Aurelius Zon

• ​When and why did you decide to move to Madrid ?

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Although I grew up in Colombia's capital Bogotá, since childhood I have traveled through many countries and cultures thanks to my parents whom are big intrepid travel lovers. The first time I changed my residency to Madrid was in 2015 when I got selected as a tennis player to be part of Madrid “CAR” (Centro de Alto Rendimiento), a sports training center for high performance athletes, many of the Olympic medalists in Spain trained here, at those times I played high level tennis and this sport was my priority. Around 2017 I moved back to Colombia due to family reasons, but just two years ago I returned again to Madrid which is my favorite place in the world. I can't be more happy to be living here now.

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• What instruments do you play and do you have favourite instruments / synthesisers ?

I started to play violin when I was a little kid, maybe around 4 or 5, it's without any doubt my favorite instrument, its tone, the way it expresses,  to me, it will always be the king of the orchestra. Otherwise, regarding VST plugins, I am a big fan of Ableton's Operator and Analog, in the first instance they could look a bit cold, but their potential is just amazing. They are such an amazing source of sounds and I use them a lot, these two are (almost) the only synths I use.

• What was the process of remixing Dusk?

I usually struggle a lot to remix tracks which I love because I don’t want to modify them a lot because they are very perfect on their original, Dusk's case is a bit different because, although I love the original piece, the remix flowed pretty naturally. Once I started jamming around, I increased the BPM, as well as added some tribal percussion and atmospheres, so I built all the remix around Davy Hall's beautiful original guitar melody. Later, I must have in mind the importance of caring the overall harmonics and ambience, therefore it is easy to saturate the track with a lot of melodic stuff inside.

• Do you have a particular structure to the way you produce each track?

Definitely, I always start the composition process jamming around with loops that I create live at Ableton's session view. I try to not think and  just let the music flow visualizing the screen as less as possible because when you see the screen you think, and when you think the feeling gets lost. My Ableton projects are constantly super disorganized but…What does that matter? To me, enjoying the whole songwriting process is the most natural way for ending up with something interesting musically, I enjoy music when I really feel it, preconceive tracks is a way of planning and forcing music and this doesn’t work for me.

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• What is a regular day for you?

I don’t like routines, they regularly make our brain kind of lazy, and although I try to avoid them, in my most common day; I wake up early in the morning and after a nice  breakfast l I try to advance as much as possible sending out emails, taking care of upcoming releases, mastering, PR, or maybe studying my Politics degree. After that, I train a couple of hours with my bike and various miles after, I finalize the fitness with some stretching. My lunch isn’t a big one as I don’t  know why, but I am not hungry at midday. Whereas, if the inspiration flows, noontime and night  is commonly focussed on music making or any creative activity.

• Who are some of your biggest influences outside of music?

Probably feelings, nature, life, beauty. This last term is very subjective and its different according to the person, but to me, it is not only an influence to make music it's also the magic of life

• Do you have a favorite piece of hardware, MIDI or VST?

I really love to work with my Ableton Push, it helps me a lot to create and keep the flow during the songwriting process.

• Headphones or Speakers?

Definitely headphones, when you understand how to manage you are able to make music anywhere :)

• What are your favourite things to do outside of music?

I love to get lost between nature and animals. I also love sports, going to museums, discussions with interesting people, reading history books/articles and hanging out with friends, etc

• What are three places that you have always wanted to travel to but have yet to see?

Norway, China, Amazonas.

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• Favorite food?

Honestly I can’t choose just one meal…I could say that I am a very easy / difficult guy (It depends how you see it) with the food as I love to eat really natural and raw. I don’t like fast food meal or over-processed meal with sauces, I prefer organic unprocessed food. 

• Favourite drink?

Water

• Song that makes you cry?

Rafael Anton Irisarri – RH Negative

• Song that makes you smile?

Dominik Eulberg & Essáy - Dream Machine

• Which song are you most embarrassed to admit that you love?

Juan Luis Guerra - La Travesía

• One tip you would give someone who has just started out producing!

Just do what you love and follow your heart, likewise everything in life, enjoy the whole process and each moment, when something is made from deep inside it creates success. Music is all about feelings and expressions and beyond all, stay true is a basic requirement to have our consciousness satisfied with ourselves.