Ankou on his recent movements

It’s always good to see an artist develop his sound. One man making some noticeable movements this year is Ankou. We had a chat with the man himself about his recent tracks & plans for the future.

So let’s hear a bit about yourself man!

Yo! I'm a 19-year-old producer from Poland. I've been making music for about five years but I started treating it more seriously about 2 years ago when I became Ankou. I've always been into experimenting with sounds and different styles but what I usually make is Halftime. It's like a sweet spot between heaviness of Drum & Bass and Hip Hop groove for me.

What I focus on in my music is sound design and a dark, gloomy atmosphere which I've always loved. I raised listening to Rock and Metal because of my uncle. I was headbanging to "Roots Bloody Roots" by Sepultura when I was 6 years old (haha). I was so impressed by his guitar skills back then that I decided to go to a music school where I learnt music theory and practised playing the guitar and the piano.

You’ve been coming up with some really interested stuff lately, it’s always great to see a producer carving his own unique sound. What kind of tools do you use to make music?

For the past 7 or 8 months I've been an Ableton user and I'm absolutely in love with this DAW but before it I used FL Studio. My main tools for sound design are Serum, FM8 and Operator. I also love adding Saturator and Glue Compressor on almost everything (haha). My music is inspired by a wide spectrum of different styles and genres. I've been following different labels such as Renraku (which I'm a part of), Upscale or Inspected over the past years and their artists were my biggest influence.

I understand you have a new track coming to our ears this Friday...

Yes! It's called "Forsaken" and it's a freebie I'm going to drop for my birthday. It's a bit more mellow and melodic than my usual stuff but it's still heavy at some point I think. This one is quite emotional for me because I treated this track as a cure for my bad mood I used to have for the last few months and it also cleared up my writer's block.

I notice that your work rate has improved a lot in recent months, I’m always keen to hear how producers approach their workflow.

As I said before, I switched for Ableton earlier this year and I think it was the cause of this improvement. It was fresh for me to use it and I spent days and nights working on new music which I prepared for the next months.

Also, I finished my high school in May and thanks to this I had 4 months of vacations which I tried to spent as much productively as possible. I usually approach a new track with drums. For example I start with making a snare and then I make a drum loop to implement the groove. I rarely design basses in the projects. I prefer creating libraries of sounds I designed and then using them in my tracks because it allows me to work faster and I can easily manipulate these sounds by resampling them.

Anything else in the pipeline?

I have tons of new tracks prepared for the next months that I'm really stoked to share. Currently I'm working on my new EP which is definitely my best work yet and I have huge plans for it. It's mostly Drum & Bass but I tried to collect all of my biggest inspirations of the last year from artists like Former, Mefjus, LEViT∆TE or Chee and bring them together as something completely new. It includes for example a collab with my friend ÆTERNA. Also there is a collab with my Polish friend Zack Efedron coming soon so stay tuned!