"Sometimes I feel like my main “koan” or paradox with music is the fact that I am goal oriented and project oriented - but still have to completely separate myself from that while I create. It is a challenge I have had for years and is something I constantly have to practice." In Zen Buddhism, the term koan denotes an enigmatic riddle, story or saying used to challenge the thinking and faith of students. Used primarily during meditation exercises, koans are used to provoke self-growth and a deeper understanding of the world's universal truths. For Burlington-based producer Es-K, these paradoxical…
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Ask any Millennial or post-Millennial and they'll tell you: going to college and university no longer guarantees success. Chillhop producer and visual artist RudeManners — born Dalton Mannerud — had exactly that experience. He pulls no punches about his disillusionment with higher education: "I personally hated college." A multimedia artist since childhood, he found that the coursework and dull rigour of academic life stifled his creativity — both as a producer and as a visual artist. Feeling cut off from his creative outlets took a personal toll on him and when a family emergency came up, he knew the time was right. He…
Housing costs are ballooning in Canada's major cities. Driven out by the high price of living, many of the country's working creatives have scattered to the outskirts in search of affordable living. Wave producer Evan Passier, better known as Dyzphoria, counts himself among this group. He currently lives on Bowen Island — a small island in the Salish Sea, reachable only via a ferry from Vancouver's Horseshoe Bay. Being separated from mainland Vancouver's music scene hasn't dulled his work ethic though; Passier has a non-stop release schedule, and drops tracks both independently and via London wave label Liquid Ritual. And his…
The life of a working musician is often glamorized, but reaching the point where you can support yourself strictly off of music isn't easy. New York's Brandon Rowan — best known by his stage name Birocratic — knows this all too well. Despite first breaking out in 2013 when a still-nascent Buzzfeed Media used his Creative Commons tracks in over thirty of their videos, he has had to work hard to become self-sustaining. But last January, he finally reached that point, and he's running with it. His success isn't surprising, though. Birocratic's music seamlessly bridges several instrumental genres — including upbeat future-funk, electronica,…
Devaloop keeps a low profile. The industrious Austrian beatmaker — born Fabian Pfitzer in Salzburg — eschews most social media; besides his Soundcloud, Devaloop maintains only a bare-bones Instagram page and a small Facebook page. This may not appear noteworthy at first glance, but it is. As the beat community has expanded online and gained increasing attention, many producers have become just as extraverted on social media as rappers and singers — two groups that have always tended to be heavy self-promoters. An extensive social media presence for producers is now no longer an exception; it's essentially the norm. But Devaloop would rather…
Ntourage came up off the internet. The success he's seen to date is all online-driven, and it's a reminder of how the internet has forever decentralized the modern hip-hop industry. Artists like him no longer need to move to massive industry hubs like New York, London, or in Africa, cities like Lagos and Johannesburg. With the right conditions and the right music, they can now blow up organically despite living in cities that don't have internationally recognized hip-hop scenes. For Ntourage - government name: Nicolas Machado - that city is Luanda, the coastal capital of Angola. Luanda is not best…
Axian is a hard-working man. From his small town of Odder, Denmark, the 23 year-old producer has quietly become one of the most widely recognized instrumental hip-hop artists in the online beat scene. He’s dropped over seventy songs, as well as two albums and several EP’s, and racked up millions of plays on streaming services in the process. And that’s not to mention his successful stints both as a music curator and as an A&R for Chillhop Records. He also refuses to chase trends. Axian’s music bucks many of lo-fi hip-hop’s clichés: the…