Exclusive Interview with "Tyde" | Illustrate Magazine

Tyde are the project of two producers from London.

Friends from school, Nick and Kyle both grew up listening to a wide range of stuff including a lot of Motown, pop and soul. Later, their passion for electronic music led them to discover labels such as Soulection, Darker Than Wax, Ninja Tune, Chord Marauders and Push & Run. The two have taken care to infuse the soul of their upbringing into their electronic compositions.

Having both played in the same band (at different times) and making beats sporadically over the years, the two have always been no more than a stones throw from each other musically.

After their debut EP Nick and Kyle have both made their way furthering their careers in the music industry, although not always together as Tyde. Through live touring, engineering, producing and writing the two have certainly seen personal progression but have seldom found the time to settle back into their project together to embark on a 2nd release.

As with most people, lockdown brought Nick and Kyle’s lives and much of their livelihoods to a halt. This gave the pair an opportunity to spend more concentrated time together making music than they had ever been afforded before. After forming a bubble, maneuvering around housemates and partners working from home and sneaking into empty studios whenever they could, they began to form their 2nd EP. Mantra boasts 5 tracks showing the pair’s eclectic influences and splicing them together in true Tyde fashion. Check out the Exclusive Interview with “Tyde” below:

1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how you got started?

Tyde: We’re both from London, old friends from school that just got very close over the years. We’ve always been around music and were actually in the same band just at different points!

Eventually about 10 or so years ago, we decided to join forces and start to actually make music

together. We began with a couple of remixes and since then we have just kind of grown together musically attempting to carve out our own sound.

2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?

Tyde: Nick went to music college and Kyle studied music at university. Nick had some piano lessons when he was about 11 for a year but like any kid he had a rubbish attention span and didn’t want to pay attention to the theory and just wanted to learn Alicia keys songs by heart to impress people, so ended up quitting to just learn stuff he liked by ear. Ironically Nick did a load more theory in college and found it waaaay more interesting though! Classic

We’ve both been obsessed with music from a young age and surrounded ourselves with it. We’d jump on any instrument we could get our hands on, but over time, naturally gravitated more towards piano and then began producing.

3. Who were your ﬁrst and strongest musical inﬂuences and why the name ‘Artist’?

Tyde: During our teens we grew up with a lot of RnB, old school garage and grime. Which I think makes a lot of sense with the sonics and vibe of a lot of the Tyde stuff. From a younger age, Nick’s house was a Michael Jackson and Motown shrine basically. It was always playing in the house. Little sprinkles of Bruce Hornsby and Tom Petty as well. Then, through being in bands a lot, we both had a strong pull towards pop music, which I think is reflected a lot in the structuring of the Tyde tracks. The name came from Kyle trying to pronounce a ‘we can do it’ WWII poster backwards and getting it quite wrong.

4. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?

Tyde: I would say a key element in the music is the heavily effected vocal samples. Mainly though, we try to inject emotion into the music as much as possible I guess. As is probably clear, we don’t tend to stick to any one genre but as long as you provoke a feeling from the listener we’re happy to put it out. It can be simple, it can be complex but hopefully the common thread is emotion. We’d describe it as warped dance-y soul, who knows. It’s music for the wind down at the afterparty.

5. For most artists, originality is ﬁrst preceded by a phase of learning and, often, emulating others. What was this like for you? How would you describe your own development as an artist and music maker, and the transition towards your own style, which is known as Indie Electronica?

Tyde: We were both producing independently for a while. When we got together we began to learn how the other works and slowly started to merge our styles and sounds. We originally

started by doing tons of remixes and basically building around other peoples stems or acapellas. You learn a lot about structure that way. There was a lot of trying to adopt other people’s styles as well and I think in all honesty, one’s own style comes from doing that long enough and being honest about what you do and don’t like and eventually after endless poking around and tweaking you end up carving out a sound that’s yours that you really like.

6. What’s your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles – and do you try and a”ront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative and entertainment?

Tyde: We think there is music that acts as a powerful vehicle for all of that, as music is just a reflection of the time. That’s why music coming from the youth is often the most important as they are the people that see the world without a fatigued world view that believe in the ability to change things. Personally for us though, when we make music or any kind of art, it’s more about escapism and being able to lose yourself from the world and what may be going on politically or socially at the time. That’s just naturally how it’s felt for us.

7. Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulﬁlment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more, or di”erent in the future?

Tyde: We think as with everything, you get back exactly what you put in. That’s no different with our music making. While we don’t get as much time together as we’d like due to other obligations in our lives, we still feel the same level of fulfilment when we are happy with something we’ve made. It’s never about the ‘success’ a track has. It’s just the feeling of satisfaction. And while we reach a slightly bigger audience now than when we started it out. If that feeling was all it was for forever, we’d be happy with that.

8. Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song? Do you usually start with a tune, a beat, or a narrative in your head? And do you

collaborate with others in this process?

Tyde: This changes from time to time. But usually, one of us will have started an idea and bring to the other to develop it. With time together sometimes being quite sporadic, we’ve adapted to working this way. More often than not, each song will have gone through almost a hundred different variations before reaching it’s final form. I think people would be surprised how many versions of songs we have and how long it takes for us for finish a song.

Until now we’ve been quite cliquey but we’re consciously trying to open the doors and let others into the process.

9. What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?

Tyde: I think trying to remain consistent through times when we’ve had to be away from one another for various reasons. There can be a lot of pressure on us whenever we find the time to get together to make the time worthwhile. It’s especially challenging when that time is meant to be used to relax into a creative process.

10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or signiﬁcant point in your life or music career so far?

Tyde: I feel like when we first DJ’d together at Blissfields festival. We were unreasonably nervous but enjoyed it so much. Also, when we released our first EP Mosaic. Kartell getting in touch and wanting to put it out was quite a proud moment as we were already big fans of his and it felt very organic. The fact that we now get to release music with Majestic Casual after getting hooked on their stuff when we were starting out still doesn’t feel real.