Photo Credit: Julian Nelken
Berlin-based musician HOVR embodies that sweet spot between cozy and crazy. His unique way of telling stories through music spreads smiles across dancefloors all around the globe since 2016.
Today we catch up with the rising German artist HOVR to learn more about his musical upbringing, influences, and taste, his latest release ‘Messy Memory’, and his views on the future of music.
Electronic Groove: Hi HOVR, we are glad to be here with you. How are you doing? How are you navigating this pandemic? How are things looking in Berlin at the moment?
HOVR: Hey! Thank you so much for the invite, glad to join this lovely series. I’m doing quite well actually, started a part-time job in an interesting environment (virtual events and technology) to help me financially through the last bits of the pandemic. I never thought how much I would miss working with a team! Even though I would still prefer going back to my passion, DJing, this had a big positive impact on my mental health. Not touring opened a new time window I can use for studio sessions, which is nice. Berlin is of course still lame compared to what it was before COVID but it’s getting warmer here and there are lots of things to do. If you ever come visit, do stop by at Tempelhofer Feld for some beers with us.
EG: So, let’s get to know your personal background better…How did you get started in music?
HOVR: Music has been an integral part of my life since I was a little kid. I’m not exaggerating when saying it’s a genuine part of my identity. I was lucky to be raised by a gifted musician who is my mom – a full time music teacher, choir director and cellist, and learned to play piano, guitar, drums, singing. And even though I developed in entirely different directions than her, both style-wise and professionally, there is still a very strong musical connection I’m grateful for. She listens to all my tracks and sets and I even brought her to two of my shows at Sisyphos to dance with me and my friends. I started DJing shortly after my career as a singer-songwriter didn’t really take off as much in 2016, and quickly realized that my musical background accelerates my learning curve in DJing, thus I established myself quickly in the local scene. I started producing shortly after but always hated how far away my songs were from what I wanted them to sound like and what I had in mind. Hence I never released music until the song ideas and actual songs finally somewhat aligned, which was in 2019, when my first song September came out.
EG: What do you look for in music? What kind of music inspires you nowadays?
HOVR: I have a pretty broad range of stuff I enjoy, both as a consumer and as a DJ. I have fetishes for acoustic textures, noise, cute sounds, anything organic, sounds from nature, thick snares, and layered vocals. But I get bored very easily. A lot of new music sounds very similar to what you already heard somewhere, especially in the melodic techno / deep house sphere. I love when labels have a focus on novelty and authenticity, like Disco Halal, Souq, Kindisch, Eklektisch, Radikon, TAU, and all the ones I can’t think of right now. If I were to give producers advice: Do the thing you’re not sure about. Just go for it, there are way too many songs where you can hear that someone didn’t want to take that risk, and I find that super lame. I’m trying to not be scared away by my own ideas, even though that makes most of my productions “edge case songs”, as my friend and talented DJ Varuu told me with a wink.
EG: And how you do feel about your sound? How would you describe it? What chords are you looking to strike, generally, with your listeners?
HOVR: I never had an easy time explaining my self-produced sound to others. I try to work with as few creative filters as possible and avoid imitation. I would say my sound has a lot of personality, or a lot of my personality, as all elements are self-composed and often contain my vocals. All tracks, their names, and their lyrics come from a concrete idea, person, or event in my life. I figure that in my tracks you can hear that my primary instrument is the piano and my background mostly is in Jazz. All this might explain why so far I haven’t produced a dark club banger so far. Also, I’m a pretty slow producer. I like taking a few weeks’ time for each track.
“When it comes to creativity, I believe that your personal space and studio play a major role in what you can accomplish”
EG: Right now you’ve got a new EP coming out, ‘Messy Memory’, which was released on 7.5. What drove you to create these two pieces?
HOVR: I produced those two tracks last summer. ‘Messy Memory’ is a vocal track that, so far, is my heaviest one when it comes to style. It’s for all the people that are, like me, sometimes very forgetful and hate what that brings: Thoughts get lost, you know you had them but you don’t know what they were. I wanted to put that feeling I think a few of us know too well (“lost and embarrassed”) into a song and I’m happy it found a home with Niconé’s imprint DANTZE, which is the same label where I released my first song. Track two is the first one where I allowed myself to let my piano run wild. It took a few days of playing my piano until it was at a point I was happy with. I have always been a Piano Man! And now I dedicated a song to this fact.
