Hi EBlo, great to have you with us for the first time!
Nice to meet you! It’s a pleasure to talk with you guys!
Despite everything that’s going on in the world right now, how are you doing?
It’s been a challenging year, but we got to remain positive. My experience is probably similar to most, just working from home trying to follow the official recommendations and advice to help protect each other. What I have recognized more in the last year is how important it is that we all take the time to look after our own mental health and wellbeing more – for me music is the best therapy and it’s a huge part of my life.
So, whats your story?
I am a dreamer and have been ever since school. I was always the one looking outside the window in class (much to the detriment of my school report grades) getting caught up in my own imagination and daydreaming. I guess that dreamer-like vibe has been with me all through my working normal day job career and then more recent years it’s turned from a dream into reality through getting to make music videos.
Why music videos?
Why not? I already have a great passion for storytelling, art, and music plus I had been making videos for my own tunes so I decided to approach Swedish House Label “House Music with Love” as I know the owner from a music festival I had worked on called Backyard Sessions doing DJ interviews with artists like Bebetta, NOLAH, Booka Shade and 8Kays. Backyard Sessions He said why not. From there it all went pretty fast and in no time at all I had already produced a bunch of videos for the label for artists like Marco Teugi, The Angels, Pandhora and Pablo Bolivar.
After that, I reached out to Booka Shade and got the opportunity to produce the video for Nicole Moudabers remix of Booka Shades “Plexus 3 am”
Why now? Are music videos making a comeback like the MTV days?
MTV – oh wow I hate to say it but I am old enough to relate to that! I guess with all that’s going on right now I saw a bit of an opportunity. Not a self-guided one but my way of being able to support artists and provide them with something that they can use right now to keep connected to their audiences. Obviously, they cant play live right now so any other additional content they can use to keep their audience engaged is welcomed. Plus I genuinely enjoy producing the videos, it’s an outlet for me to express creativity and I find it a good way for me to stay positive in this new normal.
You have a distinct theme / style in your videos right?
Yes, oh my is it that obvious 🙂 I suppose without really consciously knowing it all my videos are very journey-driven. What I mean by that is that you have a main story, and somewhere in the middle the characters or narrative go on a dreamlike journey, like the wormhole in Booka Shades Plexus video and then out the other side. It’s a way of me expressing my feeling about what the track should look like and how it can be pushed both visually and creatively. I use a lot of colors and abstract sequences to escape, I guess it kind is like some of the dreams I had when looking out of windows at school – but then we didn’t have heavy techno in the 70s 🙂
Tell us about your work with Simina Grigoriu
Simina is great! I first met her when I interviewed her last year for Backyard Sessions. Her music is amazing and its been a pleasure to collaborate with her discussing ideas for stories to accompany her tunes. Since then I have had the amazing opportunity to work on 3 of her videos, Interpol 2020, Contraband and Sandbox Wars.
You mention your own music? Can you talk to us more about that?
Yes, of course, I started producing my own music by dabbling in Garageband for a number of years, then after that, I played around with a few other DAWs. Fast forward to the present day where my happy place is Ableton. I have released my own music under my artist name EBlo.
Who would you say are your biggest musical influences?
Music has always been a huge part of my life ever since I was a young kid at school, listening to my parents play music throughout the house most weekends, growing up with a bunch of different artists and genres all the way from the Bee Gees, Barry Manilow (dont hate me 🙂 to various Jazz and Rock. My own music tastes stem very much form the 80s, so Pet Shop Boys, Prince, Aha, U2 then via the 90s house and rave scene bands like The Prodigy and Faithless. Present day is heavy techno and low fi electronica like Zero 7 and Groove Armada.
Your latest music video is for The Archer for his recently released Lonely Dream EP right?
Yes I got an email from The Archer back in November last year saying that he had seen one of the videos I produced for Simina. So I got to work on 3 videos over the winter period for his first release on his own label “Lonely Dream” under There is a Light Records.
And I see you also got the opportunity to produce the videos for the remixes from Drunken Kong and Matt Sassari.
Yes, that was super cool as well, it was challenging but very fun to create different versions of the Lonely Dream track to suit the vibe of the other mixes. Matts remix has a darker late night club feeling with minimal beats and lower tones which I tried to incorporate into the video, its my homage to some of the videos I would watch on MTV early hours of the morning in the 90s. Drunken Kongs remix was more upbeat and more traditional techno which for me meant I could catapult the astronaut space story even further into space than the original mix.
What you got coming up and what are your plans for your own stuff?
I am working on a few things at the moment, a video with Pablo Bolivar for his upcoming album and a video for 8Kays killer hit Rainbow, its not a new track but its one of my fav tracks of the last few years and I approached 8Kays and she agreed a video for her hit track would be great. In terms of my own music I am continuing to develop some tunes for a new EP of my own and working on developing my production skills with one of my DJ friends Moe Danger in Berlin.
Thank you Stephen. We really appreciate your time and we wish you all the best for 2021.
Thank you.
You can follow him here: https://www.instagram.com/eblomusic_
