Seppa returns after a brief incubation period with his third album release, “See Through It.” Known for his deft songwriting capabilities, this 13-track LP is no exception, exploring a variety of vibes, genres, and BPMs. From bangers like “Boxer” and “Cru” to more laid-back Hip-Hop beats like “Yessir” and “SDIG,” to genre-benders like “Spinning,” this album has something for everyone and will be a rewarding listening experience for anyone who has been following Seppa’s work over the years.

In this chat, we catch up with our long-time friend Seppa to discuss a bit about the album, the quandaries and contradictions of being a touring musician and studio producer, and the careful balance between family life, fatherhood, and life as a musician.

Frank: Hey Sandy, welcome on!

Colin: What’s up, Sandy!

Sandy: Hey guys, great to catch up with you. Thanks for taking the time!

Colin: What’s the meaning behind ‘See It Through’?

Sandy: The name was one of the last things to come, even after the artwork. I think the music itself is the core meaning behind the title in a way. I had a few years where I’ve been struggling with making music a little bit, being motivated, and certainly in terms of more bass music, Hip-Hop-driven, Halftime, whatever you want to call it. I’ve been feeling unmotivated with that stuff for various reasons. Then I had a kid and obviously spent a few years getting to grips with everything… I got to this point where I was like, “Oh, I think I really want to go back to doing that music more.”

I think it’s quite important that I do it as well because there’s a way that I want it to sound that I just don’t hear anybody else doing. I could really add to the scene, the community, and the musical landscape. And on top of that as well, there’s still an audience for that particular sound. You know what I mean? It’s not died out at all. ‘See It Through’ is the result of a journey I started many years ago and then got a bit lost in the middle there somewhere. I decided that I should just properly “see it through” and see how far it - the music - can take me. So that’s part of it. It’s also a bit of a project in terms of getting to grips with a new way of living, a new life, and seeing where that goes. In some respects, there’s an optimistic concept behind it. See it through and something good will be waiting at the end. It’s not all easy and will take a little bit of grit and effort. I find if you make yourself do the thing that you’re finding difficult, it’s also probably bound to be worth it in the end.

Colin: I love the free flow of the album. There are a lot of intricate textures and sample manipulations that I haven’t heard you use before. Were there any instruments used like in your previous work?

Sandy: There’s not much instrumentation. There’s a lot of sampling that’s then being processed extensively, so stuff from some old records and things like that. I didn’t play any saxophone on this one. I was originally planning to, but it didn’t end up happening. But it really was, I guess, a lot of sound design, deep dives, and trying to make stuff that was quite expressive because part of the idea for this was that one for me on a conceptual level was like, I wanted to off the back of ‘Split’, which was very alien sounding in a lot of places, which I love about it, but there’s a lot of moments where you’re like, this is just a really weird idea. It takes a while to get to grips with it. With this album, I wanted to try to make it a little bit more direct and immediately engaging, without losing the depth of sound design and quality. To make it so it’s slightly easier to digest on a first listen, also to avoid going quite as dark as ‘Split’ does sometimes and keep it slightly more uplifted.

Sandy: Because it’s important to always be changing what you’re doing and not be retreading old ground. The one interesting bit of criticism that I got for ‘Split’, which I agree with, I don’t think it’s really a bad thing, but was that, yeah, it can just be a bit disorientating on the first few listens through. That was what I was going for. I don’t take it as an attack or anything, but I thought it was interesting criticism. I’m always up for a challenge, am I able to figure out a way to make it a bit more direct, engaging, and maybe accessible without compromising what I’m trying to do artistically without creating something that’s basic and boring, which I think I managed to do. I’m very happy with it.

Frank: The album is very cohesive. Even on the first listen, it flowed and had a definite pace to it which developed a bit of an easier approachability than ‘Split’.

Sandy: Yeah, great, that’s good.

Frank: Can you tell me about the different approaches you take when creating an EP versus an LP? Aside from ‘Split’, you’ve had mostly EPs throughout your discography. When I was listening to this release, it felt like a natural continuation of the Seppa journey. When did the tracks start to come together and when did you decide it was going to be an LP?