EG: Do you think the whole situation with the outside world has had any impact on your creativity or the emotions reflected in your music? How do you exercise your creativity on a regular basis?
HOVR: Touring has since the beginning of my music career been an inspiration for my productions. Often times I had song ideas while dancing to someone else’s sets. I hated that this part of my life suddenly had to disappear and what came along with it: Less money, less inspiration, and less emotional balance. I realized how much I actually need dancing on the weekends, being social, etc. But then I took this feeling, utilized it, and just made more and better music than ever before. Music was, as many times in my life, therapeutic to me. During the same time where I realized this, ‘Moon’ came into existence, my so-far favorite own song.
When it comes to creativity, I believe that your personal space and studio play a major role in what you can accomplish. In the past years, I put a lot of time and passion into building a pragmatic, intuitive, easy-to-use, and functional studio. I only own and work with one synth at a time, plus an interface, good speakers, spectrum analyzer, midi controller and keyboard, and a handful of plugins. This makes the threshold for me to just sit down and put something together really low. Whenever I’m asked to make a recommendation about how one should set up their studio, I always say: Limit yourself to the hardware and software you actually use. At least that helped me exercise my creativity a lot.
EG: You’ve also contributed a mix for Magician On Duty recently. How was the reception on that one? Do you believe in telling stories with your sets?
HOVR: Yeah that was a really fun one to record! I have a thing for downtempo and love gigs and parties where I get the opportunity to embrace the lower bpm’s. Magician On Duty is a beautiful series from the US that a lot of friends of mine contributed to and I’m happy to see the positive feedback on my edition. It’s almost at 10k plays which is lovely. I’d say the softer the set is, the more space I have for musical storytelling and taking people on a journey. Sometimes it works better, sometimes worse, and it’s hyper-subjective. So whenever I have a lot of people resonate with something I recorded, that’s the best possible feedback I can get.
EG: With all the technological changes going on in the industry, such as NFTs, Livestreams, and such…do you believe we’re looking at a near-future shift in the industry model?
HOVR: If I’m being honest I haven’t looked that deeply into the whole NFT jazz. I like the idea of owning original copies and generating value out of that which the artist, in the end, profits from. But at the same time, I only have very basic knowledge there so I refrain from judgment. Live streams and recorded sets definitely became a bigger part of the music industry and, at least since my set for Birdhouse, I learned how important these are to growing internationally. It didn’t go viral or anything but I reckon around 500-1000 additional people from all around the world listen to my music thanks to that video! I never liked live streams from clubs too much, especially if they are as dark as most are. Darkness is great when you’re in a nightclub but while live streaming you need colors and action, otherwise you can just listen to podcasts, right? Anyways that’s one of the reasons I love the series Birdhouse from Klunkerkranich so much.
I expect and hope that the industry goes back into live-first instead of streaming-first, as with streams you will always lack this crucial element of purity and authenticity, no matter how interactive they become.
“I’d say the softer the set is, the more space I have for musical storytelling and taking people on a journey.”
Electronic Groove: What’s in store for HOVR for the rest of 2021? Any milestones you’re particularly looking forward to?
HOVR: This year is going to bring a few more exciting releases from me. One I’m especially looking forward to is the song I opened my set for you with! It’s a collaboration with Bahrain-based singer Maram, who sang awe-inspiring Arabic vocals to a beat I produced. It will be released this summer on a very special compilation. Other than that I have two more EP releases in the pipeline towards the end of the year, including a banging remix by my friend and colleague Bebetta, and of course monthly mixtapes. Plenty of stuff to look forward to!
Electronic Groove: Thank you for sitting down with us! We wish you all the best for the future!
HOVR: Thanks for your time and all the best!
HOVR’s ‘Messy Memory’ EP is out now via Dantze. Purchase your copy release here.
Follow HOVR: Facebook | Instagram | Soundcloud | Spotify
