[PREMIERE] Osias – Prism; In Conversation with the mysterious dark trap producer

Interview by Arnold van der Walt

There’s been an influx recently in trap producers making the switch over to wave music. The two genres definitely share a host of similarities, so it’s easy to see why this transition is able to take place so effortlessly. 21-year-old Swedish producer Ola Lindell, known by his stage name Osias, has been producing music from across the electronic music spectrum. Initially starting out in techno and hardstyle genres, before trying his hand at dubstep, house, Melbourne bounce, etc. After seeing how he fairs at all of these different genres, he’s managed to settle on trap music for the last two years.

It’s within trap that Osias managed to find success after his smooth remix of Alan Walker’s smash hit, ‘Faded’, went viral. Currently sitting at more than 50 million views on Youtube alone, Osias became an instant tour-de-force within the trap music scene. He has since traversed the landscapes of wave music, creating emotional sweeps in between hard-hitting 808s.

His latest release comes in in the form of ‘Prism’, which is premiered exclusively via The Playground. Osias’ latest foray into wave is a low-frequency emotional cut that might take a while to warm up, but as soon as the drop hits you’re in for a hard-hitting, unapologetic spectacle.

We sat down with Osias and spoke about his latest wave premiere, the Grief Clique and how it feels to have 50 million plays on a single track:

 

Hi Osias! Thank you so much for chatting to us! Before we begin, what have you been up to lately?
Thank you for having me!
Not too much actually, there has been some downtime on my day job so I’ve had a bit more time for music, which I absolutely love!
I recently moved away from my super small hometown of Gränna to Sweden’s next biggest city Gothenburg and I absolutely love it here. These last couple of months I’ve just been enjoying life in the city!

Your music ranges from bass-hitting trap to swooping wave tracks, but for those not familiar with you, how would you describe your sound?
That’s a pretty hard question actually. I kind of have multiple musical personalities. I love to produce hard banging tracks with heavy hitting drums and leads, but I also love to produce more calm and heartfelt music.
My harder songs often have a very dark and moody ambience to them while my calmer songs often have more of a sad and emotional feel.

What would you say are the biggest differences between the trap and wave music scenes?
Since trap hit the mainstream hard these past couple of years, I sadly feel like the trap scene has been a bit oversaturated. I feel trap is more of an “easy” genre to produce and also easier for people to enjoy.
I love trap nonetheless but I fear that we might have hit a peak for the genre as we know it. It will be very exciting to see how to genre will transform and evolve.

Wave is still a really underground genre that really not a lot of people know about. I kind of feel like the genre is by producers, for producers as of now since you got to appreciate weird sound design, melodies and patterns to really enjoy the genre.

I think wave has the potential to become a lot bigger in the next couple of years, it already has a strong underground following but I doubt it will ever become as big as trap is right now.

You’ve been consistently releasing music over the past year, with your latest track, ‘Prism’, premiering on The Playground. What can you tell us about this track?
I actually haven’t been producing that much wave before, I’ve known about the genre for maybe one or two years but I’ve never really tried producing it before. I was just messing around with a few melodies that I’ve made when I found a few airy vocals samples and thought that this project would be perfect for a wave track with a dark atmosphere to it.

The song was also inspired by the song ‘If I Miss You’ by the artist Deep October since I had been listening to that song a lot the week before I made Prism.

What do you want fans to experience while listening to ‘Prism’?
I really want people to feel the dark and mysterious vibe it has. The track also has a heavy bass and I hope that the drop will catch some listeners by surprise!

How did you first get into music? Was there a moment when you realised “this is what I want to do with my life”?
When I was a kid I wasn’t really that interested in playing any instruments or singing at all, but when I was maybe around 10 or so I started listening to techno a lot and that changed my view on music completely.
For a few years that was the only genre of music I would consume. A few years later I downloaded the demo for FL Studio and made some super shitty Techno songs. That was the start of my whole music career.
I kept on making techno for a few years every now and then but wasn’t really taking it seriously at all.
I remember a few years later when I was maybe around 16 or so I started producing tropical house and that’s when I felt like music was the thing I wanted to with my life and started taking it more seriously and started to learn more about producing rather than just making shitty songs with few techniques I knew.