Sandy: It was an EP originally. It was going to be at the start of last year, 2023. We had a long and tiring year before that. I was trying to organize it to come out and tour in the States in May of last year. I needed a new EP or something, and I had started a few tracks. But I was simply really run down and getting sick a lot, I was just not in a good place health-wise. To be honest, mostly knock-on stuff from looking after a toddler and them giving you every illness under the sun. I was run down and was trying to finish this new studio as well. So I was like, wait a minute. I don’t think I can do all of this stuff. I can try and do all of it, but all of it’s going to suffer. Basically super draining. I decided not to tour for a year and a half and finish the studio. If I were taking that time off, I would prioritize the more creative stuff, writing, and the need to make it count.

Sandy: It needed to be an album. It shouldn’t just be a small collection of tracks or a load of singles or whatever. I wanted to do another album because I believe albums make so much more of a strong statement about what you’re trying to do. It shows a much broader range of what you’re capable of as an artist. It also stays with people for a lot longer. I’ll listen to albums so much longer than I will an EP or a single. I haven’t had the motivation to write an album since the last album which I wrote in late 2019, or early 2020. Up until early last year, I was like, I don’t have the headspace to tackle a big project like that. But then I was like, well, if I’ve got the new studio space and I’m not touring, it removes the pressure, then all of a sudden I can actually focus on a big project again. I took those ideas that I’d started, trying to think which tracks it was, I think ‘Dailled’, maybe ‘Boxer’, and ‘Spudge’, were already written. ‘Yessir’ as well. That one was written around the time I was trying to get an EP together.

Frank: Love that one.

Sandy: Yeah… The can-shaking sound and the ambiance on that track.

Frank: It’s a real vibe.

Sandy: Yeah, that was fun. It fit nicely because I had almost completely forgotten I’d written it. I was going through old projects and I stumbled across it. I was like, “Oh, I’ve basically got a whole track here”. It ended up being the perfect thing because I think the first half of the album is just this ramp up slowly in energy from basically an instrumental Hip-Hop track all the way up to some really techy, heavy Halftime shit. It was a real change of pace then for the second half of the album to take your foot off the gas a little to have something a bit different. It works out. That’s the beauty of an album is that you have the space to have stuff like that on there. I don’t know whether that track would work on an EP.

Frank: I was going to say the album definitely ramps up in the middle of ‘Boxer’ and ‘Cru’ in particular. A lot of different BPMs on this. In the beginning, more beats and then more of the neuro stuff in the middle. But then you even have ‘Spinning’, which I thought was a really interesting one. What’s the BPM on this?

Colin: I believe ‘Spinning’ is around 105 BPM?

Sandy: Yeah, ‘Spinning’ is the first thing I’ve written at that speed since my Duskky alias days, I believe.

I enjoyed exploring that alias for that more four-to-the-floor style, it was a cool pace for that type of vibe. When I was making that stuff before it was more of a techno vibe, but when you attempt to do a Hip-Hop or glitchy bit on that BPM, it ends up being a really uncomfortable beat to dance to. It feels too fast or too slow to me or something.

Colin: What’s the source of the ‘Spinning’ vocal sample?

Sandy: An old disco record. I can’t remember the name of it right now, actually, but I got a disco record, stripped all the drums out of it with Virtual DJ or something, then put it into a granulator and recorded loads of messing about with a granular engine. I think the bits that you hear in the track are fairly sizable chunks, which is where I realized, “Oh, that’s a nice loop.”

I have a feeling it might have ended up being 105 BPM because the first cut. That first bit you hear when it drops, that was the speed and length of the sample so it made a nice loop. It made sense to let that set the speed of the project and work from there. It was really cool how it came together.

Colin: One of my favorites from the album. Another one is also 'Yessir' How'd you make that strung out guitar sound on that?

Sandy: Yeah, so that’s all Phace-Plant with some plugins on it. I was messing around with it, wondering if I could make it sound legit. I liked the feeling of it; it almost feels like a jazz trio or something with a drummer, bassist, and keyboard player or something. I thought that was a fun vibe to have in the middle of all this very electronic stuff.

Frank: I was going to ask about the multiplicity of genres that you make. This album is definitely Seppa in one way, but over the last year, you’ve released singles that have been more of the hard-style sound. I wanted to ask, with this separate project, do you feel like you’re still in both worlds making two kinds of music? It almost seems like a US thing and a UK thing for what is appealable in both areas.

