remake it like basically make a cover of some Fourth Dimension track for instance just to see okay how can I apply the technicals in here? First of all, what structure is he using?

What tempo what kind of tone does he have in the music? That would help me, not focus on the creative part and the technical part at the same time. I could just focus on sort of mirroring his creative work. And then the creative stuff kind of came afterward, in the end, as the tech wasn't in the way for me. It wasn't a obstacle any longer.

I could just flow with it. Like now when I start up, A new session in my DAW, digital audio workstation. Shout out to Bitwig. Bitwig Studio is probably the best, out there. Better than Ableton. now when I fire up a session, everything is good to go. I know exactly, how everything works, more or less, whereas I did struggle with the creative and the tech at the same time, and that would kill my creativeness a little bit, because I'm like, this isn't sounding any good, my creative stuff isn't good, because it doesn't sound good.

Well, guess what? It doesn't sound good because you don't know how to produce it,

**Christophe:** it's interesting because what you're saying about both, the tech skills and the creative skills, it's very similar to, learning an instrument and using an instrument to create your own music

you need the hard learning of the technical side of learning to play the guitar in order to begin to use that skills without being limited by them in order to create your own melodies,

**Dennis:** you're learning the scales. You're learning the chords, you're practicing your finger and hand strength, all that needs to come first before you can start to get, creative, which sucks.

we don't like that part.

you know, you do flow arts as well. we want to proficient at the thing immediately so that we can express our own. Love or our own bodies needs to dance or to sing or to play the guitar, but hey You have to build that foundation first.

So that would be my tip or recommendation to anybody new that start with the technicals

**Christophe:** Hard truth.

**Dennis:** Hard truth master them have them not be an obstacle for you when you try to go forward Cause if you have creative ability, all you need to do is, harness it and sculpture it, really.

But if you don't have the necessary tools, then it's gonna be difficult.

**Christophe:** Yeah. Well, Dennis, thank you. Thank you for this conversation. it's been super interesting to dig a little bit deeper into, your experience, your process and, A few of your stories when it comes to producing, releasing these albums

**Dennis:** Absolutely. Yeah. You're welcome. I'm happy to have been invited It's been my first podcast, and, I've had a lot of fun. I enjoyed the questions. uh, Yeah.

**Christophe:** Yeah. This is cool. It's my second, so

I'm not,

**Dennis:** ha. You're a pro. ha ha Yeah.

**Christophe:** no pressure, of course, but it makes me even more motivated to see, the next step for you or whatever music, whenever you tracks You managed to be satisfied enough to release

**Dennis:** Mm. It'll come soon. Yeah. Thank you. I'll be thinking about you when I'm procrastinating like fuck Christoph. He really needs to get this and he really needs to hear it.

it's soon coming out it's soon coming out there's gonna be like two down tempo tracks one's a bit more, Spacey, and the other one is a bit more dark I think i'm gonna just release them as a single, like those two together.

They fit pretty well It's like one dark one light. And yeah people want to find me, it's on Soundcloud you can check out Moonkin Sounds on Spotify. It's just Moonkin Bandcamp, it's Moonkin Sounds Mixcloud. I think it's Moonkin As well, but I guess you'll like maybe drop the links down there somewhere

**Christophe:** I will, I definitely will drop all the links.

**Dennis:** I yeah, I'm happy for any shares, if you dig my music, you know You Reach out to me guys like really do that's how I got into this stuff by being able to reach out to the artists that I appreciate and having some mentors and having something to aim towards Something that inspires me.

So If I can help you doing that like I'd be super grateful. And again if you want to do any collaborations and you feel that would be fun to do with me then just reach out

**Christophe:** Well, thanks again, Denis. I hope to see you soon in real life. maybe at a flat floor practice or something. The last three weekends I participated, actually.

We’re getting tentatively philosophical at the end, discussing the value of being a generalist in one’s career, going against the established opposite idea of specializing.

Stephen's agency: ⁠www.svanholmartists.com⁠

Transcript

**Christophe:** Hello, Steven. Thanks for joining as a guest for my first ever podcast.

**Stephen:** Hey, Chris, good to be here.

**Christophe:** So, you told me that you were in a rock band and I actually didn't know that. I know your music career as being an opera singer. but I'm so curious about your days in the rock band.

For example, I would like to know the story behind the band. How did it start? How did you meet your other band members and, how old were you and this kind of things?

**Stephen:** Well, I decided at an early age ish, about, uh, 13, that I wanted to be a rock musician and, um, I formed a couple of bands in school, just a bit of fun. and when I went to college, when I was, I was actually 20, I I was at college for a couple of years. Kept on practicing my guitar. was my instrument lead guitar. I joined a band when I was at college. This was up in the Nottingham area of England. And what happened was, in my second year of college, which was my last year, it was a two year course I was studying musical instrument electronics, learning how to make amplifiers and effects pedals and all this sort of stuff.

And then I joined a band who were from the, the Corby. Area of England, which is a bit south of Nottingham and they practiced in Leicester and I ended up getting recruited because they were looking for a second guitarist. Now this band was three friends who were old school friends. the bass player who lived in Leicester in the uk so they rehearsed in Leicester.

So it was a 20 minute, 25 minute train ride for me every time to go down to Leicester to rehearse. So I joined the band and we, it was kind of thrash metal in that we did quite heavy chuggy sort of sort of music, which was most similar to bands like, early Metallica Testament, Exodus.anthrax this type of sound and there was sort of a movement at the time What I would say that the British wave of Thrash was coming at that time. The American wave was earlier really in terms of this more Compact tight sounding thrash there had been British bands that were early on the scene.

That's a whole different story so I joined the guys in the band and Yeah, we started gigging basically they'd already been gigging. I'd actually seen them once before. They'd played on the same bill as a band I'd been in before. And I thought at the time, these guys are good.

