📣 LAZY INTERVIEW #29: WALTER EGO

"DBZ was the most popular anime in UK (and possibly world wide) when I was growing up," writes Walter Ego via an email to us. We all know that acronym: Dragonball Z, successor to the also much loved manga/anime Dragonball. To say that it is the main influence on the Sheffield musicmaker's latest EP would be an understatement—it is more accurately an homage to the series, a love-letter in three tracks to the fight scenes and funny bits of this rather important part of animation history, raw skittering beats like the machine-gun midair punches exchanged between friend and foe, cartoon samples, mystic instruments that summon an immediate tangible fantasy world.

And it's not just Walter Ego and his Seven Star Ball EP which have been clearly affected by Goku and the gang. "If you listen to grime you will know that it is very often referenced by emcees and finds its way into other genres too from time to time," he explains. Why? Well, the good guys always win. And very often the good guys aren't as strong as the bad guys and it takes a great deal of literal superhuman effort to defeat them. Something resonates in that: the power, through sheer force of will and against all the odds, to win, to save the day, to be the best, mirrors what it's like on actual Earth—in a world saturated with individuality, and especially in the grime world, asserting yourself as the best through skill and hard work is indeed the way to the top.

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w h o   a r e   y o u ?   w h e r e   a r e   y o u   f r o m ?   w h a t   d o   y o u   d o ?

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I'm Walter.

Sheffield.

I make electronic music-influenced underground club music, rap and almost anything I'm interested in.

h o w   d i d   y o u   s t a r t   c r e a t i n g   m u s i c ?

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I've been playing instruments since I was old enough to walk but I first started making beats seriously when I was around 19-20. I used to go the DnB and Dubstep parties in Manchester and Sheffield listening to a range of different DJs and producers and think, "I'd like to have a go at this". Someone gave me a copy of FL Studio and I began making simple stuff, that eventually led to really complicated stuff!  

h o w   w o u l d   y o u   d e s c r i b e   y o u r   s o u n d ?

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Extremely varied. My most recent EP is grime which is genre I've come back to often, but I've made everything from trap to afrobeat.

i s   t h e r e   a   p e r f e c t   t i m e   a n d   p l a c e   f o r   l i s t e n i n g   t o   y o u r   m u s i c ?

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This EP needs to be heard as a part of a grime set, in my opinion. The tracks are high energy and are deliberately leaving space for an MC to drop bars. But honestly that's partly down to the listener. You wanna listen to it on the bus on the way to work? That's fine with me. „
My most recent EP is paying homage to my love of DBZ and the unignorable influence anime has had on grime as a genre
” w h a t   i n s p i r e s   y o u   m o s t   w h e n   m a k i n g   a   t r a c k ?

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When I make grime it's partly the energy of the MCs that inspires me. Grime has always been about a relationship between vocal and rhythm. Partly it's just life and the world around me. I also look back a lot to music I've listened to over the years. I like anything that will give my music an different or unusual sound; people familiar with Indonesian music might recognise Gamelan bells in a track on this EP. But alongside that I might include FX noises and other bits that might be at home in a garage tune or even dub reggae.

That said, with this EP I only intended to make three grime instrumentals that would fit neatly into a set with other 140ish BPM music. I'm working on some other projects at the moment that encompass other genres/tempos/styles that are inspired by a wider palette of music.

w h a t   i s   y o u r   m o s t   m e m o r a b l e   m u s i c a l   e x p e r i e n c e ?

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I've had a few. I can't say that it's my most memorable but maybe one of the more interesting moments of last year was DJing (by chance) for Skepta. My manager and close friend Lean Low from Bad Taste (the label on which my Seven Star Ball EP came out on) threw a party at a small place in Dalston. We had asked another close collaborator, Birmingham MC Slick Don to come down and perform a small intimate set.

But before Slick Don could perform out of nowhere for reasons unbeknownst to us Skepta and a number of other MCs including Nottingham's Mez arrived and asked if they could spit. Lean Low and I were genuinely a bit baffled as we hadn't invited them but were obviously happy to oblige. The resulting 30-40 minutes was a whirlwind of wheel-ups and top notch grime barring which I can happily say I really enjoyed.

