FACES Podcast 03 w/ zisko
Our third Face in our podcast series was ZISKO, one of the most visible names in the new wave of techno producers.
Born in 1997 in Vicente López (Buenos Aires), he has always been involved with music from a very little age thanks to his family. He got his first battery sticks when he was 3, and music has been a big support during his child and teen years. Curious, always self-taught, he still keeps this young explorer spirit until today. Apart from being a magic person, he is a great music producer and hope from now on he’s also on your favourite recent discoveries list.
Get to know a little more about him in this interview and go listen his energetic techno mix on our Soundcloud page.
When do you discover electronic music?
The first electronic music I remember to listen was thanks to my dad. He was playing quite often The Bells by Jeff Mills when I was around 6 years old. But when I started digging on my own I listened to a lot of trance music. I began to search for more sub-genres and styles within electronic music through the internet.
When I was 12-13 I was already DJing, for all kinds of events, venues and music except electronic haha and then started producing when I was 14. Bass music, jungle, Drum & Bass were some of the first genres I started with.
Do you remember your first serious gig?
When I was 15 years old, there was a popular party for teenagers during the evening time until 12AM, it was called La Matiné. That would be the first time. We only played for an hour because there were a lot of DJs and we were fighting everytime for the best time slot, it was very funny.
Since I was 18 I started playing for 300-400 people in Buenos Aires Capital, and I had the opportunity to play longer sets aswell.
I would go to Capital carrying all my stuff and did a lot of warm-ups, but I liked to take on that responsibility, putting myself out of the comfort zone, with the challenge of creating hype for the next DJ, which is an art form itself in my opinion.
But after this, I had a long period of time focusing and dedicating more hours to develop my music production skills.
What can you say about Buenos Aires current techno scene? When do you started getting noticed?
My name started resonating in Buenos Aires last year, during the quarantine. The classic picture playing in the club is so cool, but I also wanted to show what I was doing so I started sharing videos of my productions, and people seemed to like it.
About the scene in Buenos Aires, it was completely divided due to a controversial event in UNDER club which is the main player in the city. There is a sense of camaraderie, but also a lot of individualism because people are afraid of getting involved with someone who might harm their music careers because of prejudices that can be created by having a relationship with X or Y. To be honest, I prefer to stay apart from all this drama, and keep making music.
What do you think about the newcomers in your area?
There’s a lot of young people with new ideas, with new concepts, people who want to transmit something new. And that’s great, is bringing fresh air and we’re living a flourishing. But there aren’t many alternative spaces to play so illegal raves are playing an important role these days here.
Have you been to any of these raves?
They’ve invited me to go but I live with my family and I prefer to protect them and stay safe, one never knows.
Tell us about some of your recent highlights.
One of the best news I had during 2020 was when Marco Bailey came to play in Córdoba and I sent him two tracks. He loved them and played them at that party and later proposed me to put together an EP for MATERIA.
Another achievement was to release one of my tracks on a Lobster Theremin compilation, for a charity cause, which is also something I’m grateful to have been part of. I sent Jimmy (Asquith) the track on Thursday and the morning after they it was already on Bandcamp hahaha I woke up with an email from him thanking me for the contribution and with the download link for the rest of the album. That track worked really well... and my friend Sol Ortega played it all over the world!
Who inspires Zisko musically?
I find the entire discography of Cari Lekebusch particularly fascinating. Direct, groovy, not confusing at all. It's something I take as a reference. So people can dance to it, period.
But just to name a few more I'd say Jeroen Search, Marco Bailey, who is a legend for me and has helped me a lot, the big guys from the 90s techno... and also out of the electronic side Nils Frahm, they've all inspired me a lot.
My sound in 5 words: groovy, festive, ritualistic, hard-hitting and experimental.
Ones to watch?
Egotot. Levzon. Nicolas Vogler. Phil Berg. Decoder. Volpe. Sol Ortega. E110101.
What are you recently working at?
I’m working on my music and having conversations with some pretty powerful labels to release new stuff but I can't reveal any names yet.
And I mainly occupy my time giving a lot of private classes on music production, sound alchemy, guiding... but I'm on a more human mission, to generate a community of conscious artists.
You’ve just talked about sound alchemy, and we know you’ve also interested in psychoacoustics, shamanic music, etc. What can you say about the healing power of music?
It might be considered as an esoteric issue in today’s society, but it is real evidence for me, I have full confidence on it. I also think I have the duty to make this more visible. Whoever has experienced it will know that many times in techno music the piece takes over you and you start to become part of the piece, right? So clearly we can design sounds with the intention of healing. Music is programmed frequency, and we should not forget the intention of music when making music. If we could understand that we are actually vibrational and energetic beings we could understand a million other things that we may never question in life.
Is this something you take into account when it comes to your own tracks?
Of course I take it into account, but I must confess that many times you find yourself a bit limited. Because of labels, because of an specific type of sound... in certain styles the path is a bit narrow. I like to explore and generate a sonic experience through other alternative instruments, other tonalities, etc. That's why I use my other alias, Oksiz, to work and develop concepts. Because music allows me to be free, and if there are no barriers in music, I feel the need to expand. And under this pseudonym I have tried to go deeper into this healing question, because in techno, even though it is one of the most free genres in modern music, you can be limited. For instance, a major label rejected one of my tracks because it didn't include a 909 hat.
And do you normally finish all your projects?
I try to finish everything I start, I don't care if it sounds like shit, but if I start it I finish it. I never got anything of what I achieved because I waited for it to be perfect. Nowadays I listen to the songs I released for MATERIA and I'm ashamed to hear them because I feel that the evolution between last year and this one has been quite big. So it is also a challenge for me to maintain the current level in my productions.
Just to finish with the interview, do you have any recommendation, anything you would like us to read, watch or whatever? It doesn’t have to be necessarily music.
Watch Zeitgeist. A documentary in which the whole history of humanity is exposed as a big lie.
Final message from Zisko:
Many thanks to 64CREW for the space, for trusting in my work. And I hope you liked it and feel inspired after so you are motivated to keep doing a lot more. Remember: “Everything is frequency”.