Hey Markus long time no see bud! How are ya?

Hey Frank, great to see you. Thanks for having me on.

Of course! I’m excited to chat about this album, a bit of a long time coming. When did you start working on 'Ghost' in earnest? When was the beginning?

The oldest tunes are two years old or so. The very oldest one might be “If You”, which is December 2021, I think. That one is on the USB extra.

Then you said 'Lonely Place' was another old one, right?

'Lonely Place' is also fairly old. 'Submission' is also old.

For a while, I was collecting tunes because I wanted to see if I could get a consistent body of work. I had those early tunes come up and they didn't inherently fit together with each other, so I kept working on others. As I made more tunes, it started to give me a bit of a picture the direction I wanted to go for.

The album is mostly for myself honestly. Proving to myself that I can write a coherent body of work and not simply a collection of disjointed tunes. I feel that the tracks work one with each other in terms of tension and feeling as you listen to them in sequential order which generates a larger theme when listening to an album all the way through.

The whole LP seems like a deep insight into you as an artist and a personality. Tell me about the Ghost title, how did you come up with that for the album?

'Ghost' became the title for the LP in essence, because I am an introverted person. When you’re in the music industry you're often confronted with lots of other people, at shows and whatnot. In the beginning, it was a difficult situation for me as an introvert to navigate because I couldn't talk a lot to people, especially to strangers. It had to be a few years before I was able to talk and network at parties properly.

The title 'Ghost' is a bit of a play on that - the feeling of being there without really being there. I like to think of it as an analogy for when you go to a party as an introvert. You are at all those parties, so in a sense, you’re physically present, but nobody talks to you. So are you really there? You may see yourself in photos posted the next day, tagged at the event, or whatever. But if you’ve spent the night mostly by yourself, would you even say you were even really there? In what sense?

It's like your physical is there, but if you're not talking or connecting, to what extent does the social aspect of our interactions define our personal realities?

Yeah. Not only in the music scene but in life in general as well. You're often questioning yourself because barely anyone talks to you if you don't talk to them first, but this may be because you are too shy or just can't think of anything nice to talk about.

Has that challenge ever made you question yourself or your sanity?

It was challenging for me back in the day, but not anymore though.

Do you feel like you've come into your own since then? You're pretty active in the live DJ scene and online Discord social circles.

Yeah, I've been pretty much pushed into it. I had a few friends as well who helped me with that.

Has it helped your growth as an artist?

Yeah, absolutely. It helped me be less antisocial and talk to people more, even of my own volition - imagine that. *laughs*

*laughs* It's like a muscle you're working out, I suppose.

Do you ever think of introversion as an asset to your work? In that, it has allowed you to go inward and spend time and reflect and revisit these tracks again and again over time. Does it have any positives?

It's usually the best thing for me in the end. I work best when it's in the night and no one bothers me.

Is nighttime your favorite time to work on music?

Absolutely. Late at night, between 2:00-6:00am or so is my favorite time to work. That's when I write my best ideas and my best tunes because no one is bothering me.

How have the tracks have been performing live? There are a few bangers on this release as well as some deeper tunes, how are they to play out?

Some are easier, and some are harder to play out. 'Ghost' is not that easy to play out. Usually, I use it as an outro mostly. For the others, I’ve been doing ‘Keep Control’ with ‘Street Echoes’ together for a while, not as a double but just with each other in the mix. ‘Gambit’ is also really nice to play out.

‘Guardian Angel’ is a bit difficult to play out. ‘Parting’ is a hard one to mix but I like playing it.

'Parting’ was one of your favorites on the album, right?

Yeah, I like that one because it's very melancholic undertones, which I'm always a big fan of.

How did ‘Parting’ come together?

It came together quite naturally. I wrote this piano bit, and then I reversed it and took two parts of it. I chopped it up and took two parts of it. It just sounded really like I had this melodic feeling of sadness mixed with a glimmer of happiness, which I love in tunes. Especially in the music I listen to personally, which isn't drum and bass much. I listen mostly to really sad, melancholic, pensive electronic music that makes me think and contemplate.

Were there any musical influences you were digging into from different genres while you were writing this album?