Sandy: Yeah, definitely. I got a bit burned out on bass music for a while, and then have mostly been here in the UK for the last four years because of the pandemic. Then having a kid meant that I wasn’t able to tour a lot. If I play sets here, I play pretty high speed, like hardcore and nightcore and all kinds of fast-paced music. I was making a bit more of that because that’s just what I was playing more.

To be honest, at this point, I think I’m going to split off the higher BPM, hardcore stuff into a different project because I think it’s a bit confusing to people to have it all under the one ‘Seppa’ umbrella.

I think I’m going to break it all up a little bit and put them under two different names. I’ve resisted that for a long time because, at the end of the day, I have a really wide taste in music and making a lot of different stuff. But I feel like the 200 BPM

hardcore or whatever is definitely outside of the realm of everything else, so it makes sense to split that up.

Whereas most of the time, there are bits of Drum and Bass and stuff that come out and record. That stuff still connects to some of the stuff I would play some of that stuff in a set in the States as well, so it all relates.

Colin: I really enjoy ‘Get Em’ on Wonk#y, definitely something that fits my sets.

Sandy: Yeah, great. Thanks, man! It’s fun. With Wonk#y Records, we decided to push it more in a Drum and Bass direction and a bit more high BPM stuff rather than Halftime. For this year at least. It’s been a really good choice because it’s opened up an opportunity for all of us to make music that just feels a bit fresher and we’ve found a load of cool new artists and music as well to put out.

Frank: What stuff can we expect in your sets on your US tour?

Sandy: I think probably a pretty heavy mix of almost everything in relation to that last question. I’m really keen to perform this tour. I’ve never heard any of the album tracks properly out of a sound system because I haven’t been gigging that much, just working on the LP, so I’m excited to play those out. I always incorporate as much of my back catalog as well because there’s so many tracks now. There’s so many different sets you can play just out of my own stuff. But I’ve definitely found some cool stuff from other people as well, I’ll probably be throwing some of those into the mix as well. As per usual, it will probably be a wide range of BPMs and energy levels, depending on what the gig is and reading the room. You just have to feel it out. I don’t really plan my sets. I see what feels right at the time. Sometimes people just want to go hard. Sometimes people want a bit of a journey. Sometimes it’s really nice to go through the more chill music for a while as well if people have the space for that. Everywhere’s different. I always want to try and present the full spectrum of what I do as best I can. That’s part of the reason for making all these different styles of music is to be able to play really varied sets where I’m not stuck in one direction.

Colin: In to my random question of the chat. What does ‘SDIG’ stand for?

Sandy: It stands for “Some Drums, I Guess.” laughs Which was the first version of the project. Everything was shit, but the drums were really nice. When I saved it, I called it drums thinking to myself “Oh, I’ll just rip the drums out of it and use that as the basis for another track.” It just stuck.

Colin: What are some of the life changes that have happened since ‘Split’?

Frank: That ties into my question. How is fatherhood going and how has that played into your personal life? The creative balance.

Sandy: Definitely, I think ‘Split’ came out the week the first lockdown started here in the pandemic. I was supposed to be doing my first solo tour with that, which obviously got canceled immediately. That was a fairly demoralizing experience and required a bit of soul-searching. In terms of asking myself questions such as “What am I doing, who am I? If you take all that music stuff away, who am I really?” Which I think everybody was going through at the time. It makes you think about what are the experiences that are genuinely, really important. What do I really want to be doing?

Me and my now wife knew we both wanted to be parents and thought maybe this is a good moment. It wasn’t right at the start of the pandemic, but it was getting maybe halfway through or something because it was locked down a lot more here than I think it was in the States. We decided it was a good time because I definitely was going to be around during her pregnancy and birth because I don’t have any obligations to be anywhere else.

From there, we just went for it. It’s been an amazing experience. Our daughter is a bit over two and a half years old now. She’s running around talking, everything. She was just in here half an hour before we jumped on the call playing on the decks, messing with all the faders and effects and everything. It’s been amazing. It’s also been like it is a lot as well. The first year or two years of raising a child is pretty intense when they’re so small and they start nursery and then they just get sick all the time. Then you get sick all the time and you end up getting quite run down and stuff.

I think trying to fit everything else that you would like to do around parenthood can be a little bit tricky and you have to learn how to fit everything together. It all balances out since it makes you reorganize your life in a really positive way as well because there’s no time to waste. You know what I mean? I’m either looking after her or if I’m not, I’m working on music stuff, basically. Those are the two things that I do.