Take us through your songwriting process. Are there any particular steps you take when putting music together?
It’s almost different for every track I make. More than often I start with the drop rather than making an intro or a build up.
I listen to a lot of music so often when I’m just listening to one of my playlists I just find a certain song or a certain part of a song that I would like to sample and work from there.
I also often send short ideas to my friends so I could get some feedback on what they think about the idea!

Your biggest track to date is your remix of Alan Walker’s ‘Faded’ which currently boasts more than 50 million plays. What is it about that remix that you think people really connected with?
I actually have no idea how that song got so popular. I personally don’t think it’s well produced at all. I remember making it in literally 20 minutes when I was waiting for my friend to play Counter Strike with me.
I appreciate all the love and support the remix got.
It doesn’t feel real that so many people have listened to it!

 

You’ve been releasing music from all over the genre spectrum, only settling on your current style the last two years. Would you say there’s a sub-genre you feel doesn’t get the attention it deserves?
I would say wave but I feel like I’ve mentioned it a few too many times already so I’m going to say the emo-trap genre.
It has kind of died out with the passing of the amazing Lil Peep.
I’ve noticed that nowadays anyone who tried to make emotrap just gets called a Lil Peep wannabe/ripoff.
I really love emo and I really love trap and those two genres go together perfectly so I really hope we’ll have another pioneer of the genre soon.

Any artists the world should pick up on now? Which 3 songs do you currently have on high rotation?
Aries is definitely on the come up. He is both an amazing producer but also an amazing songwriter and singer. His latest single ‘SANTA MONICA’ has been in my rotation ever since he released it!
The band Modern Baseball has also been in my rotation heavily for the last year.
Another song that I’ve been listening to a lot lately is ‘Erase’ by Copeland and I might have sampled it in my next release! 😉

What are some of your key influences in your music? Whether it be the sound created by others, imagery, films or any kind of art form.
It might sound weird but I really love folk music like Bon Iver and Novo Amor. I would like to integrate that kind of music more with my own in the future.

As of now, I get really inspired by all the amazing producers in the underground SoundCloud scene.

Gary Numan is quoted as saying: “I have always been far more interested in sound than technique, and how sounds work together, how they can be layered. I think electronic music, (in its infancy anyway) allowed us to create music in a way that hadn’t really been possible before. It created a new kind of musician.” What are your thoughts on this statement?
I definitely agree!
There really are no rules for making music.
I personally feel like if a track is a lot better and feels a lot ‘realer’ if it is “worse” produced, or sang by a “worse” singer rather than a made by studio professionals and is edited to be pitch perfect.
I think a lot of people feel the same way, that’s why we can see genres like lo-fi becoming super popular in the last couple of years.
Not to mention all the super popular Soundcloud rap hits with clipping mixes and heavily distorted 808s and instruments.

If you could collaborate with, or perform alongside any artist, who would it be? And why?
I definitely want to make a song together with G-Eazy. I’ve been a huge fan of him since 2012. His album These Things Happen is definitely one of my favourite albums of all time. The album is produced by the amazing Christoph Andersson and features the best beat of all time, ‘Tumblr Girls’.

As a music artist, it becomes apparent that there is a huge difference between the art and the business. Is there anything about the electronic scene that you would personally change?
I’m really not that into the business side of music at all but maybe I would like to see that social media played a smaller role. Nowadays it feels like the only way to get heard is to have a big following on social media. Just take Bhad Bhabie for example. Nothing against her but there are definitely a lot of great rappers who don’t get the recognition they deserve because they don’t have the marketing skills.

Thank you again for taking the time to speak to The Playground. Before you go, do you have any releases, performances, or projects coming up in the near future?
I am a part of a Swedish collective of producers and rappers/singers called GRIEF CLIQUE and we have a lot of exciting thing coming up so you should definitely check us out.
@griefclique on all platforms. Find out more about GRIEF CLIQUE here.

Famous last words…
Thank you very much for having me!
This is my first ever interview and I really hope that it went well! 🙂

Follow Osias:

Facebook // Soundcloud // Instagram