Last weekend, the Australian superstar of dance music, tyDi, returned to Seattle with new music from his upcoming album Collide.
We’ve covered the always charming and down to earth musician, Tyson Illingworth, including an in depth interview last year when he visited Portland. To our surprise, he enjoyed the interview so much that we were invited to speak with him again!
We sat down with tyDi to discuss his long awaited album, the return of his trance mojo, and more.
RMR’s Exclusive Interview with tyDi
Nic: As a classically trained musician, what has the process felt like creating your next album, Collide, versus your previous albums?
Tyson: This has been a lifetime dream of mine to make this album. I actually thought of the concept of Collide nearly ten years ago when I was doing my music degree. The reason it never came together until now is, I didn’t really have the firepower, being able to access to an entire orchestra and also work with a two time Grammy winning film composer.
I’ve always done electronic music and I’m classically trained, but when it comes to an album like Collide, it’s very…we’re talking hundreds of instruments I’ve used throughout the album, plus the most detailed and intense production I’ve ever done. I’ve worked with Christopher Tin, who I mentioned has two Grammy’s for film score, and we did this together.
What made this different was, instead of writing the album as a dance album and just adding an orchestra, I planned it from the start. These twelve songs were written across a three year period with the intention of it being this album being called Collide, which is a collision of electronic and orchestral.
When I brought Christopher onto it, it was just incredible. We both did a lot of the orchestral parts, but having two brains to bounce these ideas off, it’s especially easy. He’s completely from that world, the orchestral world, and I’m mostly from the dance world. So to have both of our brains work on this one project it’s just turned out to be the most intensely beautiful thing.
N: Last we spoke, you had said that Collide may be your last album, because you considered it the best you could produce. Now that the album is finished, do you still feel that way?
T: It’s tough, because I’ll stand by this: making Collide was definitely the hardest, most mentally and creatively challenging project I’ve ever done. When you hear this album in its entirety…it was very, very big to take on. And when I was making it, I was writing on Facebook that I don’t know if I could ever top it.
I still am not sure. I’m listening to the album a lot and I’m still going, “holy shit, how did I do that?!” And there’s elements where Christopher Tin has a big orchestral section and I’m like, this is just…What we’ve managed to do in twelve songs is like Hans Zimmer, meets EDM, meets just every genre of electronic music, with insane attention to detail. And with brilliant vocals.
I know it sounds like I’m really pumping up this album, but it really is my masterpiece, and I don’t know if I’ll beat it. Now that I’ve been playing the songs out at clubs, and see people react to it, I’m beginning to feel refreshed. And I’m beginning to feel like, “okay, maybe I can beat this”. But I just need a bit of time.
I need to take this thing on tour, I need to let the album have it’s moment, and maybe I’ve already started to work on other songs.
N: We’ve heard three amazing singles so far, but the most burning question from your fans is, when will Collide be released?
T: March 9th!
People don’t have to stress, I released a single last Friday, and I have a single called “Gold Blooded” coming out on February 16th, so there’s still another song to come in February and then the whole album on March 9th.
It’s been a long time waiting but I think it was really important for me to show a few singles first for people to get a taste of what this thing is about. Kinda wean them into it.
N: Your track “Did You Know?” features some beautiful trance elements. As you started your career as a trance producer and DJ, what does it feel like to go back to your roots with some of these tracks on Collide?
T: Ah, it was incredible! As many of my fans know, I started out in trance, I did trance for many years. And a lot of people thought I was a “sellout” because I didn’t make as much trance anymore.
The real reason was, I was getting bored of it. I just felt like the genre wasn’t moving forward for me. It felt that I had been there, done that. And I’m not the person who can be satisfied with any kind of plateau. I’m not satisfied unless my mind is working and I’m creating.
So I kinda moved on to making other genres, and did songs like “Redefined” and “Oceans”, and they did great. But it wasn’t until this addition of a live orchestra and working with Christopher Tin that I suddenly felt, “okay, I can bring something to trance that hasn’t been done with it yet”. That’s not to say that there aren’t orchestral remixes of trance tracks out there, but I could actually make a trance track with the intention of an entire orchestra with it.
