Bastian Bux is the consequence of reducing everything surrounding a DJ and producer to its essential element: the music. That is the intention of Bux: be stripped of all artifice and be judged by his work. Pieces full of deep textures, powerful harmonies, heavy beats and fat basslines; where everything is assembled with soul and sensibility, with the mastery of a craftsman and surgeon’s precision.
His debut was 2015’s “Stay EP” in Suara, where four timeless tracks laid the foundations of what Bastian Bux means today: deep and emotional Techno, dark House, and high class Electronica. Such was the success of the debut that, a few months later, he repeated in Coyu’s imprint with “Teardrop EP”, “Screenshot”, “Tresor” or his recent “Oracle EP”, where his stylistic range extends further its own, going from futuristic Deep House to Progressive Techno. After a first step into the remix production with his Habischmann’s “All I Dream” re-interpretation and being remixed by Coyu himself, he released his first EP on Nicole Moudaber’s imprint Mood Records. In just one year, his work have been supported by most of the underground’s heavyweights and his profile is gaining a remarkable place in the scene.
In front of a crowd, Bastian is able to travel elegantly from housy grooves to rough techno, going thru epic melodies and sober beats, always loyal to his way of understanding music but without losing sight of the dancefloor. That ability has earned him to be one of the ElRow residents and touring all around the globe. After his summer residency in Space Ibiza and having played in UK, Germany, France or Dubai, future looks bright for this new up and coming techno wonderkid.
We had the chance to chat with Bastian earlier this year when we talked about his relationship with elrow, Suara and his connection with the scene in the United States. This time we asked the prolific producer to share 5 key tips for you to apply in the studio!
This is for me the key of a great mixdown. Having control of your transients is essential if you want to get a clean and solid mix. Thereās a tool I love called MultiBandTransient by Melda that gives you total control of the transients of your sound on different frequencies. Thus you can add a little bit of attack only on the high frequencies of a kick drum while substracting some of the ātailā of the sound on the lowest ones.
I think that low frequencies are the foundations of electronic music. If you have a good relationship between your kickdrum,Ā bassline and low elements, the rest will work way easier. This is why I strongly recommend starting mixing your projects from there. I always start mixing the kick and theĀ bassline, and I spend a lot of time making sure that they are creating a solid ground to hold the rest of the song.
This is a quite simple trick but it helped me a lot since the very beginning. I donāt work on my arrangements āaddingā things over a time line: Instead of that, right after I finish creating my idea with the classic 16 or 32 bar loop, I replicate this section over and over until I create a 8 or 9 minutes draft. I start carving this repetitive draft deleting and muting elements instead of adding them. This helps me a lot because I find easier to make random combinations of the parts than actually creating them voluntarily. This technique is funny and surprising in the best way. It is like creating an sculpture of your own music.
Following with the previous idea, I like to take profit out of the randomness. When it comes to composing, I love using arpeggiators while playing chords with random notes over them. These random notes, each with different durations and velocities, create unpredictable variations of your melody that helps you create something absolutely impossible to write by simply playing with the piano in a classical way.
I always put drone notes, or live recorded backgrounds, or synthetic atmospheres on the back of my mixdowns. I call them āhorizonsā, and I use them in every single song I make. I think it helps to not overuse reverbs that kill all of your headroom. It gives an imaginary space to the song that allow the other elements to find their place.
Connect with Bastian Bux:Ā FacebookĀ |Ā TwitterĀ |Ā SoundCloudĀ |Ā YouTube
[brew_cta id=”3″]
