Videos
Interview with Wallis
Inspired by a desire to take the techno she would DJ to new levels, Wallis moved seamlessly into producing her own music, finding a home on Kangding Ray’s ARA label. Based out of Lisbon, she performs around the world, incorporating a hugely diverse range of software and hardware into her live set as well as in her studio, with an esoteric approach to designing sounds.
Key Takeaways
- Best Free Plugin: MISHBY by Freakshow Industries, a bonkers plugin that creates fun and playful sound design explorations.
- Largest Investment: Adding 19″ units to her mixing setup has significantly improved the quality of her music.
- Highest Gear Purchase: A guitar pedal called “Parting” by Old Blood Noise Endeavors, which is described as a glitch pedal with randomized effects.
Hi Wallis — great to talk to you! Can you tell us a bit about your career to date as a producer and performer?
Your new LP Everything Is Not Yet Lost is your most expansive body of work to date. What was the thinking behind its creation?
I have been a fan of Kangding Ray forever, and was very honoured when he asked me to submit music for his label. We worked on the tracklist together and it was a very smooth process. His ARA label is all about creating expansive LPs telling a story, and I was very happy he picked some of my most adventurous tracks.
The way I view his label, it’s about everyone honing into music as an art form and pushing the limit to create something new, deeply creative and personal rather than choosing tracks that are more basic and catering to the masses. It’s a risky project in a world where everyone is trying to make music that the algorithms are going to like, and I respect him a lot for still fighting for true creativity in today’s streaming-platform-enslaved music industry.
What’s your latest gear or plugin purchase?
I just ordered a guitar pedal called “Parting” by Old Blood Noise Endeavors. Effects are a huge part of my sound design and I am always searching for new weird effects, be it plugins or hardware. This pedal is supposed to be a little crazy, so perhaps it will be too wild to take to live sets, but maybe not! Either way, it will be great in the studio for sound design exploration. The description is: “Parting is a glitch pedal. It combines chance-based delay or reverb, modulations, degradation effects and randomized clock changes to give pleasant surprises at each turn of a knob”.
What’s the best free plugin you own? Why?
MISHBY by Freakshow Industries. You can technically pay for it or get it for free, and I love all of their plugins because they are absolutely bonkers. There is no other word to describe them. They do things to your sound that are impossible to explain, and it’s great to resample drums through them, or anything really, and cherry pick good moments that come out. They create a really fun and playful sound design exploration and they have the coolest UI of any VST I’ve ever seen.
What’s been the biggest investment in your career/studio? Was it worth it? Why?
It’s hard to pinpoint one “biggest” thing as I have been accumulating what I can at my own pace for well over the last decade, and I have a few things that are quite pricey at this point. One notable change from the last couple of years was adding 19” units to my setup and totally switching up my mixdown process, and I am so happy about the improvement it brought to my sound.
What’s been your biggest challenge as a producer?
I have always wanted to be a hermit and work by myself. It feels very natural to me. But being more social is something I want to achieve, especially in terms of collaborating with other people on vocals or production aspects.
How do you design your drum sounds? Specifically, how do you approach creating hard-edged kicks?
For kicks I layer a lot. Usually about three kicks, paying attention to phases to avoid cancellation. I have some eurorack modules that are great for the top end of kicks, for example the Asteroid BD v4 is a great option on the cheaper side, and there are many other amazing options as you increase your budget. I do a lot of work in the kicks in Ableton, compressing, clipping etc, and if they need more low end I will add it digitally afterwards with plugins like ToTape7 for light needs or Dropkick for bigger alterations.
How do you balance using hardware and software in your productions?
I think about the stereo field a lot and I play with that a great deal, to create what I would call a “sound blanket”. I want people to feel wrapped up in the music. Placing everything in the stereo field where it belongs is a necessity and my 8816 by Neve is a big part of that process.
Originally published at musictech.com. Curated by AI Maestro.
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