Talking Shop: Pythius
Black Sun Empire’s former intern is now blowing up on the D&B scene. In the wake of his recent album,
Descend, we catch up with the Dutch producer to find out how he does it.
When did you start making music and how did you get into it?
“I started out with rock and metal and the like as a drummer; when I was eight my dad bought me a Tama Rockstar drum kit… But I guess that wasn’t really the question [ laughs]. For electronic music I started out with an iMac, and a set of KRK VXT6 (actually pretty decent speakers I must say). I started out trying to make dubstep but I quickly went over to drum & bass.”
Tell us about your studio/setup…
“Well I’m using one of the Black Sun Empire studios at the moment. I’ve got a pretty sweet setup there – two Adam S3Hs, an Adam Sub12, and a Steinberg UR28M soundcard. I also have some synths in there. There is my own DeepMind 12 (which I’m loving at the moment) and BSE’s Nord Lead 4 and Moog Sub 37 (love that one too). I still primarily use soft synths because it’s more practical and a faster workflow. But the more I use hardware synths the more I’m starting to fall in love with them. It’s more of a jamming thing and less ‘a trying to get from A to B way’ of producing, so I got some quite nice and unexpected results out of that!”
What DAW do you use and why?
“I’m using Cubase 9.5 now. I was on Logic a few years back, but when I saw how Cubase worked, I got very excited and decided to go over to that. Also assembling a new Windows PC just dedicated for Cubase use is a lot cheaper than trying to get the same high specs with an Apple computer.”
What one piece of gear in your studio could you not do without and why?
“I think that would be the MIDI keyboard (well in this case it’s a Nord Lead serving as one). I absolutely hate trying to use in-DAW keyboards controlled on your normal PC keyboard; those really annoy me.”
What’s your latest studio addition?
“The Morph 2 Plugin by Zynaptiq. It’s great for combining two sounds in one weird big new sound. I picked it up after watching the Mick Gordon masterclass; he was showing it in there and I got really excited!”
What dream bit of gear would you love to have in your studio?
“I would love to have either a Korg Prologue or a Sequential Circuits Pro One. I really love the sound that comes out of both. I tried the Prologue at a few events and it really impressed me. I used to use Native Instruments’ Monark a lot, which is basically their software version of the Pro-One. I’ve switched to U-he Repro-1 now which is also a beast.”
When approaching a new track or project, where do you start?
“I try to start with writing a riff, since (at least for me) I noticed that putting drum patterns in early kinda dictates where the riff is going and that restricts creativity. Or I start with just messing about with a synth and build some sounds and sometimes that really helps with getting new ideas for melodies and riffs too.”
What are you currently working on?
“Well, during the last half a year that I was making my album, a lot of people tried to get me doing remixes and collabs, all of which I bounced because I wanted to focus on finishing the big project first. So now that it’s done, I have to play catch-up and do all these now… [ laughs].”