**Christophe:** Yeah.

**Stephen:** A

lot better than the band I was in. Let's put it like that.

**Christophe:** Yeah. I actually listened to the track that you just sent me, which was on your first album. And it was, to me, it reminded me of Metallica for sure. So I think, yeah, it's it's definitely an influence there.

So Metallica existed before you you just started playing, right?

**Stephen:** Yeah, Metallica were formed in the early 80s. They released, had released a few albums. we were all school kids Metallica first hit the scene. So They'd released, Kill Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, and Justice for the So they'd released four albums by the time I joined Ignorance.

**Christophe:** Yeah, Ignorance. Ignorance was the, is the name of the band.

**Stephen:** Good for people to know.

**Christophe:** And did you immediately sort of compose songs or you mostly played the covers at that time when you started?

**Stephen:** It was all original songs. the band had already done two demos when I arrived, with four songs on each demo. there was, uh, eight songs were being played live, and the band was, when I joined, we started writing for a third demo. So a demo is needed to get a record deal most demos at that time, most bands were recording four track, four song demos, as a demonstration

So I joined the band and we got to work on the material for the third demo. Pretty quickly, and that was the first time that I was involved in the writing as well. And we all just sort we weren't a band that really wrote songs and brought them into the rehearsal room and showed them to the other guys.

We wrote together when we were in the rehearsal room, came up with riffs and ideas piece the songs together, you know,

**Christophe:** Yeah, and how did you work together to create a song? You and the other members. how was the usual process?

**Stephen:** one of us might say, Hey, I've got a good idea. And they would play the riff, in the rehearsal room, and then the other guys would say, yeah, that's cool. They'd all start jamming along. And, then we would move into another. We'd say, where can we go after that?

It would all be done with our amps on high volume, playing it full blast in the rehearsal room, you know? And usually we would then do, we would do the whole song. We'd come up with the whole song like that, the different sections and stuff. And then then that would exist as an instrumental song. And then the singer would come in and lay down some sort of basic vocal melody on top of that. And then write some words to that as the last thing that was done, you know

**Christophe:** Cool so this was before you got the first deal But some of the these demos Led to record deal, right?

**Stephen:** Yeah, this demo the third demo which was called the why demo. Uh, it was very popular we got good reviews they had Demo reviews in magazines like karang and metal hammer and stuff and we got very good reviews for this demo So,I then thought i've got to do something with this because not much is going on From the other band members in terms of promoting the demo So I said i'll take it on i'll take on the task of sending this off to record labels and seeing what happens You So I sent it off to tons of record labels all the big metal labels major labels and everything.

And as is usually the case with even with legendary bands or legendary authors when they send their books off to all the publishers like jk rowling I don't know. I think there's some story about jk rowling getting rejected her book harry potter getting rejected like 100 times before she found a publisher who would print them or something.

And this is typical of when you're in a band as well. Most of the letters you get back, and this was back in the days when you would send a cassette, a tape cassette of your demo. I'd put together a little cover which I photocopied down the newsagent around the corner. I'd cut them with scissors, folded the cover up and put it in the tape box. And I had ordered, you know, 50 tapes from the recording studio guy, and I would send these off to the record labels. And of course, the same thing as for authors and for any band, anyone who's seeking a deal with a major distributor, most of the letters we get back were rejections.

They just say, thank you very much. We are not looking for new artists on our roster at the moment. Well, thank you very much. This isn't quite what we're looking for at the moment. Good luck with your. The ones who bother replying.

**Christophe:** Yeah, man it's tough.

**Stephen:** But eventually we found a management company who whose main profile was actually taking cassettes demos to the record labels in America and shopping them around.

It was a British management. for a fee, they did this for a fee, it wasn't too much. and I paid them take our, Cassette to the record labels America. And, we got picked up by an American label called metal blade, who was a big label in the early day.

There's still a very big metal label. They've released a lot of, very well known metal bands on the independent level who've then gone on to signfor majors. So with the record labels, you've got independent labels who are smaller self financed affairs. And then the major labels who are, you know, the huge conglomerates, stuff like Warner brothers, Sony. back in those days it was EMI uh, RCA uh, yeah, the major players. they're the big international corporations. Independent labels smaller affairs. But there is a difference. When you sign for a,an independent label, you have a lot of artistic control.

You get a, of course there's less money, it's a lower budget. But you have a lot of artistic control over what you do. Whereas once you get into the majors, there's a lot more pressure often. On you to be a commercial success, course, and that is the major labels sometimes Pressure the bands into becoming more commercialized so it's a little less artistic freedom sometimes so anyway, what I did was I gave it to the managers the cassette They took it over there metal blade liked it.

They decided to offer us a record deal They also at the time signing a new distribution contract with warner brothers So we thought, Oh, this sounds like a good deal. Let's go for it. And we signed after a back and forth. There's a lot of negotiation going on. We had have a lawyer, a music

**Christophe:** Oh wow

**Stephen:** lawyer, uh, negotiating our contract for us that goes back and forth for a while. uh, we signed a contract for us to record. I think we, contract to record seven albums or something.

**Christophe:** Oh wow, that was for the long term. So, before you signed that contract, how did you find the gigs?

**Stephen:** There were just a word of mouth, people who knew in bands putting on gigs. Promoters from the area would say, Oh, I'm putting on this gig with this band. And we would get in touch a lot of the bands in the Midlands of the UK, where we were from, a lot of the bands knew each other. So we would play with bands it was like the, you play with us, we'll play at your gig sort of thing.

**Christophe:** Yeah, cool.

**Stephen:** so it was at smaller venues, pubs, bars where they had the rock bar, you know, rock bars and rock pubs. this type of place, a lot of pubs and bars would have a little. Back room with a stage area, you know, and the PA.