Absolutely. When I started, I was getting deep into Future Garage. I was already listening to Burial of course for a long time now. But I really started digging on Spotify for other artists and trying to find music that was new to me, which was mostly cool Future Garage and other very introspective music. Stuff that's fairly easy listening, but also just brutally sad, emotional, and cathartic.

I've been noticing myself gravitating towards that kind of stuff - I think it's because this kind of music gets me thinking and reflecting deeply. Which I find inspiring and helpful for my creative process. I like a vocal with a nice core progression, stuff that's not much of a thing in most of drum and bass. I don’t really listen to drum and bass at all these days. Since I've been listening to it less, I've been writing way better tunes and way more original tunes as well.

Its good to step back from the scene that you're identified with and diving into those different influences.

I think as a drum and bass producer and DJ it's essential to listen to stuff outside of drum and bass if you can. If you think about drum and bass and its origins, it exists as an amalgamation of other genres essentially. In this spirit, if you make music, you want to incorporate influences outside of the genre of music you’re making. I think it's in bad form or poor taste if you only take influences from drum and bass because you're just going to copy. Even if it's unintentional, on some level you’ll be copying, mimicking, and repeating patterns you’ve heard. It's not going to be unique and it's not going to be good.

It's not going to last or be distinct because your sphere of influence is shallow and narrow.

Yeah, exactly. Many drum and bass people are so narrow-minded, and I don't understand why. You’ll encounter those with this isolated perspective of “I can only listen to drum and bass. Fuck dubstep, fuck house, fuck whatever.” it used to be like that, and that mindset has gone out of style now - especially if you’re serious about making music. You can still listen to drum and bass of course, that's fine. The distinction I’m making is not to get your influences primarily from drum and bass, because you're just going to sound like everyone else.

It's by letting in other influences that you add a new factor or a new force to the equation, and that's how you can produce something more novel and original. It's how you get a different solution, or you even come up with different questions that come with different results.

Yeah, that's how a genre keeps evolving.

With all these new influences coming from people of like, fifth, sixth generation off drum and bass producers or something. They just keep adding more new stuff to the genre. Those are the ones that will prevail.

A good tune is a good tune - don't get me wrong, but I usually remember something that tries to be a bit more “out there” as opposed to a club tune.

After all this time making music, does learning and trying new things continue to keep you motivated and inspired to create?

Absolutely, yeah. I’ve got a few Patreons as well, which I regularly check out for videos and inspiration.

Who's your favorite Patreon?

I think it may be Visages. They’re fun and have very creative approaches which always give me lots of ideas. I enjoy seeing other people work. Not necessarily a tutorial but simply watching them work and seeing their workflows of how they do stuff, how they approach certain things, and reflecting upon how it differs from my own approach to that aspect of making a tune. “What can I take from it to optimize my own workflow?” That's the perspective I try to take when watching someone else go through their projects.

Other than that I've been watching lots of sound sample creation videos lately.

What do those explore?

How to layer instruments properly and melodies and things like that. Certain core progressions, why they work, how they work. Then just taking it all and treating it as one sample, so resampling the whole track rather than the elements, and then degrading it, pitching it up, pitching it down, reversing it, stuff like that. It's been really interesting to me at the moment to learn about how to manipulate the audio as a whole. It has more of a sample quality to it because you’re basically working with one stem. I’ve been really enjoying myself with that, even though the results are not very good.

How do you go about writing a tune? Do you come to it with a pre-established idea, or do you do a lot of messing about and see what emerges?

When I write a tune, it's mostly just my daily mood which is a combination of all the things I work with. I don't open my DAW and be like, “Okay, I want to write this and that tune.” I start playing around with stuff and then let myself be guided by the sounds which lead me to do certain stuff and make decisions and try to follow the flow of the tune. I'm not dictating where the tune goes, but the things I do dictate where the tune goes, if that make sense?

Yeah, I gotcha. Do you feel like it's a flow state or a “letting go” process with some of it?

When it works, it's definitely a flow state. Sometimes, oftentimes even - it doesn't work and that's fine as well. It's important to have the right sounds available. Since I'm making tons of sounds on the side anyway, when I have a little theme going on or something, I can easily turn it into 16 bar loop. This is easy because I have good drums and sounds on hand which I can instantly access. I don't have to process them for 2 hours to make them sound good. I can just take a drag a break in and keep going while I'm feeling particularly creative. I'm not losing the idea of getting hung up on technicals too much.

