ELLIO you may remember from his track ‘Coffee’ which premiered on phuture a few months back. Him & inspektah teamed up for this huge collaboration which will indeed, take you ‘by surprise’. Get to know more about these artists below, after you press the play button :).
Interview curated by Michael, founder of phuture.
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Phuture: Hey there ELLIO & inspektah, it’s a pleasure to be able to interview both of you! Before we discover more about you, what should we already know about you?
ELLIO: Hopefully more see the light of day! Sometimes I find myself going through old session files and I find unfinished collabs we did and it’s like ‘this is dope, why didn’t we finish this???’. But yeah we try to work whenever possible with super conflicting schedules.
inspektah: Ellio and I go back a few years. It’s upsetting that we haven’t put out more music together. I work a 9 – 5 in Boston, so that keeps me busy but I try to get to Ellio’s studio whenever I can…. Working with him is always a blast. We’ve made a handful of tunes but majority will never see the light of day.
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Phuture: This collab ‘BY SURPISE?’ caught us off guard when we got it as a submission. The energy with this collaboration is transportive while transparent. How long did you two work on this, and what inspired this track?
ELLIO: I had a lot of fun with this one. When he initially sent me the stems, it was right in the sweet spot where it was already an interesting and inspiring idea, but there was also room to take the track to another place. This one felt really genuine because both of our respective styles shine through, but our mutual influences tied it all together.
inspektah: It was a throwaway beat on my computer that I had for about a year. I flipped some old 80’s track. I didn’t know what to do with it, but it was 75% done. I sent Ellio the stems, we linked up, and the rest is history.
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Phuture: Please tell us that more collaborations between you two are coming? What can we be expecting from each of you throughout the rest of 2016?
ELLIO: I’m so down!!! I think we really do always have at least one open project haha. I think an EP could defintely be on the cards at some point in 2016…
inspektah: It feels as though we always have at least one song we’re working on. That being said, I’d be open to an EP. I am thinking we buy a 20-pack of Red Bull, lock ourselves in the studio overnight and see what happens. Thoughts, Ellio?
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Phuture: When was the moment you discovered that music was your calling? Was it a specific event or substance that inspired this?
ELLIO: I started messing around with music programs at age 10 or 11, in the beginning I was just sort of arranging loops together and then moved to midi, then started designing sounds and it snowballed from there. A little over a year ago I started working as a mix engineer at a recording studio just outside of Boston, and when I built up enough of a consistent client base to quit my regular 9-5 I realized “hey maybe there’s more to this than just making beats for fun”.
inspektah: I played bass guitar through high school, which is when I got introduced to the concept of composing and structuring songs. When I got to college, I didn’t meet a lot of musicians in my dorm. One day I decided to download Audacity. From there I started programming drums and recording bass/vocals. I wouldn’t say music is my calling… but I have a lot of fun consuming and making it. It has gotten me through a lot.
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Phuture: Whenever you’re feeling a lack of motivation to work on a track, do you have a technique that gets you out of the hole? If so, what is it?
ELLIO: I’m always working on a bunch of different projects for different aliases and various collabs, when I’m stuck on something I usually just put it on the back burner for a bit and work on something else. There are certain situations though that I love an element of a track and it’s just not coming together, so I’ll just keep throwing stuff into the project until I find something that works.
inspektah: I generally spend more time outside or try and work on something else… take photos, draw, write. It’s important to keep developing the right side of your brain even if it’s through different mediums. When it comes to production, I get writer’s block all the time… it’s part of the process. Always has been
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Phuture: Where do you each want to be individually on this date, four years from now in 2020?
inspektah: I have no idea where I want to be – I just hope the world doesn’t crumble before then. As long as I’m happy, healthy and making music, I’m good. I wonder how many sci-fi movies from the past take place in the year 2020…
ELLIO: I second that about the world still being in tact!!! No matter what happens as long is I’m healthy and still able to make a living doing what I love, I’ll be happy!
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Phuture: Any routines that either of you take part in, which help your day-to-day lives?
inspektah: Exercise. Highly underrated.
ELLIO: Nature is also highly underrated. It’s important to take a second away from everything and get in touch with what’s real and natural.
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Phuture: What do you do outside of music, if anything? How do you find a balance to ensure you have time for music?
ELLIO: There’s not much besides music these days to be honest! My schedule is crazy and inconsistent so I try and see my friends and family as much as I can.
inspektah: I ride my bike around the city (Boston) all the time. During the winter months in Boston, as Ellio can probably relate to, I hibernate.
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Phuture: shoutouts?
ELLIO: ELLIO: Shoutout to Jack Montel for giving me a shot when no one else would! Also shouts to my parents, AK-47 and Never21 for supporting me throughout the years!!
inspektah: Shout out to my dog Reggie who passed last week. RIP little homie!
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You can watch a music video for ‘By Surprise’ designed by here on YouTube:
Free Producers pack by Ellio – here
Check out more of the artists & phuture here:
ELLIO:
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Inspektah:
Soundcloud
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