**Christophe:** Yeah

And so when you signed that deal, did you start recording an album or touring

**Stephen:** the record deal, we started preparing our first album, which was basically a couple of the tracks from the demo, the why demo that I'd recorded with the band. and then Talking with the record label decided on where we were going to record our album. Uh, all that sort of stuff was booked in our first album.

we got offered the chance to go to America to record it if we wanted. And we said, yes, let's do that.

**Christophe:** For the adventure.

**Stephen:** we got the budget to do it. So we did it. And then we spent some time writing some more material for the album. We did another demo, with our demo producer guy in his studio who we'd worked with before.

Of some of the other tracks which we were going to put on the album,and then Probably about 10 months after we'd signed the record deal. We went off To san francisco to record our first album in fantasy studios berkeley. It's across the bay from san francisco You've got a view over, over the city.

beautiful, beautiful place. And we were there for three, I think just over three weeks recording the album and we got a record producer. The, we sorted out with the record label. They asked us, you know, which producers are you interested in? And they also said, which ones can we bring in for you? so we got a guy called John Connaburty to produce our first album.

he is, he'd done a lot of work with Joe Satriani, the guitar hero. And, uh, he'd also produced some thrash metal bands. So he had that sort of crossover here, you know, he'd worked with different types of bands so we thought let's work with him and we were at the time moving away from thrash We were sort of introducing red hot chili peppers funky style and influences into the sound as well That was a thing at the time

**Christophe:** I actually listened to some of the tracks of your second album and definitelyit's funky. It's the influence by Red Hot Chili Peppers for sure, But this was the recording of your first album and you already had some influences from more like a funk in the first album or no

**Stephen:** in fact, if you listen to the first album, it's called The Confident Rat. there's more, I would say, of the funk influence on that. In a way, the early Red Hot Chili Peppers sound. And Faith No More were very big as well. I think there's more of that on the first album.

that combined with a slightly more metal sound. The second album takes it more into sort of pop sort of rock territory, which Chili Peppers of course did more of that later on when they became a little sort of psychedelic sounding and psychedelic pop and stuff like that. the early Chili Peppers stuff was very funky as you know.

so we moved from this sort of thrash metal sound in the demos and we had a bit of an underground following for that sound and then we moved to this sort of funk. funk metal sound and then on the second album towards a more poppy sort of polished,

pop rock sort of sound and I think in some ways I would say we evolved and changed style too drastically and too fast.

**Christophe:** Yeah

so, Was it fun and enjoyable and, the vibe was good when you were recording in the studio for the first album and as well working with the producer?

**Stephen:** Yeah, I mean we'd worked with an engineer, when we did the demos, who basically got everything done, told us the recording process and led us through it, but We were kind of self produced in a way, in that we worked with the engineer and were with him on the mix

This was very different working with a known producer because he, Had a vision also how he wanted us to sound and of course he knew exactly in what order he planned out the recording sessions Plan out exactly what was going to be done on which day at which hours and all that day five Guitar solo this song two hours spent on that sort of thing You know what I mean?

He'd have it all mapped out and then you have a big sort of chart where he put a cross on each section and you'd see the album taking shape as crosses were put on different sections for rhythm tracks, uh, for this song, vocals. So that chart would slowly get filled out. And then he would also be sure to say, when he thought a performance wasn't good enough, he'd sort of, tried to keep our performances high, At the same time, it's quite a tight ship when you're recording an album in just a few weeks. it's not enough time really for, a producer to mold something gigantically in some new kind of style or vision. we went in with our tracks, he recorded them. he pieced the project together. He kept it all together.

he oversaw the process. And the thing that really annoyed us, if I can say something annoyed us, was when we weren't allowed to sit in during the mixing. He said, okay, when I'm mixing the album now, there's a few days for the mixing. We were basically banned from the studio, and I can understand why, although we felt a bit sore about it at the time, because we all wanted control what the output ended up sounding like,

But if you've got five voices of different band members in the room, and you're also trying to mix the project, the producer and an engineer sitting in there, it's too many voices in the mix. and can become like, no, I think this should go up. No, that should go up a little more. No, turn me up a little more.

That's sort of

**Christophe:** too many cooks in the kitchen.

**Stephen:** Too many cooks in the kitchen. so he mixed it basically himself. And we came in at the end of every mix and we could then make a comment or two sometimes. but he didn't want to say when he was doing the base, the basic mix. So we came in the evenings and he sat us in another room in the recording studio actually sometimes to banish us from the studio and he brought in lots of films about UFOs and alien visitations so we were all fascinated by that and he was a big nerd in that scene so we all got totally hooked into that.

**Christophe:** Cool. any other sort of memorable moments from that studio recording session? That you can think of? Good or bad, you know?

**Stephen:** I do remember that my, when my guitar, I got my electric guitar sent over from the UK and so did our other guitarist and the bassist. But when my electric guitar arrived, it had been in a flight case on an airplane and there was a great big crack. on the headstock, a part of it had been snapped off.

underneath the fretboard of the guitar, there was a crack as well. So it had taken some heavy treatment on the aeroplane and, we had take it to a guitar shop in San Francisco and get it repaired.

so I did use my own guitar. But it was, patched up. I've still got the same guitar. still a lovely guitar, but that was annoying. And the other thing was that we, because we were recording in America, we didn't have our own equipment when it came to amplifiers and drum kits and stuff.

So we had to hire in that stuff and we just hoped that it was good enough. And we couldn't quite get the sound that our own amplifiers make. It's, it's so particular, this stuff. You've got a sound, you've got a, you've got a guitar sound or an amplifier sound that you really. That you've always, that you've developed over time with your own equipment.

And then you come in and you've got different amplifiers and we're there. Well, why can't we get this to sound like our own amps? You know, we did everything we could and it was like, well, we're nearly there, but it's not quite right, you know?

**Christophe:** No, I definitely can understand I would say the appeal to have a signature sound because as a listener, I like that as well. I like to really just hear the signature sound of that band or that artist.

