Nachtblumen Premiere: Asymmetrik
The Bulgarian producer Asymmetrik premieres his track ‘‘Mpak’’ from his forthcoming debut album on the spanish Subsist records
Happy New Year dear readers! I wish you all good things, lots of dancing and incredible music in 2022. It’s wild that a year ago I started writing this blog, and for the past 12 months, I managed to connect with so many amazing artists, creators, community members. The new year will bring a lot more of that, but to keep things moving I want to slowly expand and introduce new content. In the spirit of new beginnings, I am opening this year with one of the fresh features for 2022 that I already hinted at you a few months ago – the track premieres.
I am definitely not reinventing the wheel here, and luckily that is not my goal at all. Instead, I want to just keep providing you – my community and the artists I meet, with this common ground and possibility to connect. Listening to masterfully created sets is great, but as I often talk about the individual works of artists and the importance of it to their development, I thought that they deserved a stronger highlight and a feature of their own.
Without a further ado, I’d like to present you with the first premiere for this year courtesy of an up and coming producer from Bulgaria, Spas Tsvetkov also known as Asymmetrik. Spas is not a stranger to Nachtblumen. About a year ago, his track remixed by Temporary Permanence released on DVNTT records was actually the first premiere I ever did.
Spas Tsvetkov, Asymmetrik
I appreciate Spas as a person and an artist and I like his approach to music making and the scene, so it was no brainer for me to listen to his upcoming debut album ‘’Parallel Reality’’ set to release on the Spanish Subsist label, and premiere one of the 12 amazing tracks. We sat down and had a little catchup in order to give you some more insights into his artistic journey, the upcoming album, his views on sound and more! Stick around to find out more about the artist, listen to the premiere and pre-order that album
Born and raised in Bulgaria’s capital city Sofia, Spas began his journey in music production about 5 years ago. He is one of those people, that realized the power and magic of electronic music from the start and got immediately drawn into this world. After frequent party experiences, a lot of hours of music digging and reading up on the scene, Spas developed a very strong passion for it all as well as good understanding of what he liked and what he was missing, which also created a need for his own expression. At this point he started entertaining the idea of producing.
‘’I remember there was this party organized by Metropolis, where I went with friends and Chris Liebing was playing that night. He is one of the people I admire a lot, and that night was the turning point when I decided ‘Okay I’m going to do it!’. I wanted to try and make at least one track even if that was all there was ever going to be. Personally, I am someone that likes to commit to something and see it through instead of only dreaming about it. From that moment on I took action and started producing, and I still do to this day.’’
Some of you know that I am also coming from Bulgaria, so speaking to Bulgarian artists or community members is always special to me. I truly understand the landscape in which they grew up and started, and the challenges they faced. Listening to Spas and his determination from day one I find absolutely admirable and with a big smile and genuine curiosity I go further to find out more about his producing endeavour. ‘’At first, I recorded a couple of sets, as I did not yet know how to express what I wanted through making music. Soon after I got Ableton and it all began. I’ve always produced almost entirely digitally. I recently purchased a mixing deck with the idea to be more fluent and use multitrack recording. I am looking into that to make sure that everything is playing nice together. That mixer is part of the process to transfer some of my workflow outside the box.’’ In music production in general whether electronic or any other genre, there is no right or wrong. It’s about being comfortable with what you are using to best express yourself and your ideas. Even though Spas already mentioned that his work is mostly in Ableton, I was still curious if that was his approach for producing his debut album ‘’Parallel Reality’’ as well?
‘’I had some hardware to play with for the album, and the whole project actually took me a few years. Some tracks were created long time ago, and others over the course of the past few months. I sent a couple of tracks to Subsist, which they really liked and shared some feedback about releasing an album. As I did not have everything ready at that point, I went back into my studio with new motivation that this will actually turn into something big.’’ Asymmetrik gives us a nice example of what it means to have a dream and make it happen. He has been a long-time fan of the Spanish label, where artists like Stanislav Tolkachev, Oscar Mulero, Jeroen Search and SHXCXCHCXSH among many talents appeared. Going ahead and establishing contact, which ultimately led to the most positive outcome is truly one of those moments that every artist is working for. Spas is definitely a new face on the radar, so I wanted to trace back a little his releases and get a better understanding of his progress that led him to this moment.
