We had the chance to catch drum and bass DJ and producer, Feint, after the release of his track ‘Outbreak’ for the Rocket League X Monstercat Project and before he played Liquicity festival in Amsterdam!
Q 1: Hiya! Thank you for wanting to chat with us! How’s the music world treating you at the moment?
You’re very welcome! The music world is treating me really well at the moment – some really cool projects underway, cool releases and great gigs coming up!
Q 2: When was your first proper breakthrough as a drum and bass artist? Tell us about your journey.
It’s so difficult to say – chronologically I’d say my first personal breakthrough as an artist was becoming part of the Liquicity channel. Back when I was 18, my friends and I were blown away by all the cool new music we were hearing on the channel, and it really was a dream of ours to be promoted on there! When I started producing, it was definitely one of my goals. This of course led on to a string of releases and some amazing shows as well as making some amazing friends! They’re absolutely smashing it right now, big ups lads!
Q 3: Why drum and bass?
It’s technical, fast and well, it’s just a really cool genre of music. It’s so diverse, from jump up to deep liquid, from atonal, cold and techy to warm and summery – what’s not to love?!
Q 4: Who or what were your main inspirations?
Back when I started, I’d say my main inspirations (in terms of drum and bass) were people like Pendulum (who were obviously becoming huge at the time) and Netsky, Fred V + Grafix, Matrix + Futurebound, Logistics etc. who were really smashing the ~2008/2009 liquid sound that got us all hooked at the time – I still love all that! Outside of that, I loved listening to composers like Hans Zimmerand Nobuo Uematsu.
Q 5: So you’ve got Liquicity Festival coming up very soon – how’s your set going to flow?
That’s right! I haven’t decided yet to be honest – having played a lot of Liquicity shows, I tend to just see where it takes me, though of course I plan to play a lot of energetic, melodic tunes as the main theme!
Q 6: Tell us your process in coming up with something completely from scratch.
Usually it’ll start with me waking up and hammering away at the guitar until I stumble upon something cool! After that, I’ll roughly record it (whether its chords or some kind of melody) and add some more sounds in the box to compliment it – in the end I tend to scrap about 80-90% of my ideas, or they just get forgotten in the massive folder of project files. When something really clicks, I work on it on an arrangement and technical level to see how far I can take it!
Q 7: Besides drum and bass, what else are you in to?
In terms of music – too much to list probably. I love a huge amount of soundtracks from films (a recent example being Interstellar) to video games (the Final Fantasy soundtracks are absolutely sick) and too much stuff to mention from pretty much every other genre of music. I have a favourite for every mood and situation! In terms of other stuff, I love playing my guitar, strength training, martial arts, science and anything geeky and interesting. And space, I love space.
Q 8: If you could have the sickest line-up, who would you have playing at your perfect event?
It’d probably just be Ryuichi Sakamotoand co. playing the 1996 version of Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence about a hundred times to be honest. For real though, its such a hard question – my mood changes so fast I can never decide, and I’ve written and deleted about 5 lineups already because there’s just too many amazing musicians to see live. Radiohead would probably be on there though to be honest.
Q 9: Can you tell us a bit more about the Rocket League X Monstercat Project with MYLK?
Yeah, Monstercat (big shout out) partnered up with Rocket League to bring a compilation of brand new tunes for the soundtrack – it’ll be available to listen to in game and also available to purchase as a whole album. MYLK and I wrote a tune called ‘Outbreak’ for it, it’s a big melodic dance floor tune that we thought would fit the hectic feel of the game!
Q 10: Where shall we expect to see Feint this summer?
I just performed at Liquicity summer festival! And probably in front of my monitors thinking of new ideas!
Facebook: @feintDnB | Twitter: @feintMusic