The double-sided approach with the generation of sounds on the one hand, paired with the idea of writing tunes as they come to you at the moment, go hand in hand well because it allows you to have a streamlined workflow when you’re in the creative mode.

Yeah. Also at that point the tune is then getting dictated by the break. In the beginning, it's just to get the idea done. It doesn't matter if it's not a perfect break for it while I’m at the start of making the tune. When I revisit it the next day or after, I go a bit more in-depth into it and see and try to figure out what the tune wants from me or where the idea wants to go. Then I keep writing and experimenting and just throwing shit at a wall until something sticks.

Has this always been your creative process?

Yeah pretty much. It can work but it's also very random for me. One week I can write three tunes and then I can't write a tune for two months, maybe.

What's more important than getting great ideas, is being able to discard the bad ones that aren’t worth wasting time pursuing.

A good tip for other producers out there is to just do something every day even if it's just a little loop or a drum loop or maybe a bass or something. Do something. It's like training a muscle. Most of the days when I produce, I aim to make something simple like an eight-bar loop. Even if it's stupid - it doesn't have to be good, it’s not about the result, it's about the process - it’s about making something. If you keep doing stuff like this consistently you’re bound to happen upon something that is good eventually. I think the chance is much bigger that you're going to have something good if you constantly keep practicing - so keep making eight bar ideas or 16 bar or even four bar. Play around with sounds for a few hours and trying to make something out of it. It doesn't really matter.

It's about practicing the creative process and being in the mindset of making tunes and easily transferring ideas from your head into your DAW. It doesn't have to be good. It really doesn't. There’s a bigger chance that you're going to have something good if you keep doing that than when you very rarely make music, waiting for an idea or something.

Producing regularly and trying to make creativity a part of your daily routine is one of the ways of getting more output and out of that, some better results.

It's like any other thing you do, pretty much any other hobby or profession requires you to stay involved in it all the time. Take, for example, cooking, skateboarding, or playing video games. It applies to everything, you have to practice if you want to do it professionally. I mean, unless you're fucking crazy talented, but even then you still have to practice to produce the best work you can. You still have to try and stay in the loop. It doesn't matter how. You can just organize your samples or maybe dig for acapella or try to find cool vocals. It doesn't matter what you do. It's all preparing you for that one point when you are creative and everything aligns. It's all just preparation for when you’re inspired and the ideas are flowing.

What do you do to support your creative process aside from making music?

Nothing special truthfully, things that everyone does. I like to read manga, play on my Nintendo Switch Lite, watch anime, and movies. I very much enjoy music documentaries and tend to watch random documentaries on video games I like or stuff that generally sounds interesting to me. Every one of those things can trigger inspiration for me to do certain things, like a cool vocal line for example or something which I can record and use later. I also go out clubbing but other than that, I don't do much.

What are you going to do now that the album is coming out?

Exploring more and learning more, see how I can make my sounds better and keep reinventing myself to a certain extent - maybe double in other genres like 140 or something else.

This album has a lot of dance floor tunes, and it also has a lot of listenability. Do those two styles reflect two different sides of yourself?

I feel like the liquid tunes are the actual tunes on the album that are more important to me because that's what I seek out personally in music. I also understand the appeal of club tunes and why they exist. For the first few years of my career, all I made was club tunes. There’s always a special affinity with making club tunes in drum and bass. The album is overall a showcase of my drum and bass palette. You got the clubby tunes, you got the liquid, and you got some rollers. That's what I'm about, pretty much.

Speaking of liquid tunes and general vibes, can you tell me about 'Guardian Angel' with a Luke Truth?

Yeah, he smashed it. He's a great singer. He did all those harmonies and he sent me eight vocal stems or something. He was terrific to work with, and he came around really quick. ‘Guardian Angel’ started as a homage to Ivy Lab’s track ‘Oblique’.

