HØST on his latest release & influences in music

His ‘Swervin/Meditations’ EP on Sound Museum delivers us boundary-breaking sounds that will surely have your head catchin’ a bop... or ten.

HØST is a man who has truly been exploring his sound in 2018. With releases on the likes of DIVISION, Sound Museum and Terabyte Records, We caught up talking inspirations, production and more.

What should the people know about HØST and how he came to be?

I’m from the UK, I’ve had a deep passion for music from a young age and was exposed to many different styles and mediums during my childhood. I got a laptop at around 13 which had an archaic version of Reason on and spent large swathes of time watching tutorials until I got to basic grips with it. I couldn’t make anything noteworthy at all but just kept working away more and more until stuff started to make sense. Music definitely worked as a release for me and subsequently, I spent a large amount of my time working on noises and new sounds.

How did you discover your passion for bass music? How did you get involved in the scene?

I predominantly listened to heavy rock and metal growing up, however I remember hearing the drum break used in Slipknot’s track ‘Eyeless’ and then becoming really obsessed by it re-listening to the song so much and trying to recreate the break within Reason. I was also at the time learning guitar and my tutor was a big fan of Drum and Bass, exposing me to Ray Keith, Logistics, High Contrast to name a few, from this I became a big fan of Drum & Bass and electronic music. Around this time I bought vinyl decks from a friend to start to learn mixing.

Shortly after this, I purchased Caspa & Rusko’s Fabriclive 37 after hearing Caspa’s ‘The Terminator’ on someone's Myspace page. This Fabriclive I would say changed everything for me and changed my taste and directional path. This was around about 8/9 years ago so my sound developed and grew from this.

What drove you to begin making music, and how has your production process evolved over the years?

What has always driven me is a love for music I love spending my time doing it and I love spending time developing my sound and discovering new ones. I always find myself listening to songs and picking out bits that I love and then wanting to recreate it. This has thankfully become easier now with my growth as a producer and I find it easier to pinpoint noises from said tracks.

When I first started producing however, I always found myself adding so many elements to a track, not understanding that less is more. I think my process has now become a lot more streamlined. I spent a fair bit of money on synthesizers over the last 2 years and find this allows for a much more ‘fluid’ like style of production as I usually just lax back and play everything in live making cuts etc. in the post process.

What were some inspirations going into the making of your ‘Swervin/Meditations’ EP?

I was listening to a lot of drill music while making Swervin which inspired me in many elements in the track. I also had been trying to work a lot more with noise and the main synth part came one night when I was playing around on my SUB 37.

In regards to Meditations, I was reading the book ‘Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius, and weirdly enough this is what inspired me to write this track. I wanted to make something evolving yet forceful with a lot of power to play off the top of it. I was thinking of the rhythm while reading and had to stop and write it then and there. It really just evolved from that and came together quite organically.

You recently released a track on the compilation for Canadian based record label, Aufect.. Can you give us some behind the scenes insight on how this came to be?

The dudes over at Aufect have been supporters for a while and we got speaking about a year back, this transpired into them asking me to get involved in the 10-year anniversary. I have also written a 4-track EP for the dudes over here. Watch out for that dropping in the future. Big shouts to the guys over there. ❤️

What do you have planned for the Host project moving forward?

I have a track coming out on Division's next Partials, a 4 track EP coming out with Aufect, a track coming out on the next Renraku compilation, on top of this I have just finished the last track for the next self-release, Chapters 7-12 – I am extremely excited to share this all with everyone. Also, to mention I have a separate alias called ‘Lords & Royals’ and have been producing a lot of Lo-fi style beats through this, I recently produced one of the instrumentals on my housemate ‘Lazy Eyez’ forthcoming UK Hip Hop release and I have a 12-track release lined up to come out via Lords & Royals which will drop early in 2019.

Big up for the chat! Let this be the warning for everyone to keep it locked in 2019, the kitchen sounds hot!