As this was all going on, people outside started to clock that it was Skepta spitting and a sizeable crowd began trying to make there way in to the already quite full and extremely small venue. It was a pretty surreal, Slick Don still got to perform his set and even jumped in alongside Skeppy and others; although somewhat in shock having had no idea what had just happened either.

w h a t   a r e   y o u r   f a v o u r i t e   t h r e e   s o n g s   a t   t h e   m o m e n t ?

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Favourite is really hard to say but I can recommend a few that I'm listening to:

Rex Lawson & His Majors Band Of Nigeria – Oko

FKJ – Vibin' Out with (((O)))

Jay Z – The Story of O.J.

w h o   d o   y o u   m o s t   a d m i r e   i n   t h e   m u s i c   w o r l d ?

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DJ Khaled.

i n   y o u r   o p i n i o n ,   w h a t   i s   t h e   f u t u r e   o f   m u s i c ?

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Future.

w h a t ' s   t h e   f u t u r e   o f   y o u r   m u s i c   –   w h a t   d o   y o u   h o p e   t o   d o   n e x t ?

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As I mentioned, I'm working on some projects with greater musical scope and a mixture of genres and styles. Watch this space.

w h a t   i s   m o s t   i m p o r t a n t   t o   y o u ?

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True happiness and good friends. 


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• 🔔 Walter Ego's Seven Star Ball EP is out now on Bad Taste Records. Stream or download from your fav service here, if you like.

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☟ Walter Ego Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ songkick

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← #28: TUSKS #30: MARIUS →

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🐣 DYR — ALL THE TIME

Heavy on the bass glooping swampy digital gloss clean and rounded with angularity in its gradually sharpening shape and the offbeat syncopation as the thudding techno kicks round it up lasso it together with small but explosive snares that thin and crashing echo in the nocturnal ambience of the track. A great sense of minimalism pervades this one, small changes subtly altering the route of the track as it trundles along like watching a storm that hasn't yet arrived is not yet overhead can't feel the rain but distantly the thunder is booming and the clouds even blacker than the night sky itself and towering. Watching from a distance. Not pulling you in nor under but mesmerising from afar, 'All The Time' by Seattle producer DYR slips into this state of easy awe, a digestible titan of sound.

It is practically defined by that bass, present at almost every moment, which shifts during the track's duration shifts slightly, becomes sharper fuzzier more distorted but not extremely, and also it writhes with delay later on, the now wooden twang of it more rapid fire than its original stark simplicity. Throughout there is a little procession of organic sound in the form of palm muted guitar, whether synthetic or real it is difficult to tell, but this provides a dim twinkle for the murky atmosphere, as do the later additions of gossamer layers of ambient synth like laser light crowning odd rock formations, haloing trees, glittering on dark dewy nighttime grass. A picture-painting morsel that is pneumatic and tireless in its dance energy, and emphatically chilled, yet without a single drop nor vocal sample in earshot, eschewing needless things for the barebones of beat and bass with little jewels of ambience to decorate.

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• 🔔 You may buy 'All The Time' for only $1 from DYR's Bandcamp if you like.

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☟ DYR Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube ⚘ mixcloud

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🐣 WALTER EGO — SENSU BEANS

In this track there is power and there is mysticism and there is beauty. A sort of expansive feeling that takes its cue from the reverb that seems to lance through clouds and into the stratosphere. A definite thud in the beat that has been bludgeoned into the shape of grime, sparse and robust, gaps where gaps feel good, the stop-start rhythm of it like a kickstart to the heart and blood pumping. And with this foundation, crinkling chimes form the main ornamentation, like gold foil covering jagged rocks on stark outcrops, jangling and warped and alien but warm in their mesmeric resounding.