At the time I was binge-watching an anime and there was this piano that blew me away “Fucking hell, this reminds me of ‘Oblique’.” So I sampled it and I processed it in the way I heard the Oblique piano. Then I wrote the idea around it. Then I sent it to Luke, then Luke made the rest. He sent back the vocals, and I finished it up, and that was it.

It's an amazing tune, really grew on me a lot and is now one of my favorites on the album. How did you source out Luke Truth for this?

I think it was just posting a snippet on Instagram on a story and asked for a vocalist, and then he hit me up to have a go and the rest is history.

Do you think that's someone you want to work with again?

Yeah, definitely. He did a really great job, I liked how the tune came out.

‘Submission’ is the anthem of the album to me for sure. Can you tell me a bit about this powerful tune?

Yeah, it's definitely the stand out of the album. It's like the quintessential tune expressing the idea of what Wingz stands for for me when I make this type tune. It's stripped down to the bare minimum, but everything has its place and it's effective. It has enough progression to keep it interesting. It's a fucking huge-ass sub bass and not a lot else going on, like smashing drums, fat kick drum. It's called ‘Submission’ because it sends sound systems into submission.

I love that.

If your sound system is not good enough, the tune won't have the impact it has. I wrote this tune for Grelle Forelle in Vienna, where the Contrast parties are being held every month because they have a state-of-the-art sound system. It goes down to 20 hertz, so you can play fucking everything on there.

Damn, that's really fun. Did you design the track with that flex in mind?

Yeah. Mostly when I make my tunes, I think of Grelle Forelle in particular. They have the best sound system I’ve ever heard, I’ve not heard anything remotely close to it.

I'm curious to hear more about 'Within Me', which we were talking a little bit about how it's an interesting approach. One of the more left-field sounding tracks on the album I think.

For 'Within Me', it was quite simple actually. I wanted to make one of those 808-type tracks and played around with a few hooks until I came up with what's on the album - and then just the answer hook is the same sound, just pitched up. Not the same notes, but the same patch just pitched up. Then I had this splash vocal that went "Within Me". I thought it was a cool combination. There's not too much thought behind it on the tune, but it came together quite quickly.

It has a really nice drum pattern. It's pretty swung, lots of ghost kicks, ghost snares.

Lastly let's touch on the opening track, 'Ghost' It’s beautiful - do you like making more ambient and atmospheric sections?

Yeah, I'm obsessed with that stuff. I don't think I could write actual ambient tunes but I really enjoy making ambiance - creating a theme out of nothing.

The whole atmosphere on 'Ghost' started with the intro, I made a random pad and resampled it and filtered it and tried to see what I could get out of it. Then I wrote the drop around it that. Most albums have an intro skit and too that concept and combined it with this track, so it is an intro skit and the first tune.

I like that approach a lot.

It makes more sense to me because it makes more sense for DJs incase anyone plays that tune out ever. I thought it was cool to have the skit and the first tune connected. I went for this Burial-esque approach to it. I wanted to make some pads, create this soundscape of pads and textures and vocal tones, and then just put it together into I remember when I made the... I think when I made the idea it was around the time 'Lost Friends' by Halogenix came out.

I pride myself in making stuff from scratch, trying to get as close as possible without any help. I don't mind the other way either, but the additional challenge is something I enjoy doing for myself.

Plus the process - enjoying that part of making the sounds from scratch.

Yeah, absolutely.

When you're making so much music and it's a huge part of your life you want to maintain a relationship with it that keeps you curious, excited and engaged. That becomes the priority. If that's what it is for you, that's what you should do. That extra involvement gives your music a really full-bodied sound, especially knowing that no one's going to have your samples anywhere else unless they hop on your Patreon or something.

Yes, I think that's why most people hop on my Patreon because they get those sounds that you don't get elsewhere since I'm not relying on those sounds everyone uses but rather generating them from scratch myself.

How do you maintain a balance between technical precision and involved sound manipulation, sound design, and then having an engaged, authentic, and emotionally felt presence to your music?

I'm not as technical as some other people, like Yaano or Buunshin or Imanu for instance. I tend to fuck around with stuff until it sounds the way I want. I mean, it never sounds the way I want because that's impossible because I have too high standards, like many producers. I work with it until it sounds it's close enough to what I envision so its something that I can work with.

