Hey guys, me and Slipovic are back with another interview for you guys. This time we had the opportunity to interview a legend in the hard dance scene, A*S*Y*S*. That being said check out the interview, and hopefully you will enjoy it!
1. Hello Frank! Thank you very much for accepting our request for this interview how are you, is everything cool ?Yes all good, just on the way home from Amsterdam after playing at Defqon 1 this weekend. Always something special to share an area with 40.000 fans of harder electronic music
2. Over the years you haven't been releasing under A*S*Y*S alias as much, is their a reason for that? Yes and no. First of all I did a lot of remixes, like for Operation Blade, Kamui’s Electro Slut, two Kiddstock Theme’s, LCK’s Penguines and for Neal Thomas Pyrotechno! But you are right on the other hand my last A*S*Y*S single release was in November 2008 with “Lost in Acid”, because also the Acid Headcracker 2010 release was a collaboration with Ben Sanders (The Engineer) which has been out since early this year.
I do prefer to develop a project and it’s sound further. I simply hate nothing more than to “tread a beaten track”
You can check my releases and you will see that no single sounds like any other before. A few people hate that, coz they love a specific A*S*Y*S tune maybe Acid Nightmare or No More Fuckin’ Rock N Roll and expecting I should do exactly do the same again, but that’s not A*S*Y*S style. I pay tribute to the “Sound of now”. I don’t wanna sound dated or old fashioned, so I push my sound forward and let new vibes into it.
Again I would get easily bored to do every time the same sound.
The negative side of that is when you are searching for new sounds and trying new things, if you are not satisfied with the result of your productions you shouldn’t release it. That’s exactly what happened. I was never really happy with the approaches I created for a new A*S*Y*S single. To me all the layouts I did create were more or less a weak compromise at the end and so I decided not to release until I would be 100% satisfied with the outcome.
That’s why “Klick Klack WTF” (new A*S*Y*S single) seems to have now a big positive response after the first promo mail out. It came at the right time with the right vision of my idea how it should be like, I believe.
3. When we look at your latest releases we see that you are using your real name, Frank Ellrich, and this style is a bit more different than what we are used to, a little more tech house, why did you change your style ?I didn’t change my style. I just decided to release also under my real name Frank Ellrich too. And what would be the point to make the same sound with Frank Ellrich as I already do with A*S*Y*S!?
Since I produce electronic music I always loved to push & test my skills in different genres (check discogs
).
From my point of view it would be silly not to do so. Let me try to explain it simple. When I create a track for a different genre it makes my producer skills more complete by the end. To be more specific: When I produce a progressive house tune my approach for the final result has to be totally different compared to an A*S*Y*S production, concerning which sounds I choose, what kind of grooves I try and how I have to do the mixdown. All things I learn in this process I can transfer and use mostly for all A*S*Y*S productions as well.
Let’s say producing tracks in different kind of genres creates a lot of synergy I also get the questions from fans, “Hey Frank, why do you do House and Electro now as well? Don’t you like you’re A*S*Y*S sound anymore?” I don’t really answer that, I prefer to ask them a question: “When you like to eat Pizza, does that mean you don’t like your favorite meal pasta anymore?”
4. How does it feel to play at both softer and harder events ? What do you prefer?I can’t say which I like more, because in the end it’s not just the sound which is responsible for the pleasure, it is more depending on the party and the circumstances itself. I played a closing set for Ferry Corsten last year in Kiev for “Cream” which is one of my favorites parties amongst the softer events I have played. But I wouldn’t miss for the world, appearances at bangin’ parties like “In Qontrol” or “Pharmacy”.
5. Why did you call your self A*S*Y*S when your began producing? I mean do you really love acid that much?This is one of the most questions I have to answer regarding A*S*Y*S. Well when I started with Kai Tracid to create music we struggled a bit when we had to create the most important part for a tune, the mainpart. We were never really satisfied with the sounds we chose, till the moment we tried to use the Roland TB 303 bassline machine for this. From the very first moment we felt.. fuck yes, that’s exactly the vibe we wanna express in our music: hard, dark, rough & dirty
So the Acid sound kinda saved our productions, coz without the TB 303 we might have failed to ever complete a track together. So we used this magic moment to turn it into the saying: Acid saved our production and it will save your soul when you listen to it.
6. How do you feel about upcoming acts like Diablik, Stana, Dimavi. etc... You support them a lot in your sets, could you think about making a track together with one of them ?In general I love all people, especially upcomers, who put a lot of effort, enthusiasm and love into the harder edged music. Nowadays we don’t have a lot of these kind of guys in our hard scene anymore. The guys you listed above definitely belong to those sort of people, so support will be given naturally, whenever I feel I can do it! I have played a lot of their stuff in my radio shows!
New Collaborations are rare and difficult to do lately, simply because of a lack of time. But the phrase “never say never” describes it perfectly in that case
7. Many of your songs to make it more specific Acid Nightmare is probably one of the most well known track you did, why do you think people today still consider it a great hit?Yes it has been a great hit in 2000 and it is still a big classic. We sold more than 14.000 vinyl copies and the tune went into the regular German media control charts (overall pop charts), which was very surprising, because normally, such hard and dark sounds went never that high. On top Dutch legend DJ’s like Lady Dana pointed out “Acid Nightmare” as major influence for the development of the later on popped up Hardstyle genre.
All I can say is that Kai and I might have created a tune which was really unique and genre groundbreaking. In addition, it had a strong memorable idea and vocal phrase which might have helped as well.
8. What kind of hardware and software do you use to make your tunes?Ohh maybe a bit too much to list them all, but my favorites are:
Sequencer: Logic 8, Ableton 8 and Cubase 5.0
Hardware: Nordlead 1, Access Virus B, TB 303
Sofware: FXpansion Synth Quad, Sylenth 1,
9. Is your latest tune "Kickin" dedicated to the World Cup by any chance? Are you following the tournament as well ?Yes I do follow the World Cup. I m not into every game, but of course I cross my fingers for the German team and enjoy just other games on a high class level. And yeah “Kickin” was dedicated to the World Cup, but on purpose
10. Thanks Frank for doing this interview, do you have upcoming gigs and releases you would like to share to your fans?You are welcome, thanxxx for given me the opportunity to announce my new A*S*Y*S single “Klick Klack WTF” That has already had huge support since the first promo being sent out, which I never expected that at such an early stage!
For all who missed it so far can check out here a lil snippet:
http://www.fe-records.com/klickklack.html On this page you can also find a lil promo mix for free! The official release will be the 28th of June.
Bigger upcoming gigs are:
Support act for Tiesto’s world tour appearance in the Ukraine in Kharkov, Odessa, Lvov and Kiev. Dance Valley in Amsterdam, Airport Jam in Estonia, Creamfields in the UK, Nature One in Germany and Defcon 1 in Sydney. Pretty sure I will meet & see a few of you guys somewhere around
This interview was done by KAi and Slipovic
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awesome!