**Stephen:** yeah, so we had a specific sound, which involved using a boss. a super overdrive pedal. It was a yellow pedal. These old boss pedals, were very popular back in the 80s, late 80s, we used one of those overdrive pedals. We didn't use a distortion pedal or a super metal pedal or anything like that.

This is just an overdrive pedal, but we would turn the output of that up to its maximum and then push that into the, Marshall top. With the pre gain up full to give a super overdriven sound which really gave you that Chuggy sort of sound and that was how we got our sound and you know Other bands get it in totally different ways and using totally different setups

**Christophe:** so were you happy with the results of the album? I mean, the sound

**Stephen:** Not really At the time it seemed okay It's much more polished than the demos The demo we did before the y demo But it's in a way for me when I listen to it I think it's too polished. It's too clean sounding that's the way that music is made though for radio It's polished and compressed and super tight, but for me it lacks a little bit of rawness and a little bit of punch it's more like a sheet of metal a sheet of Shining metal as opposed to something With it with a energy and aggression of the music really comes out so if I was the producer It's always nice to say these things in hindsight, especially when you've got 30 odd years of hindsight But if I was the producer, I would say I would have had it much more punchy raw And in your face it became a little too too nice Sounding.

**Christophe:** and, did you, start touring after that recording

**Stephen:** we toured the following spring.

The album out in, I believe, February or something. we toured in May and June of 1991. May was around Europe, Germany, Holland, and then we went to America and did a month there around the USA.

**Christophe:** And you told me that once you had this record deal, the touring was no longer organized by just yourself, but it was organized by the record label, right?

**Stephen:** Yeah, not by the record label, the record label and our management collaborate, they collaborate the record label and management and they bring in a booker, a booking agent who books tour and we got to piggyback on a tour with, so we were the support band for a San Francisco band called Mordred, who were sort of a funk thrash band, and we toured Europe with them. they became, mates of ours. We had a good time. We were all on the same tour bus,which is, Intense.

**Christophe:** So how many

**Stephen:** you have all you have all these bunk, on the, on the, on the tour bus you have all these bunk beds. You have a long corridor, have all these bunk beds on top of each other. With a little curtain for each one. So you basically sleep like that every night. Quite often when the tour bus is rolling from city to city. There was a little lounge at the back and some seats at the front where you could sit. The lounge at the back, we would often sit there after, you know, as we drove off from a city late in the evening, after a gig.

And we would have a crate of beer that the venue had provided. So we'd sit there having a few beers and, uh, a smoke or whatever. And, go to bed. So most evenings to get to sleep, you'd have a few drinks because yeah, you got used to it after a while sleeping while the bus is moving side to side on the road that sort of stuff.

**Christophe:** And with, Mordred was the headliner,

**Stephen:** Yeah. were the, they were the headliner. they'd released one album a couple of years earlier and they were on their second album. And the shows were in large clubs, small concert venues, probably the audiences between about a hundred and four hundred people, a hundred and three hundred.

So, we're not talking major concert houses, we're talking a large club and small concert venue tour.

**Christophe:** And did some of the audience know you or most of them were just there for Mordred and didn't really, unfortunately care so much about the opening act.

**Stephen:** No we had, we had a good response,

certainly, a large amount of the audience knew who we were. And, had heard us and had bought our album and, we sold t shirts as well. Of course, Mordred were the prime attraction, but we also had a good amount of supporters there.

**Christophe:** Cool *hum* And you mentioned like a huge festival that you did at some point.

**Stephen:** Yeah, that was at the end of the Germany, Holland leg of the tour. we came back over to Holland after Germany and did the Dynamo Festival in Eindhoven, in front of, I think it was around 30, 000 people.

**Christophe:** Wow. How was this?

**Stephen:** Well, we'd never played in front of that sort of crowd before, but luckily at that time we'd been on tour for a few weeks already. So we had got into our swing. We weren't the best rehearsed of bands, so we didn't like practicing our tour set for ages and ages. So at the start of the tour, we were a little bit rusty, and then we got into the swing as we went.

But luckily we were well in our groove by the time we got to Eindhoven. we were one of the first bands on on the day, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, on bill that also featured bands like Primus, Armored Saint, Morbid Angel. And Xtreme, the pop metal band Xtreme, who did More Than Words, they were also on the bill that day.

So it was a, it was a pretty varied

bill.

**Christophe:** would you say that this was, like, one of the best memories, playing in front of a huge crowd, or not necessarily? Or maybe some of the best live memories were, unrelated to the amount of people in the audience?

**Stephen:** Yeah, that's, uh, that was definitely a highlight. just because it's weird when you've been playing in smaller concert venues to all of a sudden go out on stage and just see a sea people in front of you. And, you feel like, oh, all of a sudden we've got to project so much further. We've got to, you know, we can't stand here as if we're playing in a club. We've got to think of the people at the back as well. And of course your nerves go a bit more you've got this many eyes on you You've got this many people looking at you. It was being filmed and it was being you know So there was tv crews around and all that sort of stuff. And I think there's a clip of it somewhere on youtube a very short clip from some news report about the dynamo festival that day, You can see about three seconds of us playing live or something on that

**Christophe:** I've heard stories, of like technical difficulties and disasters live on stage. did it happen to you guys as well sometimes?

**Stephen:** It happens to everybody who plays in a band, a I had a radio transmitter for my guitar, which was very early one, and it wasn't made by a famous company. A friend of mine had worked for an electronics company, and he had one of their, they'd made some radio transmitters for electric guitars.

So you'd have it plugged in and you'd have it clipped to the back of your belt, and then you'd have a transmitter on top of your amp, a receiver. that would pick up the sound and put it and feed it into the amplifier. So it meant that you had freedom on stage. You didn't have a guitar cable. Of course, most people use these things these days anyway, and all microphones basically used stage, most radio mics as well.

