“Honestly there was probably a time about two years ago when production stuff started getting really full on and I thought I was going to stop making music all together,” he says. “I’ve been making music all my life pretty much, but once I was working 60 hours a week in the studio I was like, ‘Oh God I don’t have time to keep up with all of this.’ So a lot of these songs have been collected over that time period. I went off writing and then I came back on and now I’ve collected this set of songs that I’m really proud of.”
Eremin’s studio commitments might’ve momentarily delayed his creative activities, but being involved with a diverse range of artists is actually what pushed him to get stuck into his own tracks.
“I find that I get more inspiration out of the people who I directly work with than the people I listen to,” he says. “Just because you see a creation from start to finish, and I find that really inspiring. People like Hiatus influenced me a little bit, and Oscar Key Sung and I’lls, they’re probably right up there.
“I used to write a lot of rock music, but the thing that got me into electronic music was just seeing the possibilities. The first record I mastered was I’lls’ first EP [Thread, 2011]. I think them creating that was really inspiring to me and made me realise that there’s a whole different medium that you can explore with a lot more possibilities.”
Along with Fractures and Kučka – who feature on the singles Ghosts and Anhedoniac respectively – I’lls’ Simon Lam (under the guise Nearly Oratorio) sings on the EP’s final track Two Dones. Eremin’s tracks tend to begin as instrumentals, but he realised these ones would benefit from the addition of vocals.
“Part of what I’ve been aiming for with the EP is a real minimalist aesthetic,” he says. “For instance, the song with Simon on it, if you take out the vocal there’s a harp and a synth chord for the first minute and a half, which people would just get bored of and tune out. So I wanted to get them on board to try and add a story to it and just another dimension of interest. All three of them just totally killed it.”
Fractures and Nearly Oratorio are both Melbourne based, which made the collaborative process fairly easy. However, working with the Perth-based Kučka was a new challenge for Eremin. “Having people in the studio, everything happens quite quickly and naturally, but with long distance you’ve got to email back and forth. But it was a good challenge and I’m really happy with what she’s done with the track. I think it’s wild.”
Working on other people’s projects gives you a priceless level of distance, which speeds up the decision making process. But taking total control over a project often leads to fixating on minor details. Making this EP has taught Eremin a lot about self-discipline.
“The thing that I’m slowly learning as I go is just to create anchor points for myself. So if I make a demo and there’s one section that everyone universally loves, I’ll keep that in mind and don’t mess with it – build the rest of the song around that and just remember that one time when everyone loved it. Even if I forget that it’s good, I still remember that other people had a really good first impression of it.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
