Look out Darth Vader, coming off releasing his debut LP ‘Tremors’ a matter of months ago, Sohn has gone from strength to strength with a two show tour of his death star crazy live show in Australia happening as of tomorrow in Sydney and Melbourne on Wednesday.

To celebrate his yonder into the south of the sea’s to the baron land of l’Australie, our tech writer Nick Tho chat to him on the phone to learn more about what makes the British born, Italy residing producer tick.

This is your first appearance touring here in Australia, is this your first time visiting?

S: It is, I’m really looking forward to it man.

Awesome, so, for us who have yet to see your live set, how can you best describe it?

S: Probably like a sort of rush of synthesizer waves accompanied by Jedi lighting, hahahaha, but that’s only based on what people have told me now. I think it’s funny.

So can we expect a visual-audio show?

S: Yeah, we’re bringing the whole production.

You made the move to Vienna in 2010, can you see any influences of this move in your album Tremors?

S: Yeah I think so. I think I never really interacted with space before I moved to Vienna, actually. I guess as a person I wasn’t comfortable with silence, so moving to Vienna definitely gave me this some-how feeling of being more comfortable with myself and space, and that definitely found itself into the record.

Yeah, so where you moved, was that quite isolated?

S: Uh… Not really, but in comparison to London it’s massively like that. There’s just so much space, there’s just so few people in comparison to a place like London. There’s really a lot of, sort of time, to be able to work on stuff where I think in London you get so swept up in the idea of working, working, working on your career; “How am I gonna get somewhere?”, and I guess Vienna just totally chilled out that part of my brain which just said: “Well, you’re not getting anywhere, you’re in Vienna.”

Awesome! So, as a producer myself, I’ve always admired the production in your work; the blend of electronic music and vocal-sampling I think really helps define your distinct sound. Could you give us a brief on the creative process behind these tracks?

S: Yeah, a lot of the time it’s like, I have very particular markers when I’m writing a track. The first thing is almost always the musically motif. So in Bloodflows it was the first chords basically, and I heard that before sitting down at an instrument. So I’ll record that on a phone or something, just so I don’t forget it. Then the next time I get to an instrument I’ll basically make the sound which was in my head. Uh, and then I sort of play around with beats, until I get to a point where I feel like the music is starting to pick up it’s own life. Then there’s normally a time, after about three hours or so, where I just start to mess around with singing in a microphone, with no idea on what I’m going to do, trying to be instinctive and singing whatever nonsense comes out.

Words kind of find their way into particular places, and I re-write backwards to try and make those words stay where they are. So I don’t ever have a sense of meaning, when I’m writing lyrics, until it’s just kind of three quarters done. Because I work from the words rather than the subject.

Then it’s all about filling out spaces and leaving spaces for me. Things like the vocal samples happen because, like from the end of Bloodflows, I don’t remember thinking at any point, “I know what would be good here, it would be good to chop up a vocal or whatever”. I just, got to the point where the end of this word just hit and I chopped it and heard this, like, “ooh”, and I thought this was a really nice sound, so I started pasting these tiny chops everywhere.

And it just all comes together?

S: Yeah and then it becomes to be just like an instrument line.

It’s interesting to me because you said “it’s all about filling out spaces and leaving spaces”. That kind of comes back to moving to Vienna and finding more space, and getting used to the fact that you always don’t have to add; you can take away.

S: Exactly! For me especially, I found that from doing live stuff, singing something quite powerfully, then letting it breathe is often much more powerful than you know, doing three lines where you’re just going for it, you know what I mean?

Yeah, definitely. So, what musical influences, if any, do you see within Tremors?

S: I’m not really sure actually. There’s definitely some really old influences in there, from my past of listening to music when I was a kid and stuff like that. There’s definitely some key albums in there for sure. There’s “Homogenic” by Bjork is in there somewhere, “Bad” by Michael Jackson in there somewhere. Then there’s sort of more recent things but I can’t really put my finger on them, their just every thing I kind of listen to in the past two years and they just kind of seep in to you, don’t they?

Yeah, I totally get it, it just kind of mixes inside of you, sub-consciously.

With every single released so far, there’s been quite a powerful video put along side it on YouTube. Personally I love the experience of listening and watching the video together, I think they complement each other quite well. Did you have any involvement in these videos?

S: Well in particular with Bloodflows, that was one where the director and I sat down and made the concept of what we wanted to do; talked about what we wanted each shot to be. I was really hands on with that one, in terms of what I saw it being. It ended up being almost exactly what I saw it to be. It’s amazing how it’s almost exactly how I would of imagined it.

And then with Lessons it was a pitch, as you sort of do get from directors and stuff. But, it was that kind of thing where as soon as I read that one pitch in particular, I was like “Yeah that’s exactly what I’ve always seen it being actually, but I just didn’t know”. I knew it had to be about running, because that’s what the synth line meant to me, and I knew it had to be about this monster chasing you in some way. In that case, the monster was just his memory.

And with artifice it was just another one, it was a pitch. I really wouldn’t of had any idea what to do with Artifice because for me it was, even as a song, sort of far-out in terms of anything else I’ve done so I guess if it was left totally to me I would of probably really screwed it up. I was already so uncomfortable with how far away from every else Artifice was before even thinking about what to do with a video.

It’s interesting with Artifice how the video is all in slow-motion and then yet it’s one of your most up-beat songs.

S: It’s really interesting how it like, pulls you through. Like you watch it without realising you’ve watched it.

I’ll be lucky enough to catch your set here in Sydney, and then you’re playing in Melbourne, but for the rest of Australia; will we be seeing you back at all? Anytime soon?

S: I hope so. I’m not sure exactly what’s going on in terms of what’s booked and such because I know how solid the year looks, but I haven’t actually gotten any details on what the year is. My general attitude now is I can’t hold any stuff in my head that long, so I just don’t bother finding out. But I guess we would be looking to get out there
kind of early next year to do more a more extensive Australian tour.

Great! Well, thanks for your time Chris, and I’ll be there Tuesday at your show in Sydney!