Ahead of his EP release in November, upcoming producer salute speaks with Wonderland about his journey so far, as well as sharing an exclusive new mix.
salute has already been causing a stir in the underground music scene and received backing from the likes of Huw Stephens – and his debut EP is still yet to drop. At 19 he’s an incredibly interesting guy who has always felt really connected to the UK music scene despite growing up in Vienna.
The Brighton-based producer’s title track to his new EP is titled “Castle (Magic)” and has already received a lot of radio support. It is both seriously cool and seriously well-produced, featuring grime beats and airy, hypnotic vocals. We also love “VXV (Way You Do)” which begins with building orchestral sounds until the beats drop. Below salute shares his Wonderland mix and speaks with us about his new EP, musical influences and teaching himself to produce.
https://soundcloud.com/saluteaut/wonderland-mix/s-tcgue>
Your new track “Castle (Magic)” is so so good and you’re only 19! When did you start making music? Can you tell us anything else about your journey into music?
It must have been about 5 years ago, so when I was 14 and basically me just making music in a living room on my parents computer and dabbling around not really having a clue about what I was doing.
Did you just teach yourself then?
Yeah I didn’t even know that there were any tutorials online – which there are plenty of – but I sort of just wanted to try things out myself. I didn’t think i’d be putting music online anywhere it was just for me and I just used what i’d learnt from piano lessons and stuff and went ahead and made really bad music at first.
We’ve read that you lived in Vienna before settling in Brighton. How did growing up there influence your music?
My music’s very influenced by UK music but I never lived in the UK before last year. So I think it helped me take what I knew from UK music and put all the European stuff I’d been hearing into it as well so that my music was more of a mix between UK, US and European stuff and not just UK music – I think that’s how it influenced my music the most.
Who/what are your biggest musical inspirations growing up – are there any icons for you?
So there’s Timbaland – he’s one of the best producers of all time in my opinion, and people like Justin Timberlake, Michael Jackson, Pharrell.
You’ve received support from a lot of people in the industry and you’ve performed at Bestival – it’s all been pretty amazing! What has been you’re favourite bits of 2015 so far?
My favourite bits must have been all the radio support recently I got for “Castle (Magic)” – like Annie Mac and Huw Stephens and more recently Phil Taggart playing it on his show, saying how it sounded like I went into Huw’s head and took a load of separate sounds and put them together. That was a huge compliment and that’s really nice thing to say I think. Having these big players basically play my music on the radio is something I never thought would happen so that feels really good.
https://soundcloud.com/saluteaut/castle
How was Bestival, did you enjoy it?
It was amazing. Apart from my set itself which was great I just had a really good time with all the people I met there and all the people I already knew – it was a shame I had to leave on Saturday to go to another show but I just had such a great time there.
What was the best thing you saw?
Hmm, good question. I don’t have one definite best thing but surprisingly Jurassic 5 were incredibly good – they were ridiculously good and then FKA Twigs was one of the highlights and I caught some of Tame Impala’s set which sounded surreal and then Monki played an amazing DJ set after FKA Twigs – that was really impressive.
So what’s next for you? Are you working on any more music?
Yeah I’m actually sitting in the studio right now finishing my EP which is going to be a four track thing which is coming out on 37 Adventures in November which i’m really hyped about because it’s got some really good features on it. I’m really excited because these tracks i’ve been sitting on them for quite a while now and getting round to finishing them off is just good and being able to put out a four-track project is something i’ve been looking forward to for a year now so i’m really happy for this to happen.
Amazing – well we can’t wait because we love what we’ve heard so far! Just a random question as well as I’m just intrigued – was there anything behind the choice of the name “salute”?
That’s a question I’ve been answering quite a lot recently – the thing is it was sort of random really. The word was stuck in my head after I went to France with my family years ago just because of how often it’s used there. Around the time I was looking for a name for a new project and that was literally the first word that stuck in my head so I just went with that really.
Words: Alys Davies