But, uh, back in those days, this was a very early version of those things and you could actually go and buy good ones in the shops. But because this one was given to me for free by this company that my friend had worked for, I used it and the other guys in the band complained a lot because it did cut out quite often.

It was a little bit dodgy but I insisted on using it because I wanted the freedom of not having a guitar cable And because i'd got this piece of gear, I was going to use it whatever happened But those sort of things do cut out sometimes the battery would run out sometimes Sometimes i'd have to go over to and all of a sudden plug a cable in because the The radio mic was giving me trouble. luckily It didn't give me any trouble on the day of the dynamo festival

**Christophe:** Cool. And, so I know you recorded a second album then with the, with that band as well.

**Stephen:** That was recorded, in the spring of 92, and we decided not to go to America this time. the record label had been very adamant that we should use a record producer still, but we really pushed and we ended up producing it ourselves, the second album, with the engineer, Paul Johnson, at his Rhythm Studios in the UK, near Stratford on Avon. we recorded, with him over a period of about, was probably the same sort period, I think we were three weeks or so. it was a very rural place, very different from San Francisco, like at a farm in the middle the English countryside. so producing it ourselves was a decision we made because we didn't want to let go of control of recording it.

Although that was also in a way a mistake, because if you produce something yourself, you don't have any outside voice telling you actually you guys need to trim this section, you need to get rid of this, you tend to To lose sight of things. You need an objective voice looking at you from the outside.

Who's helping you things. And Paul, to a certain extent helped us with that stuff, but he's more of an engineer and we booked him for this project as the engineer. so he came up with some good ideas, but at the same time, we could have done with somebody who produced the album with us at the same time, the results are okay, but.

The same as with the first album. For me, when I listen to it now, it sounds too polished,

**Christophe:** And, what you mentioned to me, was that you started, uh, Having I would say, a difference in artistic direction, with the rest of the band just in the style that you were evolving into and you sort of lost motivation, right?

**Stephen:** Well, there was a lot of bickering going on. I think, out of all the guys in the band, I wanted to probably stay in a slightly more guitar oriented style, a slightly heavier style. whereas the guys wanted to go full on, I mean, I'm not saying, that I was against it. I mean, I was also listening to this sort of more pop stuff at the time.

Jesus Jones and EMF and The Wanda stuff, which were British bands at the time who were doing a lot of, uh,

electronic guitar, based rock pop, in a way. so I was also for that move, but at the same time, a part of me wanted something that was more cerebral, more thought out, more, artistic. I always had that sort of thing for, uh, beautiful album covers and an aesthetic around the music.

And, uh, in a way, ignorance was going in a more cartoony sort of direction, if you know what I mean. I always had this longing towards, I mean, I was listening to a lot of artists like Kate Bush and this sort of stuff. I had this longing towards sort of, uh, singular artistic visions. And I felt that I wasn't getting, And I'll put for that in the band.

And there was also a certain amount of negativity around certainly with, you know, we weren't particularly mature. We were, there was a lot of, griping about band members doing this or that. Is this person good enough, to remain in the band? are we going in the right direction?

Do we need to, bring in this or that person? And also a lot of negativity towards the record label and their management. so it was getting a bit toxic to be honest. It was getting pretty toxic, in that, most of the, a lot of our rehearsals and a lot of our, when we were hanging out together would end up just with moaning about stuff.

And I've always been a person who, you know, I thrive in reasonably positive atmospheres, but negativity gets me down in the end. so I wanted out. I realized around this time, geez, I can't be in this for another 10 years, another 20 years of my life. I need to build a life, which is, in the direction of where I want to go, you know, of something which is going to be sustainable in the long run for my mental health.so I decided around the time we were recording our second album, actually, to apply for music college and study classical guitar and classical music.

**Christophe:** Cool. just before we get there, can you tell me? how did the band continue, or what was the trajectory of that band from that moment on,

**Stephen:** Well, I didn't leave the band straight away. and I was pretty sure while we were recording the second album, I was already pretty sure in my mind I was going to leave the band. I didn't tell anyone. And then I, applied for the music college. I'm not sure if it was before or after we recorded the album that I got my place at the music college offered to me. It was in Nottingham, my music college. and I. Carried on with the band for a little while, and then I think it was in about August, just before the college year started, I, gave the bass player a ring and said, look, that's it. I'm out of here. I'm jumping off. And, that was it. I left. I went to his house a few days later where my Marshall amplifier was in his garage, picked it up, drove it back to Nottingham. And I was out. And of course I got calls and letters, from the management. And others in the band saying, Oh, come on, Steve, stay, you know, we need you and stay in the band and all that.

And I say, no, no, I've made my decision. I'm out of here. So I left. They had some dates lined up that autumn, I believe. Some tour dates, some gigs. It wasn't a full tour. and the other guitar player's brother, who was also a rock guitarist, he came in and played, the second guitar in the band for those dates. so they carried on in some sort of format, for about. Seven or eight more months, I think, and then I think in early 1990, this was 1992. I left in August 1992, and I think probably by about the following spring the band had broken up, or disbanded.

**Christophe:** And you don't really know exactly why. Did you get some details? Hmm.

**Stephen:** all decided to go separate ways, and no third album was ever recorded.

**Christophe:** Well,

**Stephen:** And then funnily enough though, funnily enough though, the following year, still at college studying music, I did form a new band with the bass player and the drummer, Plus the singer from a band that had played with us once, a band called Boneyard, who, we liked his voice. He was a bit like a, a sort of like Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain type of singer.

and we thought this guy's got talent. You know what I mean? He was a great performer and everything. And he added this sort of more intense singery style, which we really wanted. So we formed a band, it was heavy. we got together and we rehearsed quite a few times, started writing some songs.

