Interview: Producer/Sound Designer Pluto Tideswell Talks About His New Album "Walk Alone"
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“...”Walk Alone” is quite explicit. It represents a part of my life that is now gone. I am now at peace with it and going through this album helped me a lot to put everything outside.”
You've mentioned that your influences vary from pop to metal, as well as from techno to classical. Which genre(s) would you say had the most resonance with you as you produced and recorded the ten songs on the album?
That is a tough question.
I tried to keep everything under a certain kind of sound vocabulary but as you can hear the various songs are influenced from many electronic styles (synthwave, dnb…).
I love to borrow time signature changes from prog rock, or harmonic structures from older rock and roll or pop tunes. I think it is fun to challenge myself and the listener, to not fall always under the same loop of chords.
My main goal was to give a pop quality to the album but with a twist.
Tell us about how you got started as a music producer and which instruments you currently play.
I started my music career as a classical trained pianist and I was playing in some emerging bands in Italy. Around 7 years ago I started to get curious about music production.
I am quite an introverted person but I always have the need to express what is inside of me in a way or another. I find it almost therapeutic, like journaling.
Currently, I still play the piano, I've also started to play guitar out of need for a more portable instrument. Of course I don't know how much you consider sound design as playing an instrument but I spend a lot of time on that.
Congratulations on the completion and release of your album "Walk Alone"; how long did it take to complete and what was your creative process along the way?
Thank you so much! I must say it was a long way to get to the final product. I remember having the first idea for one song ('Take me away') maybe in 2016. I was fidgeting with the guitar and the main melody came along. This is not my main job but I love to do it. Because of this I have a limited amount of hours to work on my own music and that makes everything slower. With enough willpower bit by bit things get done.
I didn't want to rush the album but it should have come out earlier, also the covid pandemic hit quite hard and everything got slowed down.
About the process I mostly leave it quite open. I love when inspiration comes from nothing, when you start to sing a melody out of the blue and you say to yourself "Yes, this could work".
I like to work with what your subconscious wants to say. I think this line of work can bring out much more from me.
What does the album's title "Walk Alone" represent, and were there songs that you recorded that did not make your final track list? If so, why not?
Well, "Walk Alone" is quite explicit. It represents a part of my life that is now gone. I am now at peace with it and going through this album helped me a lot to put everything outside. We always go forward and I think it is important to remind yourself who you were and how you changed.
There were some ideas that didn't make the album but I never finished them. I wanted to have an intro track but it got implemented in the song "Greed". I had a different idea for the ending, something more instrumental and grandiose but with time I realized that "Black bile" was the right ending. I think the album now has smoother transitions.
How did you go about deciding the sequence of the ten songs on the album?
The sequence follows my personal experiences. There is a line of thought that has a beginning and an ending and it goes throughout the whole album. But I am not going to reveal that!
With the "Walk Alone" album now released, what are some of your goals musically for the rest of the year?
My year is quite full. I am producing music for theater, dance and video productions.
It is something different and has to be approached in a different way. Somehow it is harder because there are more "rules" to follow due to the nature of collaborating with other artists, but I like the challenge.
For personal production I already have quite an array of songs on the side but I don't know if I will be able to release them this year. They need a lot of cleaning and perfecting.
In the next release I want to explore a darker side of me and a darker kind of music.
Stream and Share “Walk Alone” on: Bandcamp | Spotify
Connect with Pluto Tideswell: Instagram