Music production journey and the debut album
‘’My first EP in 2017 was for one of the labels of my friend Gosh also known as Temporary Permanence, Raw Roots. It was quirky, because I used some samples of cuckoo birds. In the end it turned out to be something between house and techno. My friend Gosh is a really cool guy, and he has been supporting and pushing me from the beginning, which I appreciate a lot. Later on, he created his other label Spazio Speziale, where he is mostly active nowadays and I released there another 4-tracker that was already entirely techno-oriented and more solid sound. These were followed by another EP on one more Bulgarian label, Euton managed by Jackrock with his alter ego Teuton. Eventually, Gosh introduced me to Dimitar from DVNTT, which was certainly a label that I grew to love as I was finding my way in the music scene, and I saw that Dimitar is pushing the boundaries in his concept constantly. It was quite something to be able to release an EP for him as well, where my work was remixed by some great artists. These were followed by some remixes I did by request of DJ Steven from Metropolis for his tracks on his ‘’Mekanika’’ label and my latest releases were for various artists compilations for Steve Parker’s Muted and for Subsist again‘’ From what I hear, Spas has quite a solid position into the local Bulgarian music scene as a producer. He is supporting new concepts and contributing to a diverse palette of labels, demonstrating his versatile nature as an artist. Even though he does not have too much experience as a DJ behind the booth, when it comes to making music Spas is very passionate and methodical, which has clearly led him to great results.
‘’I love trying out different things in sound, and I see that it has been well accepted. I am definitely not an artist that would like to focus on the same sound and create by the same model always.’’ I respect his choice to go and venture into different types of sound, as this is truly what his identity as an artist is. I can definitely see the sound experimentation in all of Asymmetrik’s releases, and what particularly excited me about his upcoming LP is the hints of raw obscure Scandinavian-sounding darkness that he is introducing. I wanted to know what influenced him to go into that direction, and what did he want to communicate with this body of work in general?
‘’During quarantine, I was actually following the live streams of Lag on Twitch and he said something that stuck with me and I related to a lot. He shared about this ongoing conflict about creating tracks with a lot of emotion but then that same music being not necessarily the thing that makes you dance. Coming from that same line of thought, I tried to find a compromise in my album. I like dramatic music, and most of my tracks have that minor feeling. I try to find the common ground between emotion, tension and give some rhythm to it.’’ I think that Spas managed to achieve his goals, because when I listened to ‘’Parallel Reality’’ I did feel a lot of emotion, as in my eyes this is quite the complete sonic journey with a distinct storyline from beginning to end that encapsulates rhythm, hypnotism and raw atmospheres. Spas goes on to share ‘’I always put some sort of emotion in my music. For the album I wanted to look at the contrast between things in life. There are always two sides to everything – where there is love there is hate, with light there is darkness, where there is anger there is calmness, and this is the main idea also behind the name of the album ‘’Parallel Reality’’. There are aggressive tracks, melodic, calm ones. When I produce, I always try to imagine how would that music fit to a place where there are no people. The relationship between architecture, space and sound is what excites me. When you remove people from the equation, it is just the music and the scenery, and I kind of always have that in mind during my creation process as well.’’
‘‘For the album I wanted to look at the contrast between things in life. There are always two sides to everything – where there is love there is hate, with light there is darkness, where there is anger there is calmness, and this is the main idea also behind the name of the album ’Parallel Reality’. ‘‘
I really like the ideas that Spas is putting forward with his debut album, and I am excited to see it fully released soon. At the end of our chat I wanted to have his brief view on the current electronic music landscape in Bulgaria as well as his future plans for 2022. ‘’I think our scene is going in the right direction. There are a lot of organizations and individuals that are having concepts that seem to be well built and I think that their efforts are great. I hope that in the future they will grow even more and together we can build a nice scene. I have been going to some events by Stamina and Faza, and I always felt good, welcome and this family feeling which I miss a lot now.’’ I can only agree with Spas, and hope that the future is bright for our scene. As we are seeing incredible attention to Eastern Europe right now in terms of electronic music, I can only hope that the climate in Bulgaria will shift and the community there will become bigger and stronger in the next year. ‘’Speaking about the future, I have some more EPs in the pipeline for 2022. One is a little more raw and distorted, another experiment of mine. As I mentioned, what I make I release. For now, I will not disclose the labels, but soon I will be able to share with everyone once the release dates are future proof. I will just keep working on music, hopefully there will be some DJ gig opportunities this year as well given the global situation improves.’’
Nachtblumen Premiere: Asymmetrik - Mpak
With that we concluded our conversation and I am very happy to give the floor to Asymmetrik for the opening of 2022 for Nachtblumen. Listen to his track ‘’Mpak’’ that we are premiering today, check out the rest of the premieres that have surfaced on other platforms and make sure to pre-order that album! ‘’Parallel Reality’’ is set to release on 10.01.2022 on Subsist label. Enjoy!