INTERVIEW: Whipd Beats presents Eclectic

We sat down with Whipd Beats to talk about her new album, encapsulating House music and all its subgenres, you can expect the unexpected, it is full of paradoxes just like its creator! On the "A" side, Whipd Beats weaves smooth textured moods with richness, warmth, depth and soul. A collection of ambient jazz, soulful gospel blues, chillout downtempo and a fusion of hip hop with tango. The "B" side is full of voluptuous sounds for the dance floor, a harmonic tapestry full of streaks of color, awakening excitement and pouring energy into every moment. Merging different genres and venturing down open roads, this collection of Afro disco house, tribal tech, progressive jazzy house, and progressive tech house is guaranteed to immerse you in limitless grooves and textured beats. Between these two very different rhythms is the artist's personality, an alternation between tenderness and punch, exuberance and restraint, experimental and serene. There is an open-mindedness and unorthodox acoustic approach that allows Whipd Beats to escape the usual conventions and create fresh and "eclectic" music.

Hi. How are things with you?

Things are great! I am excited for July 16th, which is when my album “Eclectic” will be dropping! It has been a long, long, labour of love and to finally share it with the world, I am ecstatic!

What are you working on now?

I always have a few tracks on the boil that I am working on. At the moment I have one that I am doing the final mixing and mastering on, it is inspired by the English post-punk band Bauhaus and their track ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ which was released in 1979. It was featured in the film ‘The Hunger’, with actors David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve, and Susan Sarandon. This piece of film was so artistically crafted with a fabulous music score and left an impact on me. Isn’t it amazing how music can imbed itself in your DNA and influence your creativity so many years later? I am again pushing the boundaries and experimenting in this track and it is nothing like any of the tracks on the album.

I have also got a couple of House dance tracks on the boil.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background in music?

I would need a few pages for this as there is so much history but I will try to keep it brief. I grew up in a house where music was played 24/7. My Father had an enormous vinyl collection which included all genres of music. There was no TV in India (where I was born and grew up) in the seventies so listening to music was how we entertained ourselves. I was always messing around with the sliders on his Technique’s equaliser to try to get the music to sound how I liked it, I was about eight years old. I loved a lot of bass and still do! I remember I would get so excited when crates full of vinyl would arrive from the vinyl shop at our house and I would be allowed to sort through, play them, and then choose which ones we would keep. I would read the back cover casing of the vinyl from top to bottom to know who the musicians and producers were. Jazz was played more than any other genre and so I was greatly influenced by the jazz of the forties to the sixties. You will hear this across all the tracks in my album “Eclectic”.

I was sent to boarding school when I was seven and here I started studying classic piano till I was about fifteen, but had to give it up (under duress) to focus on my studies. I have recently started learning how to play it again, in particular jazz and house chords so I can use them in my future tracks.

In the seventies when disco was born it was like heaven had come down to earth. It has such a great happy vibe and was also so deeply soulful. Music has to make me feel good and uplift me and when I create music I try to do the same. You will hear a lot of disco influences in my tracks especially jazzy horns, strings, and synths.

In 2008 I was confined to bed due to an illness and I would listen to a lot of music to help me get through the dark days. I stumbled across a music making program called Music Maker and started to experiment, making beats and tracks. I soon became addicted to the creative process of making music and downloaded Ableton, got myself a couple of Yamaha HS8 speakers and took lessons once a week to learn how to create tracks and perfect my craft. In 2018 I created an Afro-House track called ‘Joie de Vivre’ which was the first track I felt good enough to send out to a label, within a week it was signed to an Italian House label called Stereophonic Records in Italy. The track made it up to number nineteen on the Traxsource ‘Essential Afro-House’ charts.

What can you tell us about your upcoming LP? How was it born?

What is the concept behind the record?

After my track ‘Joie de Vivre’ made it up to number nineteen on the Traxsource ‘Afro-House Essentials’ charts, I felt inspired to challenge myself to create a body of work for an album. I didn’t start with any concept of what the album ‘should be’ other than creating music from my soul with absolute authenticity that would reflect my creativity in its purest form. I like to constantly push the boundaries and experiment and this has been the result of this album.

One of the most prominent signatures of my creativity is my love for fusing different genres together. I feel that this comes from my exposure to and love for all different kinds of genres. When I sit down to create a track I have no preconceived ideas of how it should be because this will completely block my creativity, instead I just allow my creativity to flow and what is to be birthed in that moment is birthed.

I called this album “Eclectic” because it is a fusion of many different genres. It is a compilation and one that reflects the totality of my creativity. I divided this album by tempo as creatively I felt that it would work the best. If you wanted something chilled out to listen to you would choose side A, here the tracks are more softly textured, soulful, and rich with warmth and depth. You will hear a fusion of gospel with blues, downtempo jazz, Tango fused with Hip Hop, ambient electronica, and more. Side B is for dancing! These tracks are voluptuous, vibrant and energised, here you will find Afro-house fused with disco, Techno fused with tribal beats, classic house fused with jazz.

How do you produce, your work on a more analog sound, or more in a DAW?

When I first started making beats and tracks I used the DAW Ableton but a few years ago I switched to Logic which I absolutely adore!

How has your sound evolved since you first started?

As I mentioned earlier, I first started creating beats and tracks on a simple program called Music Maker. I had no idea what I was doing but my creative intuition found it easy to stitch a set of samples together to create a track. When I graduated to using Ableton you could say I was the most technically challenged person in the world and found it extremely difficult to get my head around using this program, but I persevered.

What has really evolved in my sound is learning how to use sound design to perfect my sound. Creating a track is easy but perfecting the sound is challenging and takes years of learning. Good sound design is what makes the track. At a young age my Father taught me how to really listen to music especially the subtle nuances and the spaces in-between which make a track. I continue to study with my teacher, mentor and sound engineer on how to perfect this. If I compare this album to my earlier productions I can see that I am slowly perfecting my craft. I have used samples mostly in this album, chopping them up and distorting them, however in the future I will be venturing into creating my own sounds with my Yamaha MX88 key board. As my jazz and house piano skills get better I will be including them on my tracks.

Could you tell us some last words of wisdom?

If the person reading this should take one thing away, I would say ‘never give up on your dreams!’ I started making music at forty-three when I was sick and confined to my bed, life didn’t look too optimistic for me as far as my health was going. My love and passion for music kept me going and hopeful. At fifty-six with sheer determination and a lot of hard work I am about to release an album. If you are really passionate about something keep doing it, your passion will keep you going through the ups and downs. Don’t listen to the naysayers who tell you it’s a pipe dream, that you are too old, too fat, too thin, too broke etc. etc. If you want it, you will find a way to have it just like I did!