Long time friend and progressive house savant Cid Inc shares his views on the global Progressive House scene.
1. Hi Henri, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today, you’ve just returned home from another tour of Argentina. How were the gigs?
Cid Inc: Thanks, always a pleasure !
For me (or if you ask any other DJ who ever played there I guess) Argentina is something very special, the crowd has such a huge passion for the music which is hard to find any where else in the world.
2. It’s a country well known for its love of progressive music, with you frequenting it as much as you do would you say it’s still growing from where it was a few years ago?
Cid Inc: Yes the scene is still growing there. It’s amazing that even smaller cities, or even towns there are catching up now and doing some really good events. On this tour I played in cities like San Luis, Resistencia and Posadas with populations between 150-300k , but the events were packed and crowds were simply amazing.
3. You have a new EP out this week, your first original project of the year in fact, the excellent ‘Shifter’ EP on your Replug imprint. I would say it’s your most stylistically diverse collection of music to date. Still very much progressive minded of course but with a broader design release wide I would say. Was there a calculated thought behind doing this or just a natural order of things?
Cid Inc: I’ve been working on a lot of music the past year. It was time to release an EP on Replug again and we chose four tracks with different kinds of moods to them. The songs capture different state of minds that I’ve put into the tracks while producing them. The name “Shifter” for the EP reflects this quite well I think.
4. Do you ever draw on life experiences or specific moments, maybe in a club or the feeling of a certain country for inspiration when writing new music and what inspirations if any did you take from on your ‘Shifter’ EP?
Cid Inc: Inspiration is drawn from every where, moments in life, daily moods and feelings, travelling etc. Shifter kind of includes moments of my life from the past year, tracks that turned out the way they did just because of something influencing my mind at just that certain moment when a track was created.
5. Outside of this new release it has been a relatively quiet year production wise with just a lone remix of Roger Martinez. What if anything can you reveal about the rest of the year?
Cid Inc: I have an EP coming out on Sudbeat in July & a few remixes in the pipeline. There’s still a whole lot of unreleased stuff laying around so I’ll just need to get my head around them and see what I’ll do, many of them not getting released though I’m sure.
6. Progressive music seems to be in a good place right now. Where do you see the sound going in the next year or so?
Cid Inc: Yes, It seems like the progressive scene is growing again, which is great to see. I’m sure Beatport getting rid of all the commercial EDM stuff from the genre helped this also, now I guess people have a better understanding again what Progressive House actually is. I’m not good predicting the future but it seems like things are getting more melodic and atmospheric now.
7. Your label Replug was relatively quiet from 2013-2015 but the last two years it seems like you’ve refocused on it quite a bit. It’s certainly been a good run, what was it that got the fire burning again?
Cid Inc: I started working with Dan Baseley (Orsen) around one and a half year ago and he has been a tremendous help pushing the label forward. To be honest before that I was quite lazy in managing it due to touring and mastering work, so it was difficult to find time to fully manage it by myself.
8. The label definitely has its own sound, what advice do have for someone hoping to get on the label?
Cid Inc: We’re not looking for just that one sound, we choose music that we love. We also try to get back to all producers who send us demos which are in the right direction for the label, and those who we think have good potential but are not just there yet we encourage them to send tracks in the future. Advice would be to just send tracks to us and if it’s something we really like we’ll sign it.
9. The label recently released a project from Luka Sambe. His five track concept collection ‘Shepherds In The Stars’. It was a step outside the norm as generally the label focuses on strictly club material. Do you want to do more releases like this in the future and how important is it to give an artist the space to do something like this on given project?
Cid Inc: Luka is a very talented producer and we were very happy that he ended up doing a release with a great story behind every track. We like to have something different on the label from time to time so there will definitely be more releases like that.
10. What is next on Replug? Anything you can tell us about?
Cid Inc: We have an EP coming from Argentinian Interaxxis, Marcelo Vasami, Matter from Australia and Dan is also working on stuff for the label under his Orsen moniker. We’re also compiling a small VA that should see the daylight during the fall.
11. Mastering was a big part of your day years ago but you’re definitely on the road quite a bit more now, sometimes away for weeks at a time. How hard is it to juggle the life of a touring DJ with that of a mastering engineer?
Cid Inc: I still do a whole lot of mastering when not touring. Of course heavy traveling takes a toll on that, especially if it’s longer tours, work tends to pile up and I got my hands full always when back home.
12. How is life back home in Finland? How often do you get to play there? and have you ever entertained thoughts of moving somewhere in Europe? Or is this home for the foreseeable future?
Cid Inc: Life in Finland is great, it’s very easy and quiet with lovely nature. However the weather is something that me and my fiance really don’t like. Here in southern Finland the winters tend to be quite wet, I’d prefer if it would be a tiny bit colder and snow. Summers then again can be a hit and miss, for example so far it’s been quite bad, rainy and mostly below +20c. We’ve been thinking many times moving to southern Europe, Spain for example, so maybe it happens soon, who knows =)
Cid Inc: I don’t play much at all here in Finland, maybe twice a year. There’s really no progressive scene here.
13. Do your best productions always come together the quickest? And tell us a bit about your process?
Cid Inc: It depends a bit, usually it’s that the faster I work the better the results, flow is very important for my creativity. After a longer tour and absence from the studio it takes a while to get back to it again.
The process varies quite a lot, sometimes I just play with sound and end up with a finished track and other times I have an idea in my head, but once I’ve worked on it for some time it usually sounds completely different from the original idea. Most of the time i just start with a kick and bassline, sometimes a melody and it all evolves from there.
14. Looking back over your career as Cid Inc what do you feel the breakthrough point was? An important release or something early on which really brought attention to you as an artist.
Cid Inc: I’m not sure if there’s been any breakthrough point that I can pin point, it’s been a slowly growing process and being ambitious and dedicated to the music success has followed, more or less.
15. What 5 tracks are you currently loving at the moment?
Khen – Cornfields
Jos & Eli – Amore
Orsen – Wakey Wakey
Interaxxis – Kicking Problems
Eli Nissan – Liquid Stars
16. Thanks very much for taking the time chat Henri and congrats on your new EP! Is there anything else you would like to add?
Cid Inc: Thanks for having me. Hope you guys enjoy the new EP =)
‘Shifter’ is out now on Replug, you can purchase the release: here
