Interview with Kid Smpl & Night Tracks 025: Guest Mix

The interviews keep on coming, and today we've got Kid Smpl to drop in and answer a few questions. He's also put together a guest mix exclusively for Night Tracks, and double bonus, it's comprised entirely of his own productions. Here's top hoping that they see a release, because they are next level. Check it out at the end of the interview!

NT: Can you give those that don’t know about you an introduction?

KS: I'm a 21-year-old producer/dj from Seattle, Washington in the US. I make music on the deeper more ambient side of things and tend to focus a lot on atmosphere and melody.

NT: Coming from Seattle, how did you get into the music you produce today, which undoubtedly has roots in dance music from the UK?

KS: When I first started producing music I was making hip hop but I became uninterested in that pretty quickly. I then discovered dubstep through the internet and also word of mouth from some college friends. Dubstep was the first form of UK bass music that I had ever gotten into. I fell in love with the sound and started producing it. My dubstep production eventually evolved into what I'm making today which, probably shouldn't be categorized as dubstep.

Kid Smpl - Travelled

Interview with Sully

Big up to all, I've got a treat for you today, in the form of an interview with Sully, the badman responsible for album-of-the-year-list-botherer Carrier which was released on Blackdown's Keysound Recordings. Read on and find out a little more about the man behind it and check out some of his tunes if you're not a fan yet... (The interview continues after the page break)

NT: Hey man, can you give us an introduction to those who may not know Sully yet?
S: In short, I make tunes, mainly but definitely not strictly in a 2-step fashion.
I've worked with a lot of labels but most closely tied with Frijsfo beats and Keysound Recordings. The latter released my debut LP Carrier in September and currently I'm getting (back) into DJing...

Click here, here, here, or here to buy Carrier

NT: You’ve been releasing for a few years now, what made you decide to put out an album?
S: In all honesty it was down to Blackdown's persistance. I've had a fair few people put the idea to me, but Keysound kept with it and the time came where it seemed the thing to do. I wanted to try out some new things, have the oppurtunity to write some tunes without a dancefloor and DJ in mind, as result I did a lot of experimenting and came up with some tunes I would have never made outside of an LP. So I'm thankful to everyone who pushed the idea to me over the years!

Sully - It's Your Love

NT: Your album came out on Blackdown’s label Keysound Recordings. How did you manage to convince Blackdown to put out a full album on vinyl? That label has so many albums that need a vinyl release! Does it feel more special that Carrier got that treatment?
S: It's true, Keysound have a serious catalog. They've stepped up even more over the last year or two and I'm stoked to be nestled in there at such an interesting time for the label. I can't think of a thing they've done that doesn't deserve wax, would love some of Damu's Unity in particular, but the sad fact with vinyl is that it's economically difficult, the sales are undoubtedly going down as people switch to Serato and so on, so it isn't always possible to put double or triple disc LPs . I even know some labels have such a passion for vinyl they'll make a loss and make it up with digital sales, which I think is worth it, I love vinyl and always seems to go back to playing it over anything else, but there's a limit to how much you can put into it. I was lucky, Carrier is short enough to fit on 2 sides, which is perfect for the flow of the record too, as you mention...