Full disclosure, I have some projects released through 30th Floor Records, a Cardiff based label with an eclectic taste in electronic music. With that being said (and any bias aside) the artists on this label are an absolute treat. This week I’m highlighting synthwave artist DisTurn and his ‘Elliptic’ album, a record released on the 30th of November. As a bonus we’ll also be talking to the man himself (skip to the bottom for the interview)!

Stephen Strachan aka DisTurn is an enigmatic figure, with this being his most significant release under this alias alongside a steady stream of remixes and singles, but boy is it a piece of synthwave 80’s gold. Each track is seemingly filled with about a million different melodies and riffs from a million different synths, keys and probably some fucking hairspray given the shear retro-ness of it all. This is a comprehensive synthwave album, 8 tracks of varying moods and styles with 2 features from singers Katie Mitchell and Elina. The production quality here is excellent, the mixing is modern and bright but still manages to maintain that dreamy 80’s vibe with deep clear reverbs, artists like Oliver, Kavinsky and Daft Punk are influences here but he uses it well and builds on ideas in his own unique way.

I won’t review every track in detail like I do for smaller albums so I’ll just highlight the tracks that particularly struck me.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of retrowave (or synthwave or synthpop or whatever you want to call sweet retro synth glory) I always hear the jittery Jupiter 8 melody for Knight Rider or New Order’s legendary ‘Blue Monday’ (there’s no middle ground in my monkey brain). But that’s all in the past, the new adventures in this sound are big, powerful and full of nothing but banging sound design, and this is highlighted spectacularly on ‘Endeavor’. From the first second you know you’re in for a wild one on this tune, the aggressive metallic clattering synth sequence of the intro highlighted with these bursts of white noise makes you feel like you’re in a rusted old spaceship on it’s last legs heading for a rough landing on some alien planet. Then, seamlessly, you’re in a different world, one characterised by this light and dreamy melody that sits comfortably atop the sharp, percussive synths and heavy hitting drum samples. The Oliver-esque ‘talking’ bass line is just pure ear candy throughout this record and here it’s done beautifully as it’s used as the driving force of the tune. Always shifting, always changing sonically and melodically.

On ‘Falling Apart’ (featuring Katie Mitchell) DisTurn stretches his production muscles and creates a polished, addictive track that I’d expect to find topping a Monstercat release soundtracking my gaming addiction. It’s a brilliant achievement that shows what can happen when a keen ear for songwriting meets a brain full of audio production know-how. Accenting the second snare of a bar with this ‘verbed out clap is straight out of the 80’s playbook and I love it. DisTurn plays with dynamics and structures so well and is a master of cohesion with his choice of instrumentation, the sharp bubbly synth that accents the chorus in the high register is complimented smoothly by the chugging bass and pads. On to the vocal performance by this mystery Katie Mitchell, what a monster performance! Powerful vocals, full of character and presence, are what elevate this song. It’s an old trope among music makers that adding any vocals to a track makes it more effective at capturing a listener, so when you have a singer that suits a style this well then you’re effectively smashing the listener across the face with the tune, screaming the catchy “NOW I’M FALLING APART’ hook while you do it. I hope these two work together again because it’s a match made in heaven to my ears. All in all, this track is a must hear if you’re a synth head like me.

But that’s enough from me, I reached out to Stephen for a quick interview about this release!

Q:What’s your background in music? I take it from your Instagram that you may be more from the audio engineering and production side of things.

A: My dads very musical and always tried to teach me to play an instrument, I was never really interested in it though, I would get bored of learning one instrument after a while, and was always too lazy to learn properly. I only got interested in electronic music production about 5 years ago after watching a youtube video of someone making a track in fl studio.

I decided two years ago to study music further at university. And I found myself enjoying working as an engineer and producer for other people at uni, so electronic music really became more of a side project. Hopefully in the future I am able to dedicate more time to electronic music production.

Q: This is a hefty album with some incredible detail – was this a long process or did it just come together naturally?

A: The album is something i’ve been slowly working on for probably close to two years, so I guess it was a long process haha. It was important to me to make the tracks on this album unique, I think that’s why it took so long, it was really hard to make each track unique, while also making them work together as an album, In many ways the album was a platform to experiment with new ideas.

As far as inspiration goes, I’m a big fan of Oliver, Vaughn Oliver is a god basically, whenever I use reference tracks, it’s always something produced by him. I also like listening to old disco and funk records for inspiration whenever my mind goes blank. There are some good smaller youtube channels posting lesser known tracks. Moscu ION, Disco Flyer, Disco 82, and Basic Rhythm are a few good ones I can remember.

Q: What gear did you use on this record?

A: I use FL Studio for electronic music. I mainly just use plugins and a midi keyboard, and then go to some outboard gear in the final stages.

I use sylenth1, u-he Diva, and korg m1/polysix a lot. I’d use Diva all the time if I could, it’s so powerful and versatile it’s scary. Unfortunately it eats up a lot of computer power.

For outbound stuff I tend to use a KingKorg, korg X3, or a korg monologue for adding layers etc. I think I used a guitar on most of the tracks somewhere in the background too.There’s some interesting things I did for this album, for example, the synths in the outro of Endeavor are going through a speaker I put in my bathroom, which was recorded back through a microphone the other side of the room. And lots of the synth lead and pad sounds on power were recorded from a toy yamaha pss-470 I bought for £15 from a charity shop.

Q: This album features some brilliant vocal features from Katie Mitchell and Elina. I’m not familiar with these two myself but I’d love to know the story of how they ended up on the album and where you heard of them?

A: I worked with Katie and Elina at uni, helping to record and mix some of their own tracks, I asked if they would be interested in writing lyrics and singing on any of my tracks and i’m thankful they said yes. The track with Katie was actually recorded more than a year ago. Hopefully I will have the chance to collaborate with them in the future.

Q:Final words, anything you’d like to add?

A: Thanks to both 30h floor records for releasing it and 7field_x for designing the album art.

Thanks to Stephen for answering a few questions and giving us a great insight into the album, which you can grab here for £3 (!!!):

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Find more from 30th Floor Records at 30thfloor.uk