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☞ YES/NO LAZY INTERVIEW #29 W WALTER EGO (September/2017) ☜

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This is the sound of Sheffield musicmaker Walter Ego. 'Sensu Beans' is essentially a classic minimalist grime instrumental with a futuristic lilt that channels Dragonball Z, the wholly fresh and weird and exciting feel of it with the homely nostalgic familiarity that this quite universal anime inspired and continues to inspire in many people. Combined with many samples presumably taken from the show itself – unplaceable, unintelligible but recognisable – the chimes summon that same alien warmth, a bulge of gradual bass creeping in the beat skittering virtuoso with clacking snares and hi-hats that tick staplegun and whirr uzi fast by turns and the sshh of sheafing shakers. And we are all healed, as well as amazed, by the miracle senzu beans.

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• 🔔 'Sensu Beans' is taken from Walter Ego's clearly DBZ-inspired Seven Star Ball EP, released last month via fellow Sheffield-based label Bad Taste Records. You can purchase the three-track wonder of hard beats and fluid sounds over here if you like.

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📠
☟ Walter Ego Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ twitter ⚘ songkick

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🐣 DAISILY — JEFF'S BEAT / SQUIRTLES DON'T DROWN

The emotive nature of this charged with nostalgia with the crackle of many moons past with the delights of some place some time that you reach for fingers outstretched and straining the odyssey of memory a fog in the mind slowly curling and crowding and fingertips glazed with yearning aim yesteryearly seeking for that one thing which is a something composite of many things this nebula of fond experience. It is beatmaker daisily's utilisation of this piano sample that so washes the track in gallons of organic ancestral yearning, a dusty tract of high-pitched keys that call out coldly chiming into a night that does not seem to be listening, or that listens a silently weeps knowing it can do nothing to ease the distress.

Wow. And that piano comes lifted, the musicmaker tells us via email, from an episode of the Pokémon anime called Pikachu's Goodbye: "it is pretty emotional if i say so myself." Light organs accompany the twinkling keys in the nicely named 'jeff's beat / squirtles don't drown' (it's true—they don't), now warped as if distorted through bleary tear-filled eyes, now fluttering like panicked heartbeats, providing soulful ambience on the backdrop of a crackling nocturnal canopy of sound, insectoid and chirruping, itself reminiscent of summer days, specifically summer nights, humid endless. The beat is persistent, the rapid double-tap thud of the kick, the full-bodied clack of the snare.

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• 🔔 This nostalgic track is taken from LESS FEEL I, the beat tape by daisily, which you can download from Bandcamp. It's dedicated, says he, "to the progenitors of my friends, they inspired this by n' large".

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☟ daisily Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram ⚘ spotify

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🐣 EMMECOSTA — HEAVY HEART

Slowly slowly this track rolls along, the eternal trundle of curling clouds across a greyscale landscape, the horizontal energy of chillwave simplicity sweeping into the foundation of this track: the dom-dom glooping bass of the kicks and the thin abrasion of the snare tinged with lo-fi, the soft constancy of the synth constant like a tide in the sidechain of it all. 'Heavy Heart' unfolds like a flower turning and opening to the day's first flood of light, the vocals of Gothenburg-based Italian trio Emmecosta adding silken texture to the track, the languorous luxury of it heightened. Here we are laid-back and loafing, bleary and wandering.

And around 2:40 the brief disappearance of the beat, relegated to its most bassy parts, highlights another element that bejewels the track; these high-pitched pings, synth or effected guitar it may be, how they cry into the air, splashing watercolours, the stifling distortion of it, the degradation of the pure sound conjuring this feel of something pushed to its limit—and the energy in this scathing absent melodies is something that aches and pines and yearns, careering into a blanket of dazzling stars. The electronic tricks of 'Heavy Heart', the sometimes staccato cuttings through the track, that ebb-flow sidechain, both betray and bolster how human it is, how organic, how like a melancholy nostalgic longing howl into the ether it is.

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• 🔔 'Heavy Heart' is taken from the August-released EP from the band, Velour, which was brought into the world courtesy of Stockholm label ICEA. You can listen to and download it from Bandcamp.

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📠
☟ Emmecosta Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ twitter ⚘ youtube

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