Frank: Yeah, for sure, it helps you prioritize what’s important and manage your time accordingly.

Sandy: Yeah. Before, I had time to just piss around and do whatever. I could spend as long as I want on something. I think parenthood focuses your mind on a lot of things, which is great. But I think I was also wanting to make an album that was a bit less dark and a bit more uplifted and optimistic and stuff. That better reflects how I feel now because I have this relationship with my daughter and my wife. We have a little family, and it’s a beautiful thing. I definitely feel much more uplifted and optimistic myself lately, and I wanted to get that into the music as well. The irony is that my daughter doesn’t really like the stuff on the album, she just only ever wants the hardcore stuff, which is hilarious. Ultimately it’s been very great. An amazing and totally life-changing thing. I think it’s also just made me realize how truly fortunate I am to be able to still do this thing that I love with music and to be able to put an album out that I’m proud of, to be able to come over and tour and visit so many cities, and see so many people.

I feel blessed with that. It’s been really positive.

Frank: The family and creative life balance is something to appreciate. It sounds like what you’ve got going is healthy and sustainable, which we know in our industry could be something that people struggle with balancing. Having an anchor is really good for some artists, for sure.

Sandy: I think it’s important. I’ve done it the other way where I’ve obsessively done music all the time. I literally injured myself by hurting my back from overworking, causing myself physical and mental damage in the process. It’s not healthy to obsess about something all the time, whatever it is, even if it is your career or even if it brings you money and success or whatever it might be, you still need balance. I can’t help but have balance now because that’s the way my life is now. I definitely feel a lot better about it. It’s a bit harder to do on your own when you’re self-motivated. I think anyone that’s an artist has an obsessive part of their brain that says, “I have to keep doing this thing, I have to keep exploring it, seeing if I can get better at it.” It’s easy to get trapped in that, not knowing how to escape and run yourself down or make yourself ill or injure yourself.

Sandy: The last ‘Split’, for example, is an interesting comparison because it feels like a totally different era in my life. It was this obsessive mad dash to try and write as much music as possible and get it all done. It was really a bit of a chaotic process. I had a concept and a vision I was trying to do and it was a really chaotic way of doing it.

Whereas this time, when I realized last May, February, or whenever it was, that I was going to do an album, I literally sat down and made a spreadsheet and was like, “Right, these are all the months until I’m going to release it next May. How can I structure my time to make sure that I don’t get lost in the creative process?” I think the first month was just sound design, and then two or three months of starting ideas but not finishing them. Literally start things, throw them all in a folder, and check them out later.

Sandy: Then, after a couple of months of starting to cherry-pick the best ones and actually finish them, turn them into full tracks. Then there was the mixing and mastering side. And then in parallel to that, it was figuring out artwork. The whole thing was laid out in a schedule. Also, I got married as well at the end of last year, which was awesome as well. I was trying to spin a few plates at the same time. I realized that if I didn’t keep things organized, then I was going to lose track of what I was supposed to be doing. And it could end up being one of those forever projects that never actually gets finished. I would definitely like to do another release planned out like this again because this is the first time I got to the end of a release like this, put it out, and haven’t felt totally burned out. Simply because I actually gave myself the time. I gave myself a structure to follow where I was never really having to majorly rush myself, which ended up being a healthier way of approaching it, for sure.

Colin: How did the artwork come to be?

Sandy: It was made by a friend of mine, Eléna, who is an amazing artist and musician. She does all sorts of stuff, she’s a total polymath. It was one of those things where it all came together at the right moment. She contacted me because she wanted some tracks mixed, and I needed some artwork made. We made a trade. I had a few ideas of what I wanted to be in there. My wife, Llla, was the one who suggested having an eye in the middle. She said that it would make a really engaging image, which was a great idea.

I knew I wanted it to be quite psychedelic and have that feeling to it. Then we went back and forth a few times, Eléna and I, and slowly filled it all in and got loads of detail in there until it ended up with what we have, which I love. I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

It’s great to have up while you’re listening to it because there are so many little details and your eye can just keep moving around it the whole way through. It was a great fit!

Colin: Well, best of luck on the tour! I will see you soon at Infrasound.

Sandy: Wicked. Yeah, good shit. I’m so excited to go back to Infrasound because I’ve only been there once before, which is that. What? Maybe the full one in 2019, the September one. I’m really excited to actually go back. See you there!