With his name popping up everywhere lately with releases on GEM, Lost & Found, City Slang, Traum and more, collaborating and swapping remixes with the likes of Timo Maas, Sebastian Mullaert, Dusty Kid, Guy J & Noga Erez, Eitan Reiter serves his electronica downtempo trip hop infused album “Give It Life” at Guy J’s new Armadillo Records imprint. We caught up with him for an in depth interview about life, music and of course, synthesizers.
The only thing that all my music has in common is that it’s got a part of me in it… nothing that can be described in technical terms.
1. Can you present yourself for our readers that haven’t heard about you?
My name is Eitan. I am 35 and I have a daughter and another on the way. I am into creation in all its forms: music, painting, video, programming, etc. For the past 10 years I have been mainly touring, writing and producing music.
2. New album – Give it Life – just released on Guy J’s Armadilo – tell us about it.
The album was formed over 5 years from a collection of tracks that I feel appeal to me after passing the time test. Every now and than I would make a tune with no specific genre, or one that has nothing to contribute directly to my dancefloor oriented sets, just in order to explore as many sides and forms of making music as possible and reminding myself why I love music so much. It has really been a learning experience and working with so many amazing musicians was the very best part. When I met Guy for the first time it was at a party of his in Amsterdam and we chatted for a bit. He told me about his plan to start a new electronica label Armadillo, and I could instantly feel Guy is one of these people that do what they do for the love of music. He really felt like the one to do it with and his enthusiasm about my sound is something I am thankful for.
3. Your musical output is extremely diverse – Techno, Ambient, Trip Hop, Electronica and much more – is there a common theme to all your music? What are the positive sides to releasing music with such diversity and what are the negative ones?
I guess positive or negative sides are questions that make sense if you are trying to aim for a certain concept. The only thing that all my music has in common is that it’s got a part of me in it… nothing that can be described in technical terms.
My goal is to create what I feel every day and thלn when it’s done to promote that. I find that finding out how to make a living from something you have done from pure artistic intentions is where creativity is really needed.
As a human being I feel different moods and this album is a documentation of some of those moods. It’s much easier to create a business with a product that has no surprises and you know what you are going to get, but I always admired producers like DJ Shadow, Aphex Twin etc. that just do what they feel and their crowd expects the unexpected.
4. You seem to take great care to involve artistic approaches to the visual side of things as well, with video clips and visual art – what is the philosophy behind that?
I enjoy listening to music in motion, when driving, running, looking at clouds from a plane. I feel that music needs an extra stimulation to reach its maximum impact. I am also really fascinated by visual forms of art and more so by complex productions and coordinating like the ones needed to make an amazing video.
5. Can you tell us about your Outdoor Sessions project?
Playing electronic music on machines and synths is probably my favorite thing to do but to be honest it doesn’t look so interesting for most viewers. I want to entertain people and I feel connecting electronic music and nature is a great balance for the eyes and also for the ears as it’s super inspiring to create music outdoors. The goal is to have some guests on the show. The episode we are editing now is with Sebastian Mullaert. The last episode just released was a live performance of music from the album I made with two friends and great musicians.
6. It’s obvious you’re into Hardware – how does it affect your music making?
Touching instruments and moving my whole body made me more present and precise while making music, I feel it has also improved my DJ skills. I just really like using the amazing instruments I have collected over the years and using a mixing desk. I think it has to do with the sound that I grew up listening to. I have been doing a lot of laptop VST productions and you can reach insanely deep levels of production with only your mind being the limitation, but what can I say… lately I am really into analog again. I guess I am thankful both sides exist and that you can make music in more than one way. These days I don’t even use a computer thanks to a company called Elektron.
7. You’ve just released a remix to Noga Erez @ City Slang – how did that materialize? In general you seem to be very diverse with your remixes – remixing The Doors, Suicide Silence, Robert Babicz and more – what do you like about remixing? How do you approach remixing such different music?
People approach me for remixes and if its really far from my world I enjoy the challenge. Noga and Ori are good friends and I really love what they do so I was more than happy to do it.
8. This album offers a lot of songs, you usually produce more instrumental music, how did you approach the lyrics?
It was a really cool process, some of them came from the singers like Choices – Omri Klein and Fade Away – Tzlil Danin. But I actually got to write some of my own songs for the first time. Avoid was a love song I wrote and was lucky enough to have Hadas Kleinmann perform. Lyrics add a whole other dimension of art and expression to a musical piece and I would be happy to dive more into that in the future.
Touching instruments and moving my whole body made me more present and precise while making music, I feel it has also improved my DJ skills.
9. A lot of other people were involved in the album – would you like to tell us a bit about them?
Omri Klein, Yotam Weiss, Nadav Katz, Ido Ophir, Tzlil Danin, Idan Haviv, Hadas Kleinmann, Ori Rousso, Yael Feldinger, Joel Rebel Sun, Barak Rosen, Nimrod Gorovich, Gal Binyamin, Shaul Eshet, Sebastian Mullaert, Guy J and a few more BIG surprises as remixers.
And on the Video side Ben Kirschenbaum (Eyechant), Onn Halpern & Liel Simon (Shabbos Boys) and the Animator Oron Aiche.
I could write pages about each one of these talents and I probably forgot some, all I can say is that I was really really lucky to have them all on board this project.
10. Surrounding the album was also a string of banging techno releases – the Flux vinyl @ GEM, an EP on Lost & Found with a remix by Timo Maas, an EP on Digital Structures with a remix by Dusty Kid – how do balance between your Techno side and the more downtempo / song side? Is it a good mix?
I have this vague vision of doing an electronic show that presents all sides of music I love. From deep beatless ambient to 145 bpm old school trance beat or even higher bpm breakbeats. I have a feeling it will all connect one day. Also a lot of the new stuff I am working on at the moment is really making it hard for me to define what it is… It feels like electronica that I wanna play in a techno set 🙂
8. Share with us one Techno track that blew your mind lately.
Wow, I am more into old tunes at the moment, but I do hear a lot of underground music by friends, so anything by a fresh producer called PRZ is worth checking out.
9. Future plans?
To be as focused as much on my surrounding and to help all the people that are constantly helping me. Also to be a better musician , and maybe to even develop my own gear for my live shows.