I'm more technical when it comes to the drums because, for me, drums make or break a tune, especially in more minimal stuff. You can have the fucking vibeous tune ever, but if I don't like the snare, I don't like it. I'm kinda fucked in that regard, that's just how it is I guess. *laughs*

You're a real jerk about the drums.

Can I ask you about your relationship with the Discord communities? There's a lot of cross-pollination and community and talking amongst peers. How does community play into your music?

It's cool. I like hanging around with Yaano, Latesleeper, Dotdash, Azotix, Noah Isla, William Light, Gyrofield, Xeonz, Visla, Age of Espion, Imanu, the whole Discord Gang. Its always fun and they're great musicians.

I prefer not being in complete silence unless I'm focused and working on something important. The Discord voice chat is always nice because I'm one of those old-school kids who used to need to have the TV on or something in the background so I could sleep, for example. But it doesn't have really anything to do with that. It's just cool hanging out with like-minded people because there are not a lot of other producers in Vienna who do similar stuff to me. It's Alibi, En:vy and myself really. I don't really socialize with others unless I'm going out to a club or something. It's nice to talk to people online sometimes and play a round of golf with friends or watch something together on YouTube or just look at memes or some shit.

It's about the quality of connection. You resonate with these people on a deep level just because the physical bond isn't necessarily there. It doesn't mean it's lesser, really. It's just limited to some extent in terms of real-life engagement.

I met them all pretty much already, aside from the Americans obviously. They're sound people.

How has the reception been for 'Ghost' so Far?

The reception was pretty good. It was the feedback from the industry so far has been pretty nice. People were really happy about the variation. Mostly really good words about how varied it is despite being only in the realm of their own base and having good coherency, that stuff.

Can you tell me about the artwork a bit and working with Mikołaj? I love the cover.

He came up with all of that, I really have been messing with what Mikołaj aka Noah Isla has been doing lately, especially the Peroxiide vibes which I think he expressed here on Ghost a bit. I love the almost degraded, bit crushed feel to it.

I really was fascinated by the Hyperdub artworks. Hyperdub is the label by Kode9 and also where Burial’s stuff is released on. I really got into this idea of slow shatter photography - long exposure shots. While you’re filming long exposure shots, if there is any movement the shots have this really ghostly afterimage. That was our idea for the LP. I had a shoot with my friend Lukas, who is a photographer who does mostly event photography and press shots. We did a session together and I sent it to Mikołaj. I asked him if he has any idea or if he can help me find a direction for it, and this is what he came up with. The rest is history.

Yeah, he crushed it. It will be cool to see on the vinyl.

Yeah man, its the vinyl and we also have the USB with 4 unreleased dubs related to the album.

I’m especially happy we got the USB going because it’s actually a functional USB. Oftentimes when people release dubs on USBs they’ll only a USB 2.0 with 4 gigs of memory or something.

Ours is a USB 3.0 with 64 gigs, so it’s actually one you can use. I think that’s a cool factor we’ve considered which will make people happy when they purchase it. The design is pretty cool as well. All the dubs are absolutely from the same period as this album, but simply didn’t make the cut because they didn’t fit the narrative of the LP.

Any artist in particular you've been digging lately?

My absolute favorite artist in this realm of futuristic sad-sounding electronica is a guy called 'ONES'. This guy is fucking insane. I've not heard anything like this before. It's just so fucking good.

Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?

I don't know - maybe I’ll live in the mountains and write obscure Burial rip-offs *laughs*

Do you feel that with the album, you laid out a journey for people? Do you have any intention of expressing anything in particular, or do you want the listener, to have their own experience?

I want everyone to have their own experience. I don't think about that kind of stuff too much. I'm a very headstrong person, but when it comes to making music I started gradually turning that part of myself off so I can have it a bit more free-flowing, and not overthink everything constantly like I do with the rest of the things in my life. The album certainly has a bit of a narrative with the whole with the titles and the way it's arranged, the track listing, and stuff. But overall, I think everyone should make it their own meaning and can interpret it their own way… Pick out whatever tracks they like, and whatever vibes resonate with them.

Find the full release over at Overview's Bandcamp and pick up a copy of the Vinyl or USB if they're still in stock!