So, it felt like I was alive again in the trance sense. I felt comfortable going back to trance, and being able to say to my fans, “here you go, but I’ve made it different than what I ever could have done before”.
N: It seems like a lot of artists are giving trance a try, most notably to me, Porter Robinson’s new project Virtual Self. And of course many big trance names from the beginning of this decade are returning back to their roots. Do you think that this is a sign of the subgenre returning to the forefront of dance music?
T: I hope so! I think trance is beautiful.
If you’ve ever been to my DJ sets, you’ll hear me play a lot of house music, I’ll play techno, I’ll play bass. On the new album coming out, there’s a drum and bass song, a trap song…and that sounds scary, but when you hear it, it’s all melded together with orchestral.
Trance has this really special place in my heart, because it’s where I started, and it’s a genre that evokes emotion. I’m pumped if that genre comes back in full force. Now that I feel that I’ve got my mojo back with trance, and I can bring an entire orchestra to it, I feel like that is going to be my staple sound in the trance world.
That doesn’t mean I won’t make house songs or other songs, because I love diversity, but now I feel like I am able to take on trance again and be comfortable with something original, that’s mine.
N: Many of your younger fans are inspired by your music, but who inspired you when you were a teenager?
T: When I was 15, I used to listen to BBC Radio 1 on a dialup internet connection. I was in high school, and I was listening to Radio 1 on bad internet quality. I would hear songs like “Sandstorm” by Darude, and I thought, “oh wow, I could do that, all on my own with a laptop!”
Where I fully understood it, I was 15 and I climbed a fence to sneak into a festival to watch Armin van Buuren play. I watched him play a three hour trance set, and how he could command an entire crowd. And this was like twelve years ago. I thought, “wow, this genre really affects people emotionally”.
I walked away feeling something, and I wasn’t going to the festival high or anything like that. I was purely listening to the music and I felt like I was on drugs. I felt like that just magically from the music.
So, I walked away and I was like, “you know what? This is what I want to do with my life”. And I heard music from friends of mine, who weren’t friends of mine at the time, like BT, and I dreamed of making music even close to the quality of BT’s work.
I never thought I’d ever get that close, and now looking back, I’ve made four songs with BT. This is going a little off topic, but I’ve also worked with bands I used to listen to like Dashboard Confessional, who was on my last album, Redefined.
It’s interesting, because it seems like my life has come full circle. And I got to do all of those shows with Armin, playing ASOT in the Ukraine and in Australia, playing for 40,000 people.
I got to experience everything, and now here I am in America, and I’m about to play a show with house, progressive, and trance. It’s just exciting, I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited for music as I am now.
N: It’s been six months since we last spoke with you. What other things have you been doing with your career? Any great cities or venues that have really stuck out to you in your mind?
T: So, since the last time we spoke I’ve been touring like usual. I played in Seattle later last year, that was a great show.
I went back to Australia and took a bit of a hiatus once I finished the album. I didn’t want to keep touring with the Redefined album, because that album took three years in itself to make as well. And when I released it, I was very lucky because it went to number one on the dance charts.
I toured that for two years, and playing those songs out everywhere, and I thought that I need some time now because Collide is about to be released. I’m still kind of taking it easy, I’m back here in Seattle because I’m touring my favorite places.
I think I’m going to wait until this album is out before I consider doing something major, going too crazy on the jet planes.
N: Besides the release of Collide, what else is coming up in 2018 that you are looking forward to most?
T: I’m mostly looking forward to sitting back and seeing what people think of it. Imagine spending three years on something, I’m looking forward to seeing this thing come out. And I’m looking forward to playing the songs out.
I’ve also been working a little bit more on my Wish I Was project. But I can’t say too much what I’m working on in the dance world, because Collide is just massive.
I am excited about film score. Since doing Collide I’ve been getting deep with writing songs that are purely orchestral. I would like to make it one of my goals to score a movie, write music for film. We’ll see how it plays out. Just to be able to write music for, you know, a sci-fi movie, with music that I made behind it would be pretty cool.
Another dream. But as I’ve learned with life, dreams do come true if you work hard.
