BLAGOJESCHILLING.
On a wave of bass.
Blagoje Schilling on original tracks at Weberknecht, ideas between two records and hearing a piece before entering the studio.
Producer / DJ · Sunshine696
Two in the morning, a sold-out club, nothing but music they made themselves. When Blagoje Schilling remembers nights at Weberknecht, what stays is the connection: audience and DJ moving on the same wave. That moment carries this conversation from the first beat of a production to an imagined night that ends at noon the next day.
Blagoje speaks as a producer and DJ also known to many as Sunshine696. In the studio, he starts with beat and bassline, finds new impulses on the Virus B and stays with an internal picture of the sound. On the dancefloor, ideas begin again where two records meet.
Two a.m. Original music.
You’ve spoken about BFP and your time as Martins696 in Vienna’s underground scene. Which night do you remember particularly fondly, and what remains of it in your music today?
Nights at Weberknecht were among the best parties back then. One was sold out, and I played at two in the morning. I played only music we had produced ourselves, with no sounds bought from a shop. That was something special at the time.
People danced and screamed, which of course motivates you, and it just kept getting better. It felt as though the audience was surfing a wave of bass with you: perfect. That driving beat and the influence of trance can still be heard in every piece I make.
A track begins in the mind.
Echoes of Tomorrow brings techno and classic trance sounds together. Where did the track begin? Did it ever take a different direction from the one you first imagined?
The idea behind Echoes of Tomorrow is that everything you’ve ever heard in your life comes around again, sometimes in a completely different style. In a way, you already know every sound.
My process is always similar. First I have a sound in my head and try to produce it. I make the beat and bassline first, because everything else is built around them. Then I add the background, usually something with trance in it, followed by melody and voice. Finally, I master in WaveLab.
Of course it could have sounded different. A different synth on the melody can immediately turn it into something else. I write those ideas down for another piece, but stay with my original idea for the current one. I hear the piece in my head before I can produce it and try to remain true to that idea.
I hear the piece in my head before I can produce it.
Machines that spark ideas.
Your studio includes an Access Virus B and a Roland MC-808 alongside Cubase. Which sounds or ways of working keep drawing you back to those machines?
The Access Virus B contains synth sounds I’ve designed for melodies and backgrounds. Just listening through a few of them is enough to bring on the next ideas. I use the Roland MC-808 drum machine for sounds from the nineties and for the bassline.
To my ears, the hardware simply has a fuller sound than plugins, although Serum 2 is also one of my favourites for its sounds.
Between two records.
You also use your own loops and one-shots in DJ sets. Do ideas emerge while you’re playing that later find their way into a production?
Of course DJing keeps giving you ideas for improving things or creating new beats. When you mix two records and play only particular parts of each, you always get something new that wasn’t there before. It comes into being through your mixing. I’m happy to pick up those ideas later.
Into the next day.
If you could put on your own night in Austria today, what music and people would you bring together? What would make all the effort worthwhile?
An evening outdoors, with neon decorations that make it feel like a forest full of huge mythical creatures. It would start at eight in the evening with relaxed house and tech house until around eleven, then driving techno until six in the morning. After that, straight into an afterhour until noon.
Everyone who enjoys dancing to techno is welcome. An evening is a success when the DJs and the audience dance together on the same wave into the next day, have fun and forget everyday life for a while. Good conversations are part of it too. There’s nothing nicer than a guest coming up afterwards and saying: that was brilliant, what you played. That makes it worthwhile for me.
Blagoje Schilling
Interview by email · Editorial and image art direction: SCENE:ID. Source photographs: Blagoje Schilling / persönliches Archiv.