After almost a year long hiatus New Something artist Derdy Harry released a new track, Saturn, which was well worth the late. We sat down with Derdy Harry to discuss the track, what he's been up to the last year, and his plans for the future.
Thanks man! Unfortunately things have definitely been a bit rough since my last release, I had to receive major surgery on my spine this past year and the recovery has been far from easy, but I’m stoked to finally start slowly getting back into making music again.
This track was actually written way back in mid 2019, I was dealing with lots of stress from some personal issues as well as finishing up school, and I was in a kind of strange head space. I had a large portion of the track down and felt like it needed some deep spoken word vocals, so I kind of just went with what was going on in my head at the time and it ended up working pretty nicely. I’d go on to play the track at various live shows for years, but hadn’t felt like releasing it at the time because I felt it wasn’t ready. It honestly took some convincing from our label head Weir to decide to finally clean it up and release Saturn, but after talking to him and seeing how the crowd would react when I played it at shows, it seemed like it was time.
That’s a tough question for me because I find that most of the time, each track starts from a different place. It could be a some cool synth sounds I’m playing around with that might inspire the rest of the song, or a catchy vocal sample, anything really. That being said, I definitely try to get some solid drums down on the track within the first session. The drums usually provide a great foundation and backbone to the track that make it really easy for me to decide what direction to take the song in next.
It was pretty surreal to be honest, I think about those nights sometimes and they’re almost like some blurry dream that I made up in my head. While the lead up to those shows definitely came with a lot of anxiety, everything would kind of just wash away once I was on stage and the adrenaline had kicked in. If I’m being real, right after I handed the stage over to Malaa that night, I went straight to my green room and threw up from the adrenaline, dead sober. To this day, it’s still probably my favorite show I’ve ever played so far, the energy from the crowd that night was just unmatched. Fun fact, it was also one of the first times (if not the first time) I had played Saturn to a live audience!
Unfortunately I need a bit more time to sort out my health with my spine before I hop back into live shows again. My recovery has been abnormally slow compared to what it should be, but I’m doing my best to be patient with myself and stay focused on getting my body right. It’s definitely been tough though, I’ve had to turn down some pretty killer gig opportunities this past year which is never easy. Hoping to be back into the swing of things sometime soon.
I’ve really been loving playing around with Granulator II on Ableton recently. I’ve been using it to resample and resynthesize sounds that I’ve previously recorded, and it really just breathes new life into the sounds. I highly recommend it if you’re looking to create some really cool grainy textures or if you’re feeling like your sounds are getting a bit stale. I also recently got a Behringer TD-3-MO which is like a knock off/modded out version of the Roland TB-303, and I’ve been using Ableton’s Mono Sequencer to send some cool patterns into it on the fly. The Mono Sequencer makes it unbelievably easy to write new patterns, you can essentially draw in a random pattern and hit “Conform to Scale,” and as long as your scale settings match your track, you’ll have a dope new melody pretty much every time. If you don’t have Granulator II or Mono Sequencer in Ableton already, they are both available for free on the Ableton website.
Ooooh you’re gonna get me in trouble on this one no matter how I answer haha! To keep things light, I’ll say there’s a time and a place for each one of them. However, I’ve honestly been drifting away from House in general, a lot of the stuff that’s been inspiring me the most lately has been coming from the Industrial Techno and Breakbeat scenes.
After getting a few more things out after Saturn, I’m actually thinking about putting the Derdy Harry project to rest (or at least on hiatus). I don’t want to give away too much at the moment but I’m in the process of creating something new that’ll be a bit more gritty and unique. It might be some time until this project is ready to reveal to the public, but I really want to have everything dialed before I do. This isn’t the last of me though!
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