[PREMIERE & INTERVIEW]: Belau Feat. Yasaquarius – An Ocean With No Waves
Belau are a dynamic Hungarian duo who are about to release their latest album, Colourwave. The two aim to represent the path to self-awareness through the depth of the individual by making modern and elegant electronic beats with longing lyrics driven for the solace of the mind. Their track, ‘An Ocean With No Waves’ which features the sensual vocals of Yasaquarius, is filled with organic soundscapes, driving those electronic beats.
The duo have previously performed at well-established festivals such as Primavera, Eurosonic, Reeperbahn and Electric Castle, won the Hungarian Grammy Award with their debut album and are currently sitting at over one million streams across online platforms.
Find out more about Belau and their unstoppable trajectory in the exclusive interview below.
Set the tone for us. Why the arts?
Put on the record. Sit down in calm. Breath. Let the music flow through you and go on a journey inside yourself. Find what you are looking for. Dream of what you have always been too shy to. Imagine a world where you are complete and satisfied and see the path towards that ideal state. This is what we want to provide. A possibility to change and improve on the inside.
Which comes first when you’re producing – the sound or the idea?
First, we try to have a concept for the whole album, and after starting to work on songs. Usually, we have the instrumental part of the song come in after the vocals.
Does your material feature any collaborations?
It not only features one or two collaborations, actually it was the main concept for the ’Colourwave’ LP, to involve talented female artists from all over the world. This is not unusual from us, because we continued the same idea after the heartwarming success of the debut record. Here is the list of these wonderful women who features ’Colourwave’: Sophie Barker (ex-Zero7), Amahla, Belle Doron (CUT_), Yasaquarius, Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg (ex-Blue Foundation), Sophie Lindinger (Leyya), BÖBE, Saya Noé and Ayah Marar.
What’s on your current playlist?
It’s always hard to pick just few songs, that’s why we made a special playlist every now and then what we share with our followers:
Tell us about the chemistry you have with your fans on stage.
It changes every time, depending on the country we are in. Let me tell you the ideal for us. It’s in dark, the mystic lights are on what we use and sound thrills everyone when we start and people just sink in their minds and we travel in this journey as far as we can.
What techniques do you experiment with to get your original sound?
Before we start working on an album we choose the right sounds/fx or self-recorded audio (e.g. drums, effects, synths, etc) which refers to our concept the most. Colourwave contains some self- collected tunes from the Caribbeans, some 808 subs and some exotic instruments like a marimba.
Take us through a day in the recording studio.
Most of our songs are recorded in our home studio. First, we made the beats and chords what we want to use, then the vocal melodies and the lyrics. If we have finished the basics of the instrumental part, we send it to the featured artist. Sometimes we meet in person, but sometimes we only contact through the web, although meeting and creating together is the best part, that is hardly missed in these cases.
Was there a specific moment in your life where you thought, “this is what I want to do”?
Fortunately, we had many smaller and bigger successes as well. In the last years we played almost 200 shows in 23 countries at festivals like Primavera, Eurosonic, Electric Castle, Sziget, SXSW – to name just a few. Belau was supported by radios like BBC Radio 1 or KEXP and mediums like Clash Music, Billboard. Our first album won the so-called Hungarian Grammy Awards in the electronic music category and to be honest recently Belau has just reached one million streams with the earlier releases. These things gave us more energy to continue our journey.
Any emerging artists on your radar?
Both of us are great explorers and love a lot of upcoming quality artists like ourselves in every genre. In the last months we have listened to Maria Isabel, Arlo Parks, Lola Marsh,or even Дeva from Hungary, just to name few of them, but Krisztián is really into underground metal for example. This makes us diverse from others as well. For more just check our official playlist.
What gets your creative juices flowing?
Our main inspiration is travelling. Right before the virus crisis, we were almost always on the road, visited many great cities and met a lot of people. It was really a shame when we had to cancel the album release tour as well. But to be honest we could be influenced by many films, series, photos, adventures or just hanging with our friends. Our common favourite is, for example, a series called Dark.
Take us through your collection of gear, tech or software that accompanies your creative expression.
Our instrument park contains Fender guitar and bass, Nord and Novation keys, Roland SPD-
SX drumpads and a lot of decent toys you could imagine. We working on the songs in Ableton live, usually use Massive, Kontakt and Serum libraries, but anything could be useful.
Any side projects you’re working on?
We started to work on the deluxe version of the album which is an interesting journey in these days, but also have many ideas for our 3rd album. To be honest the break caused by the pandemic made a good impact on us as well and we will try to raise the quality even more in our future efforts.
Breakdown the news for us: what can we expect from you this year?
We’ll definitely release a few more music videos and live sessions in this year, and if all danger will be gone hopefully we’ll start our album release tour in August.
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