Mystic State: Lights Out

‘We originally had about four minutes of the narrator’s speech running behind the track but in all fairness it scared the shit out of us so we cut it back slightly… ‘

Mystic State have – rather mystically – arrived out of nowhere. Is the name a nod to some West Country Illuminati movement? Or maybe an oblique reference to a certain Calibre tune from years gone by?? Either way, best to go in, to talk about the recent outing entitled Lacking Lights on Violation and also some key future moves…

‘Tension’ off the ep is easy one of my fave tracks this year can you tell us about it?

‘Tension’ was sent to us by Howz in it’s early stages. He’d sent a clip through to see if we were interested in working on it, and we really liked the feel to it. It was already laced with some lovely FX and mid-range, so we worked in various atmospherics and built up some drums to finish it up. This was a track that seemed to almost write itself, it was really nice to work on. Ambient, creepy stuff always seems to be more fun to write.

Can you tell us about yourself?

We are Will and Mike. We’re a 19 year old duo from just outside of Bath, UK. We’ve been producing music for around 3 years, mostly D&B but also 140, Techno and Hip Hop. We are affiliated with the labels Flexout Audio, Nurtured Beatz, Violation Music and Broken Audio, to name a few.

What influences do you have… in music art, everything?

Obviously a lot of influence comes from D&B music. Source Direct are a huge influence, as well as Doc Scott, Spectrasoul and Jubei. It’s good when music can be dark and moody, but still have emotion behind it, and these artists in particular seem to convey that in their tracks. Outside of 170, artists such as GAS, Korn, Nine Inch Nails, Gantz, DJ Rum and Synkro.

The most influence, though, probably comes from film. Soundtracks are a huge interest for us.

Who are your kindred spirits in the music?

It’s hard to narrow it down as there’s so much good, original D&B around at the moment. All the artists representing Flexout Audio are ones to watch for sure. Clarity is killing it with every track, as is Skeptical, Mako, Blocks, Escher, Overlook and Gremlinz.

I feel with Lacking Lights that it is all one thing, it’s all connected, it’s meant to be sat and listened to, it’s a journey. That’s just me any way, is that close?

It’s good to hear that, I guess if the tracks flow together nicely then it’s good they’re on the same EP! Ha ha.

We’ve been told we have quite a distinctive sound, so in a way it’s not surprising that all our tracks fit together, although we do try and change things up and experiment from project to project. We’re writing some stuff at the moment that’s a bit different, so expect a lot more versatility in our upcoming releases.

Who are the people you’ve collaborated with here?

We collaborated with Jay Mythix on the track ‘Extract’. He’s an exceptionally talented artist, and while he makes stuff that’s a little bit more aggressive than our usual style, we’ve collaborated with him a couple times and our sounds seem to blend nicely. His solo tracks are all excellent. Our other collab track is with Howz. His music is extremely ambient, very soundscape-esque. He seems to stay pretty quiet but the quality of his music is so good it’s inevitable he’ll get attention soon.

Where can we check you live?

We’re playing in Lueven, Belgium on October the 17th with Bredren, M-zine & Skeptics, Transparent and C-Side, which is our first international gig. We’re also playing at a Flexout Audio night at Plan B, Brixton, although the date hasn’t been confirmed yet. Promoters get at us!

Finally what is a tune off Lacking Lights you’d extract and talk us through

I guess ‘Deadwood’ is probably our favourite from the EP so we’ll chat about that. It was a really flukey track in the sense that everything we did to it just seemed to work, there was no point where we hit a brick wall and ran out of ideas. The best tracks we write seem to be written this way, and we always seem to finish them quickly.

The vocal was sampled from some weird-ass welsh fairytale thing that we found in the depths of our sample library. We originally had about four minutes of the narrator’s speech running behind the track but in all fairness it scared the shit out of us so we cut it back slightly.

The percussion is broken and stilted, with a lot of reversed and pitched up break chops, which were fun to program, and the crunchy FX sounds were made by recording bits of polystyrene snapping. It was a fun track to make!

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