It was like, kind of like Soundgarden, you know, Soundgarden,

**Christophe:** yeah.

**Stephen:** big, heavy riffs, melodic vocals. Black Sabbath y style riffs, quite chunky. so we started putting some stuff together, but that fizzled out as well.and I'm not sure why.

**Christophe:** but was this before you started music college while you were?

**Stephen:** this was when I was, in the music college. This was after Ignorance had broken up. So

This was just a little project we got together. And, we thought we would do a demo and everything, but we never got that far.

**Christophe:** you have any idea why it fizzled out?

**Stephen:** I don't think any of us was in the end committed to it enough. I was doing my music studies and also pretty sure I was going to go to university to study music by that point. We all had slightly different views about where the music wanted to go. I think we were pretty unified actually, but it's often the case.

A lot of music projects get formed. I would say a huge amount of music projects get formed, rehearse for a while, get some songs together and then they just sort of disappear. So we never actually gigged even. But I do have some tapes, some cassette tapes of our songs at rehearsal.

Sounds bloody awful.

No, they sound good. But the recordings are just done with a tape recorder in the rehearsal room, you know, so they're pretty distorted.

**Christophe:** Yeah. I mean, you can't judge the soundjust From this recordings

**Stephen:** Yeah, exactly.

**Christophe:** So I would love to know how from university studies in music how You got into opera because a huge difference between the sort of metal and rock even funkto opera

**Stephen:** Yeah, well, I was studying music, like I say, at, at Music College in Nottingham and, they put on an opera every year at the college, in the spring,in the first year, we were all singing in the choir, so in the first year I sang in the chorus of the opera, the opera choir, and in the second year they held auditions for the roles, they were putting on Carmen by B, Georges Bizet and I auditioned for a role.

and I sang the Toreador song at audition.

Toreador

on guard. Toreador, Toreador. And, I sang it badly. But even badly, seemed good enough and I got a role. I got a small role. and, yeah, it went pretty well. A few people, well, one or two of my teachers said, Stephen, you've got a voice.

You've So what happened was I then got a place at university to study music at the University of Surrey in Guildford, near London. And during my first year there, classical guitar was still my first instrument, but during my first year I was taking singing lessons as well at university. And I decided at some stage during my first year to move from guitar to singing as my first instrument. Because there's something there, there was something there, which I wanted to explore. And I was enjoying it. and then I ended up after the three years at university, I majored in performance instead of, majoring in academic study of music or something, I majored in performance.

**Christophe:** And little by little, you improve your technique as a singer and you started maybe playing in opera, real opera, right? Or how did it go?

**Stephen:** Yeah, it wasn't the easiest ride. I was very unsure where my voice was going in terms of tenor, baritone, bass, But I left college and started getting work. first thing I did, you know, was a children's musical called Wind in the Willows, which Outdoors in the Manchester, in Parks, country parks and country houses around Manchester.

Just the summer after I left music college. And then, I had a few things, chorus jobs and stuff like that. Then I moved to Sweden, in the autumn of 2021. And I got a job pretty quickly with a small theater in Stockholm, called it which was on cotton actually. and I worked there. I worked there for a few years.

**Christophe:** no. So you mentioned you moved to swim 2021.

**Stephen:** two thousand and one, sorry,

**Christophe:** 2001. Yes. That makes sense.

**Stephen:** So,then I worked there, I had jobs off and on, and I moved back to the UK a few years later and, worked for touring companies, different things here and there. I never performed as a soloist on the biggest stages like the Royal Opera House and, English National Opera and stuff, butI did a lot of smaller, medium size and smaller companies and fringe things.

And, did some chorus work for some big companies as well. And it's a way of, many opera singers have this path, you know.

**Christophe:** What would you say were the highlights of your opera career? if you can think of something in particular.

**Stephen:** One of them was, funnily enough, not really opera, because I also write my own music, or did, I haven't written much recently. My own project is called Sibelian, and I got invited twice to go to represent Sweden in this big Buddhist music contest in Taiwan.

And they basically flew us out there. they flew in people from all over the world to compete. so what I took was some of my music from Sibelian, which is like an artistic Gothic crossover project. Very different. You'll see when you, if you hear Sibelian, you'll see more of where I wanted my music to go as opposed to what Ignorance were doing. it was more classically inspired, but rock, rock and gothic and everything like this all combined. And basically I then got commissioned to write music to some of the texts by the Buddhist master of this movement. And I said, yeah, I'll do it. I was interested in Buddhism and meditation anyway, and, quite involved.

so I decided to. take one of my songs from Sibelian and basically just transpose the text of this Buddhist master onto this so I could go to compete with my own music in this contest. so I went over to Taiwan, and it was great. We were there for a week, in Taipei, and got to compete with my music in one of Taipei's biggest concert halls.

I mean, it was like the Eurovision Song Contest, this thing. But in terms of, so everyone got up and did their piece. And, it was great in full of, uh, you know, gigantic PA system, huge concert hall, and it was wonderful. It was great fun. I did that two years running.

**Christophe:** Awesome. So were you with your guitar or how did you perform?

**Stephen:** No, just singing. And the second year I brought a friend of mine over, an opera singer, a soprano came to sing duet with me in my own music as well.

**Christophe:** But the instrumentals, did you do it with your guitar?

**Stephen:** yeah, but they were all recorded prerecorded. So we used it as backing tracks. Guitar, synths, drum machines,

**Christophe:** Okay.

**Stephen:** samples.

**Christophe:** what would you say you like or dislike about the opera industry? and as well, do you think there are some fun or surprising things? In opera, for people who are more used to popular or rock or metal, this kind of music, the two industries.

**Stephen:** I think the opera industry is a very traditional industry. It operates in the same way now that it's operated for the last hundred years uh, and and beyond. It's still opera houses, the focus is opera houses, performances, opera companies. they find their singers by auditioning singers in person.

