Anjunadeep favorite Yotto recently put his spin on the latest single from Grammy-nominated producer Cassian, titled ‘Imagination ft. Tora and available on Beatport
The track is off Cassian’s debut album Laps, which arrived to massive praise in June of this year. Yotto also just released his debut label project, Odd Ones Out V1, a compilation of five hand-picked artists and a new single of his own. Here, Yotto retools the emotive single into a driving melodic soundscape with his climactic atmospheric tones and signature ethereal spin.
The pair have a long history together from Cassian remixing Yotto’s “Nova” to the duo touring together across venues like Los Angeles’ Fonda and New York City’s Avant Gardner. They have taken their friendship a step further, even sharing workout routines with each other in an effort to remain fit and healthy.
With such synergy and strong connection between the two, we asked them to interview each other so we could learn more about who they are as people and artists.
Enjoy the back-to-back interview below:
If we were to compete against each other in American Ninja Warrior, who do you predict would win and why?
I hope this isn’t leaking your athletic ability but I’d say based on the off-road mountain marathon you did, you would win pretty easily.
You’re great at finding super healthy products to take on the road. Have you always been into working out and looking after your health or have the years slowly made you responsible?
I’ve only been really focused on health the last few years. My mum was always into health food and fitness and I was decent at basketball in high school. But after high school I ate like shit but kept playing lots of basketball, ignoring injuries and generally thinking I was still super fit. Ended up messing my up achilles tendon which made me realise I wasn’t indestructible and that really kick-started the #tourofhealth
How do your parents describe what you do for a living to their friends? On a scale of 1-10 how much do they like your music?
(laughs) Oh man! They’ll probably read this because they live out in the country now and don’t have a whole lot to do. Honestly, I think they name drop some of my “career highlights” like the Grammy nom or some of the insane venues I’ve supported RÜFÜS DU SOL on in Australia. I think all parents want to subtly one-up each other with their kid’s accomplishments. As far as my music goes they would say they like it 9/10 but in reality, it’s probably closer to 6/10.
What’s been the best part of 2020 for you a) personally b) music-wise? (Serious question)
I’ve been thinking about it a lot but this downtime for many of us is the longest we’ve been in one city for maybe 10 years and will probably be the longest for another 10 years so from that perspective it’s a pretty amazing opportunity to live a semi “normal” life. It’s making me rethink a lot of what I do for sure. Music-wise this year has been great. In March I moved into a new studio that is pretty close to my dream studio. Along with releasing my debut album and getting a remix from Yotto, I don’t know how this year can ever be topped musically.
I love your sound, obviously, and you’re one of my favorite producers. What do you think makes your music stand out?
I think I’m pretty heavily influenced by a lot of current dance music I love and I’m mostly trying to “fit in” as opposed to stand out. But because of my background in bands I tend to produce & arrange music pretty differently to how most “dance” producers do. Also as a mixer and producer I work on a range of music not just dance music so I think all those influences sort of bleed into my stuff and make it a little different … or maybe it sounds like everything else I don’t know it’s impossible to have an accurate perspective.
Favorite track from your album and why? I can’t decide between “Laps” and “Imagination.”
Really tough question and if I was sent this in a normal interview I’d probably just ignore it BUT for you of course, I must answer. It’s probably “Imagination” just because for whatever reason when I listen to it, it doesn’t feel like I made it. For most of my tracks the only time I get an emotional reaction to them is when I’m playing them in front of lots of people but with “Imagination,” I still get that feeling even when I’m alone in my car or studio. It’s definitely an outlier of a song for me. It came together really quickly and wasn’t really much work to get it to where I was happy with it. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learnt there…
I recently DJ’d in an empty club and the energy I felt, even without any crowd, was amazing. You just threw a party in Helsinki with actual humans in the crowd. As one of the few artists in the world to have recently performed in front of real people, talk me through what that felt like coming off the back of a long period of isolation.
Oh man, it felt so, so good, I think I was just smiling for 5 hours straight. I think everyone also knew that the next couple of months are still pretty uncertain and restrictions might easily come back if the virus has another wave. So that just made it even more exciting. There’s something that comes from being between big loud monitors, a booth full of friends and a dancefloor full of individuals that a virtual experience in my view can never ever replace.
This question will start off seeming like an annoying generic question but hopefully it will get more interesting towards the end. I’m really intrigued to hear how you approached the remix you did for me (which I love by the way, thank you).
Did you start off with a strong idea of how you wanted it to be and work towards that vision or just start experimenting and go from there without a specific goal in mind?
I wanted it to be good because the remix you did for me last year is so great. At first, I just took the vocal and tried a bunch of different chord progressions under it to give it a slightly different mood from the original. After that, it became more about jamming stuff in there. Then it still felt a bit cold so I added some pads and a big lead sequence to give it one last push. I did have like seven different lead melody/arp ideas I was jumping between.
Now the remix is cool and everything but the people really wanna know what you’re doing for workouts these days. Are gyms open in Helsinki? Have you been running? Let us know!
Ha! Yeah gyms are open, I’ve been doing about 30k/week running and then my trainer has had me doing some low rep heavyweight stuff. Pretty awful really. We have been grinding something called “The Nordic Curl” and that is just rough.
I’ve found over the years that it’s gotten harder & harder for me to find new artists producing music I can play in my sets. Which is one of the reasons I was really impressed by the Odd Ones Vol.1 release you just put out. Each track on there is a smash and was from an artist I wasn’t even aware of. How did you come across those tracks/artists?
Thanks! I’m very happy about it. I wanted to find artists that are new or still in that maturation period of their projects. I also wanted them all to be somewhat different from each other. All these artists honestly just sent me some demos, I’m fortunate to get a ridiculous pile sent every week.
Find Yotto Odd Ones Vol. 1 on Bandcamp HERE
Find Cassian Laps on Beatport HERE
Connect with Cassian: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Spotify | YouTube
Connect with Yotto: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Spotify | YouTube
