A word with SKEW on 'Cyborg Rising'

Skew has been making some noise on the halftime/beats scene over the last couple of months and his release on Saturate is no exception, with a solid nod towards to legends of the scene like Eprom, Perez & G Jones.

Cyborg Rising really delivers with the hardest distorted bass lines and heavy drums thumping away underneath. We sat down and had a quick chat with Simon regarding the release and his work methods.

Who would you say are your main influences within music at the moment? What were you listening to when you wrote Cyborg Rising?

First of all, thanks for having me! My main influences are usually always drastically changing, I like loads of different stuff. I listen to a broad band of music but right now it would be Hip Hop and all the Halftime/Beats Producers that send me dope stuff! Really everything I like has a certain impact on what decisions I make when I make beats. For this EP it's definitely and obviously Eprom/Shades, Joker and Glitchmob with a touch of J Dilla, because I love wonky drums. I got inspired to write the EP after Bios (Saturate Records) played at a local event called 'Bassment'. Seeing and hearing him rinse those unreleased G Jones and Eprom tracks was really the "wow this is how it's done“ moment for me. I had to give it my own twist.

How do you do to get inspired to write music? Have you any rituals you do prior to writing a beat?

It randomly happens, there’s this constant drive of wanting to create something. I usually start with a loop or a sound I engineer and then go from there. Having hardware changed things a lot, just putting stuff on and having a go is usually very fun! You get the ideas on the go. As far as rituals go it would probably be a coffee or a tea at hand and if possible night time, I just prefer the silence and darkness sometimes.

How did you get into writing beat music / halftime kind of bits?

Pretty much some years ago when I met Yunis when he still lived around my ends. I was making dubstep by that time and Yunis pretty much opened new sonic worlds for me. Hearing a lot of the Sound coming up it was just a natural progression. It's the perfect combination of the bouncy drumflow I grew up to and the heavy bass sounds I love synthesizing. My mate Ruffman was rinsing Ivy Lab a lot when they first came out with their beat stuff so he influenced me as well.

Where did the name Cyborg Rising come from?

Originally the Tunes would all have random names, like all my projects. When I sat down with Saturate to evaluate the name, this came to mind. It really is what the title track is about and what I had in my mind 90% of the time while I was writing any track of the EP. The sound is very robotic/machine-ish but also has this human touch of failure and imperfection so it had to be "Cyborg Rising“.

I absolutely love the title track Cyborg Rising on this release along with your colab with ReDraft! Which song out of them all did you enjoy writing the most ? which one took the longest?

Thank you! I definitely enjoyed writing "Cyborg Rising“ the most, it was just one of those session at night where things would come together with ease, I recorded some synth lines and started chopping them up and forgot about time and space. "Charged Up“ probably took me the longest because I struggled a lot with finishing it to my liking.

What DAW you working on at the moment & give us a piece of hardware/software which you're really digging.

I'm using Ableton 10 at the moment and Reason 10, which was heavily involved making this EP. I really love Trash 2 by Izotope, combined with my synths its a crazy sound design tool! I just love distorting stuff so much!

What's 2019 looking like for you? Any plans you wish to announce?