Auditioning online is no good because, you know, you need to hear a voice in person. so it's a live and it's a living art form, but it's also in some ways super traditional. technology is used in the staging and stuff, but opera performance is the same as it's always been. An orchestra and singers on stage with scenery. And it's in the moment. it's like live theater. It's in the moment and it's happening in front of your eyes. and this is where I think, I think people don't realize just how much. An opera singer has to give their life to opera, to the voice, how careful you have to be with your voice, how hypochondriac opera singers can be when it comes to getting the first tickle in their throat or the first signs of a blocked nose, because it affects your instrument.

remember singing is the only instrument where your instrument is inside your own body. So the state of your own body is supremely important the whole time. and that means that you in some way have to limit your life. You're a bit more like an athlete. You have to limit what you do. You can't go out partying all the time. you have to be careful when you travel not to be dehydrated. You have to be carefully getting the right nutrition. So you're an athlete on many ways as an opera singer.

**Christophe:** And I imagine if you get a cold, that would be pretty bad.

**Stephen:** That would be pretty grim. I've sung many times with a cold. It can be fine, butThere was one time, actually, I sang here in Stockholm, and I had a sinus infection. I'd started really noticing before the performance that whenever I bent over, my head felt like it was going to explode. My sinuses Had a bacterial infection, but it also affected my vocal cords and I couldn't sing above a certain note. so I got through the performance very badly.

And then my director sent me immediately in a taxi to a hospital in the South of Stockholm. We're the only place where they had a air nose and throat section that was open at night. And I was there at about one o'clock in the morning and they Prescribed antibiotics and gave me my first tablet right there and then because I had performances later that week as well So that sort of stuff happens.

it's really risky Uh going back to your question about what people would be surprised about opera. and what are the connections? as well With other forms of music. I do actually think opera and heavy metal aren't that far apart there's a lot of metal, which is mythical about big mythical story.

Look at Iron Maiden, look at this sort of stuff. they sing about Alexander the Great. They sing about Dune. They sing about, the rhyme of the ancient mariner, this type of great literature, which is very similar to opera in a way, and also in my opinion, voices like Ronnie James Dio and Bruce Dickinson and people like this, they're semi operatic voices.

They use a similar sort of sound and a similar style. and it's a very majestic and overblown and over the top and big heavy metal is big, right?

**Christophe:** I really like Nightwish and, it's very cinematic. It's very grandiose. very, I would say elaborate when it comes to the instrumentals as well.

**Stephen:** Yeah

**Christophe:** And the voice, your voice is definitely close to opera,

**Stephen:** Yeah, there's a lot of it I mean there's many different sorts of metal there's from growly sort of blackened death metal stuff to this operatic speed metal and power metal style you also have guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen and stuff who use all the Bach and Baroque style melodies within their playing and are much more like, violinists in a way.

**Christophe:** yeah, cool. But then your, your opera career came to an end as well.

**Stephen:** yeah, well, I wound it down. it was hard keeping my head above water financially, and it was hard to see where I went. I'd been trying for many years and I realized that I don't have the biggest singing voice, in terms of volume, and I wasn't getting the jobs with the biggest companies.

maybe if it was down to technique, I tried several times to change voice far, which is the, the bracket your voice is in and move my voice up to tenor. I tried several times to do that, but it didn't want to do that. so my voice was a little unstable and I'd never really bedded into the, I'm a baritone, which is the middle voice type.

You have tenor, baritone, bass. the singers who make it on the big stage, are usually ones who've, really developed their repertoire over a long period of time and have a very strong foundation in it. And I was always a little bit too all over the shop trying to train up as a tenor, maybe going back to baritone.

So it lacked a bit of stability. and in the end, I realized, okay, I've done my singing. I've had fun with it, but I need to move into something else. So I formed the first of several companies I've had within the agent side or administration side of opera, working with opera singers, to help them find work. So now I have an agency,

an opera management company. So I have a roster of 20 singers who I represent and I speak to them and help them with their careers, try to find them performances, negotiate with opera houses.

So I'm their representative and opera houses use agent as their filter system to make sure that the singers they're getting presented with are of a level that is correct for them. That is high enough for them. Otherwise they would be inundated and they probably are inundated with hundreds of emails a day from freelance singers who are looking for work.

**Christophe:** at the same time I know that you sang opera again a few months ago. You did a performance

**Stephen:** Yeah, it wasn't opera. it wasn't opera actually. It was, uh, oratorio. So it was Brahms Requiem. So I sang that in a church in north of Sweden, in Gävle. And not in the north of Sweden, but north of Stockholm.

**Christophe:** How did it feel did it bring some nostalgia or?

**Stephen:** Yeah. I mean, and I have done some solos in the past few years also with, With a choir, during the pandemic, we recorded quite a lot of, pieces by Mikael Valdenby, who is the conductor of a choir I was singing with in Stockholm a few years ago. and we recorded several of his pieces in, Stockholm Cathedral, Storkyrkan, in the old town.

which are available on YouTube, if you look up Mikael Valdenby, and I sing some solos in those as well. But the difference with doing the oratorio a few months ago was, it reminded me of much more of my singing career because you're singing a proper solo, with an audience in a concert.

So, I mean, it wasn't a huge, audience or anything, but, it was good. The church was three quarters full, big church in Gävle and, it felt good. You know, you felt that nervousness again. And then, a great choir singing, and then you pipe up and do your solo things and it's fun. But the difference is, I think the thing that a lot of rock and pop people would wonder about is the difference in performance. And of course you're standing therein a black suit, with a tie. And, it's a very traditional style. You stand there with your music in front of you. So you don't have the freedom to express yourself in the same way.

rock and pop, of course, You could do whatever you want on stage. You're free to move. Oratorio is a very strict musical form, which is to do with the performance of sacred works, or, big text and choral works in concert or church settings, which is a very fixed way of doing it. The soloists at the front who stand up to do their pieces and sit down again, the choir behind them, the orchestra, it's a very fixed format.

