Emanate Spotlight: Tony Awake
The winner of the recent mau5trap x Bentley Dean remix competition via Emanate
Huge congrats on taking out the top spot in the mau5trap x Bentley Dean remix contest!
Tell us more about yourself.
Hi! I’m Anton, aka Tony Awake. I write electronic music, and when I don’t feed cats, I participate in contests. I love nature and be at home when it is cold. And it is getting colder in Estonia already in June.
You experiment with various styles of electronic music. Which one is your fav?
I’m not into the definition of styles, as I don’t stick to any specific one. There are a lot of them, and all have their heroes. I think all resulting experiments with genres that exist are based on the interpretation of our knowledge by the agitated mind. It is cool that everyone is expressing themselves differently. That way we get something new and saturate an experiment in general.
Who are your influences?
The Prodigy, Junkie XL, BT, Deadmau5, Chrystal Method, Noisia, Pretty Lights, Daft Punk… Anton Belyaev, also cool. Andi Vax and sound designer Ilya Likashev are awesome too.
Tell us about your creative process? Are you trying to re-create the music in your head or experiment until you got to a tasty-sounding?
For me, each new track or project — is a new history page, new experience. Most of the time I don’t see the whole picture, as I don’t have a good imagination. I am not waiting for inspiration: all life can be not enough for that.
An appetite comes at cooking. All I need is to get in front of the display, find samples that sound cool together, or just get an emotional drive from one or few combinations. Sometimes one sound is enough to understand everything what is needed to be done and how the arrangement should be approached. The number of notes is limited. At the same time, I don’t know anything about music theory. It is a bitter truth but also can be viewed as excellence. Time will tell if I will go to the music school… But I don’t think so.
Where did you get info about a contest?
I’ve been a long time subscriber of the mau5trap email list and, if I remember everything correctly, I saw the news via that.
What instruments do you use in your work on music and what used working on the remix specifically?
Lets split it into instruments and mixing.
Synths: Uhe-Repro1, Uhe-Hive2, Uhe-Dive, Arp2600, Spectrasonic Keyscape, and more.
Mixing: everything from Fab Filter, Ozone, and Valhalla, then standard Ableton plugins, Slate Digital and some other plugins from Plugin Alliance. They are cool, but Fab Filter are the best — they are absolute fire!
What was the most difficult part of making your remix?
I guess in the first version I was trying too hard and the mission failed right in the beginning.
In the second one — I was trying to get into the style, which was in good correlation with the mood of the track… but not with a tempo. I didn’t want to change vocals via Ableton’s warp algorithm. Not like they are bad… Long story short: the result was unconvincing.
After “many” approaches to conquer the universe, I just left raw vocals and focused on having fun, paying attention only to emotions. As a result, I got a lot of pleasure and revenge for the two previous iterations.
In your hall of fame, there are winnings in competitions of Armada Music, Spinnin Records, and now mau5trap. That’s a spirit! Tell us your secret :)
The secret is too obvious and difficult at the same time to apply it to yourself. Everyone has their path and own ambitions. I just love it and I’m trying to get better with each track. I’m making the most of it looking closely at my mistakes and making an expression of musical ideas in an arrangement plus mixing more precise. This work is constant. I like to go to sleep thinking of new experiments. Sounds crazy but it’s a part of me.
If you could collab with anyone who would it be?
With myself from the future. I hope we won’t debate what DAW and processor are the best. It would mean only one thing — we are fucked!
Live shows are restricted everywhere. What can compensate it in your opinion?
Callin’ a Cap Obvious — Streams on YouTube and Instagram? I don’t watch closely at live shows scene, as my last gig was a while ago. I hope I will get my head into it when the whole situation with pandemic will over. I have a lot of material now, and it would be cool to play it in front of the audience. Right now I’m solving the problem of getting a sound from a DAW. Guys from RME don’t want to give a clear answer on how to do it.
On Emanate, artists can self-release music, set up automated royalty splits, get paid instantly for streams. What’s your vibe on it all?
I think it is a great platform and I’m super excited to explore it all!
Emanate is planing to deliver monetizable playlists. Fans and listeners have an opportunity to earn on streams. We already have in place favs and follows, to make things easier. Have you tested it?
I’m planning to make a list of tracks and projects, which I haven’t released anywhere, and will publish them on Emanate as soon as possible.
What’s next for you?
To write music, which would resonate with people, fulfil their desires, and give them cool vibes.
