15 August 2014 (released)
15 August 2014
A Catch Up With Rui Da Silva - How The Music Business Has Changed, And What's In Store For The Coming Months
Award winning and number one selling artist, Rui Da Silva, saw his music leap from club to radio when his song "Touch Me" became an international charting single. Producer, engineer, beatmaker, remixer, writer, DJ, and programmer. Very few people manage to combine genuine underground respect with commercial success, but this Portuguese artist has just managed that.
Rui is continuously trying to push boundaries and moving forward, as he puts it, “trying to change the sound and evolve as staying still gets me bored”.Over the years, he's also notched up a broad array of collaborations including Underground Sound of Lisbon with DJ Vibe and Coco Da Silva . Other notable notches on his belt include label owner - Kismet Records - DJ and general computer whizz. He's also a man who's never satisfied, constantly looking to learn and re-learn music-making science and skills.
Sophia Morgan: You’ve clearly been a veteran in the music industry for quite a while now, how have you seen it change over the years?
Rui Da Silva: Over the years, I have seen dramatic changes in the music industry, mainly in the way the music is created, distributed and consumed; and with it, I have seen the effects it has done to everyone that is involved from the creators to the end consumers.We now live in a world where music flows almost like water and its access is now offered to us almost like a kind of “utility”. The sharing, collaborating, contributing and trading music is now done without any restrictions or limitations, the entry level to acquire and operate these tools has been lowered to a level that everyone can create, transform, collaborate and share their work with the world. People are editing mashing, trading and sharing their work and the platforms that host these works have become some of the biggest companies in the world.
This as created a massive turmoil in the way artists were financially rewarded for their work and currently seems that the artists’ only option is to be permanently on tour. The challenges that these changes have brought us have created a tremendous difficulty for artists to be heard in a sea of musical noise, so we currently live in an industry where fakery and cheating is rampant especially in the higher tier of it. Success has been detached from talent and it has become more difficult to credit the real talent behind the music, this has never been seen in dance music at the scale we are witnessing now.
Sophia Morgan: Most memorable experience so far?
Rui Da Silva: One of the most memorable experiences was to meet Yoko Ono in New York a few years ago straight after I remixed her and John Lennon’s song “Walking on Thin Ice”.
Sophia Morgan: When did Kismet first form? Tell us more behind the philosophy of it.
Rui Da Silva: It came about when I moved to London, after splitting with Kaos Records in Portugal. I didn’t want the logistics of running another label, but my wife Gilly made me realize that to be able to keep my creative freedom, I should have an outlet to release my music free from A&R and product manager teams. So we came up with a deal where she would run the label and I provide the music.
Sophia Morgan: Would you say creatively that your music has seen change since first producing?
Rui Da Silva: I would say that over the years the way I approach music composition has changed dramatically, if at the beginning I would use just one method to create music I currently use a myriad of approaches. Writing music is a skill that needs to be exercised daily... I still feel that I’m only scratching the surface and I love it.
Sophia Morgan: Give us your top 5 artists right now.
Rui Da Silva: It’s very hard to narrow it down to 5 artists as I tend to be more interested in individual works than artists, but people whose work I follow regularly include Brian Eno, Skrillex, Ricardo Villalobos, Dr Luke, Rick Rubin and countless of other unknown artists & producers.
Sophia Morgan: How does your mindset change when producing as opposed to DJing live?
Rui Da Silva: They are both very different activities. When you are producing, you are creating a single piece of music and you spend hours listening to parts of the same song until you have a finished the track. When you are DJing, you are there to entertain a crowd by playing music, usually it lasts for a couple of hours and has a clear beginning and end, your mindset is to select song after song to create a performance.
Sophia Morgan: Lastly, what can we expect out of your newest single “Shadow Of The Moon”?
Rui Da Silva: “Shadow Of The Moon” represents somehow a return back to my original roots of progressive house but with a very current 2014 sound to it. You can expect a vocal version very soon too.