**Christophe:** One thing I always wondered, because I went to opera a few times, And I was always wondering, because there's a lot of text, if some of the singers, they forget some of their texts because it's a lot of things to remember.

**Stephen:** every singer, I think, in a band or in an opera has forgotten some text at some stage or other.

**Christophe:** Yeah.

**Stephen:** It's inevitable. at the same time, when you do an opera, you want to be so at one with your text. You need to have studied the story. You know exactly what's happening at every moment in time.

You've got direction, stage direction, which ties into that. You should know what the translations are of what you're singing. If it's in a foreign language, like French or German, and we're English speaking singers. you need to know word for word what you're singing, or at least phrase for phrase. and have that story and that narrative totally cemented into your mind.

But even with that, something can happen, like something unexpected can happen on stage, and it can throw you for a second, you can have a little blank. And, you know, innumerable times, I've invented a few lines of nonsense text, because, I've lost what I'm supposed to be singing.

**Christophe:** and apart from the other performers, nobody noticed, I guess.

**Stephen:** And of course, human nature is that at the end of the performance, that's the only thing we remember from the performances. Oh God, what a klutz I was. what a terrible performance that was from me. But you forget that 95 percent of that performance was probably really good. we have a natural, psychological bias to, to focus on what went wrong as opposed to what went right.

**Christophe:** I hadn't even realized that it's extra difficulty to memorize all the lyrics if it's in a foreign language.

**Stephen:** yeah, you learn it basically phonetically. Phonetically. So you're learning just sounds and notes. But what I find is, you have to translate it. You have to know what you're singing about. And you also, I find it anyway, much easier remembering a text if it's tied to music than if it's a pure text.

Those times I've done straight theater texts, spoken dialogue, much harder to remember. music,is almost like, it drills it down into the subconscious in a totally different way. For me, this is the way it works for some people, I'm sure it would be not universal, but for me, music tie music ties it into your mind.

**Christophe:** our memory works with connections. So it's about making a connection between one thing and the other. for example, between lyrics and music, it is one connection or maybe between lyrics and maybe visuals. It is another connection, but still. It's by making connections that we remember things.

**Stephen:** Exactly. Just look at film. Imagine a film like, uh, gladiator without the music, and then see those scenes with the music, Hans Zimmer's soundtrack, Lisa Gerard's voice, and, just look at the impact and how it imprints itself in your memory because of the music's effect on those images.

**Christophe:** Cool.

So yeah, it's been super cool to hear about both, your metal, and opera career,

**Stephen:** anything else you have in mind?

Um, well, it's an interesting concept and it's something which, which I've spoken to several people about recently, including you, the concept of breadth as opposed to, single tracked focus. I'm a person who has always been very broad in my interests, which has probably enabled me to move between these different stools, to move from rock, metal. And believe me, when I was a teenager, rock and metal was a lifestyle choice. You identified so strongly with your tribe, with the metal tribe. You'd go to festivals. And it's very hard at that point to see yourself having a different type of life. it was like rock or bust. You know what I mean? to move from those things then to jump over,

I found it interesting and fun to jump from that into classical music, into education for eight years, studying classical music. Into.the world of Buddhism, which I was really interested in while I was studying music. And in those early years, into sound recording, myself and producing my own music at home with keyboards and, samples and stuff from that into performing opera on stage, from that into creating a service for opera singers where they could find, work around Europe from that, to creating an agency, And at the same time, being a recording business, I record demos for singers as another business.

and then at the same time, I'm interested in a hell of a lot of other things outside those areas too. and I would say, just encourage everybody, if you're involved in music, And you feel an urge, enjoy being broad, enjoy exploring other areas because all those areas feed into music.

They feed into your artistic expression.

So I think this whole idea of following many passions is really relevant for some people, and it's really interesting this distinction between, what do we call these people, broad or, generalists. in a way you could say this is generalism, in that you have many different interests and it leads you in many different directions, as opposed to being a specialist who just focuses on one thing for their whole career.

And I think we're entering the era of generalists in a way,

**Christophe:** I feel the same. One of the favorite books that I read, for example over the last few months has been Range, and it's about generalists and it makes the counterpoint of, This very established way of seeing success of the 10, 000 hours of being a specialist, basically about how,how we are advised in leading our career.

We are advised in, becoming specialists when it comes to career. But, I think,there is a renaissance of the value of being a generalist. And I really connected with the thesis of that book Range, which is exactly what you're talking about.

**Stephen:** makes sense. So who's the author of this book?

**Christophe:** Let me just check. especially with for example, AI and, technologies that really are very powerful when it comes to getting deep.

I think that being generalist is one of the ways that as humans, we can still, bring a lot of value

**Stephen:** Yeah, I

**Christophe:** like increasingly technological world.

**Stephen:** I think, the future lies with those of us who can synthesize, synthesizes, we can bring together different stuff from all over. We can bring AI into what we're doing. we can draw from different areas and we can create value By being the person who can create a larger picture, a holistic vision of how these things could tell a story or work for companies or businesses and,move, innovation along this type of thing.

So the synthesizers, have a great, I think, advantage in many ways.

**Christophe:** I think humans have this ability to just connect different concepts together that maybe the computers cannot do yet.

So I found book Range is was published in 2019 by David Epstein. We recommend it. It's super good.

**Stephen:** great. I have it sitting on my coffee table waiting to be read.

**Christophe:** I know you borrowed it from me. Awesome.

**Stephen:** Okay. Chris,

**Christophe:** Cool. see you today at the park. Great. for this interview. Yeah. See you.

**Stephen:** All right. We'll speak soon, Chris. Take it easy. Good to talk.

**Christophe:** Yeah.

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