Track By Track: Egokind & Ozean – Transition

 
Music

Berlin-based producers Egokind & Ozean "embody a new, young and unconcerned generation with their overshadowing nonchalance. A generation that is driven by the interest in detailed know-how behind dance and audible tracks." Whatever that means. 

We're quite partial to a fair amount of their new LP "Transition" – 13 tracks of melancholic moods "dreamy interludes and Balearic fantasies to organic improvisations and Hi-NRG" – so we asked them to break each track by track down according to a set of dictates. By using the starting points of: Inspiration; Colour; Season and Setting as descriptive points for each of the album's tracks, the aim is to collate a tangible, cohesive description of an LP.

1. Mega

Season: Transition from winter to spring

Colour: Black background with glooming blue and red sparkles

Mega is not only the first track on the album, it was also the first track that we finished after we had started working together. The title refers to the intro music of a psychedelic movie which was constantly running through our heads at that time. In our opinion we succeeded in starting the record with a warm and exciting atmosphere.

2. Flying Sparks

Season: Early spring

Colour: Yellow

This piece is our tribute to Minimal Music in general and especially to Terry Riley – his work and way of composing timeless music had strongly influenced us over the last two years. The track was mainly written on piano and additionally mixed with some strange spaceship samples from Japanese anime movies.

3. Everytime You Smile

Season: Summer

Colour: Orange, pink, purple and red

Without a doubt, this is our most happy-clappy-poppy track on the album. Most of the synth sounds are processed voice recordings. For instance, the main chord pattern is made out of one word: "you". We wanted to create a musical equivalent to the work of such beautiful Japanese artists as Hayao Miyazaki and Takashi Murakami.

4. Mute Memories

Season: Late autumn

Colour: Ocean blue, brown and grey

We won’t be mad with you if you would call this one some kind of puzzle track. The first part was created a long time ago, it’s maybe two years old, and while we produced the record, we cam up with the idea of creating a track inside the track, that’s the reason you’ll going to hear that guitar part in the middle. 

5. Faint Light

Season: A summer very long ago

Colour: Various blossomed colours

This one went through same changes. Due to the fact our debut should reflect a wide range of styles, the small Rhodes improvisation was much faster in the first place and sounded a bit like the work of Nathan Fake. In the end we messed around with speed and decided not to include any drums in order to build up this dream-like world that lives inside our memories.

6. We Float Around (And Hang Out On Clouds)

Season: Summer 2010

Colour: Orange & yellow

We know that sounds a bit cheesy, but that track was written as an attempt to catch and preserve some very special memories from a very special summer. In the beginning we just started improvising with that one a lot, but after a while it was pretty clear how the track should sound like. The main composition should be surrounded by a dreamy, flowing and psychedelic vibe that was created through recording tons of recording tons of weird samples like broken glasses, crushed ice and our own voices. We even sampled tiny fragments from some movies we like. Due to all these audio samples this is definitely one of the tracks that crashed our computer the most. By the way, our longtime working title was “22/11 Thank You”.

7. Light Realms

Season: All seasons in time lapse

Colour: White

With this track we kind of tried to open up a small window into a different, unknown and wide world where everything breathes very slowly. Most of the interludes have this very visual aspect to them and for us Light Realms creates a weird, white world.

8. Silverbird Wake Me Up

Season: Midsummer

Colour: Light blue

Without being swanky, but in our opinion a track of and/or about club music should not only live by repeating loops or special patterns, but should combine many different parts and worlds. In a way this track is our personal approach to club music, which doesn't have to be dark and monotonous all the time, but can also hypnotize someone with a very organic, friendly and uplifting groove. We wanted to feel some energy that is gathered by different scenes of one movie.

9. Everything Around You Is Resonating Light

Season: Summer

Colour: Green & yellow

The inner cinema won’t just be provoked on the listener’s side, but also on the side of some producer's before even creating a track. Long story short: This is a composition made by an alien and sung by a choir of small fantasy creatures with a tiny solo performer. Listen closely!

10. Future Fireflies

Season: Late summer

Colour: Light blue and red

Maybe this piece reflects best our way of working with voices in a special way. We imagined this human voice would sing our track, the composition and melody without any songwriting or lyrics. You can put it in other words too: It’s a pop song that is played in a surreal fantasy world. 

11. Eclipse

Season: Winter

Colour: Black & red

You never wake up with the same feeling over and over again. So this piece is not only the last small-improvised track on the record, but also a snapshot how we could sound like when melancholia is on our side. Eclipse is also one of the tracks which works with nothing but processed vocal samples, this time by a good friend of ours.

 

12. Everybody Dance Now

Season: Winter

Colour: Black background with fainting lights and much blue and red

The idea was to combine our kind of psychedelic alien pop choir music with a raw, danceable and dreamy energy of techno. Usually we’re not totally devoted in just producing dance music, but this one lives from that inner and outer explosion of power that only club music can give you – when played on a massive sound system of course.

13. Euphoria

Season: Late winter

Colour: Shiny colours that merge into white

You possibly noticed, we’re pretty much visual guys. So this last track and some kind of timid firework at the end of the album. During the process we had been trying out many drum styles and tempos that we were very happy when we found the right combination. The last part sounds just like the orchestra music that our minds would love to hear. It is the end of our first movie. We hope you had or will have fun with it.


Buy the album here.