One of the great things about writing for The Noise Gate is it provides me a thinly veiled excuse for ‘productivity’. I can spend my time ignoring the university textbook calling my name and instead spend it listening and writing about the music I love, all in the name of ‘journalism’ and ‘research’.
This time well spent has allowed me to discover artists who are just at the beginning of their careers, with a few releases under their belts and primed to hit the big time very soon. One such artist destined for bigger things is ‘Whiney’, aka Will Hine, a 19 year old producer hailing from Coventry. I first heard of Whiney last year, with a tune he did with Keeno called ‘Isokime’ on the Med School release ‘New Blood 13’. It’s a stunningly beautiful liquid track and sent me down the path of discovery to uncover all these two young lads had produced; I wasn’t disappointed with what I found.
A string of stellar productions have continued to see his star rise, including a more tech inspired release on Bachelors Of Science label CODE Recordings and recent collaborations with Keeno on his debut LP recently out on Med School. We thought it was a good time to have a chat with him before its too late to call him an ‘up-and-comer’….
Hello Whiney, hows it going? For our readers who aren’t quite up to date please tell us a little about yourself?
Hi there guys, my name’s Will Hine and I’m a 19 year old student from Coventry, England, currently studying at the University of Manchester and have just completed the first year of my Geography degree. Amongst my studies I play a lot of sport and have been producing Drum & Bass for about 4 years now.
You are classically trained and have been playing music since an early age, what were your biggest musical influences growing up?
Having been taken through violin and piano from an early age some of the biggest musical influences for me were Bach, Debussy and particularly Tchaikovsky with his early romantic compositions. Asides from classical influences, bands such as Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys and Pendulum were hugely influential on my music tastes around my early teens.
You are from Coventry. How big was the city an influence to your music? How would you describe the state of the D&B scene there?
This is a great question and one I’d love to be able to say “Yes, hugely influential” however, I can’t seem to recollect any bands or moments in time Coventry has inspired me musically. In fact, I think the biggest export we have is Pete Waterman, and whether you regard that as a positive is an entirely different matter. As for the scene, it’s quite small and there are very few promoters putting on nights. Although saying this, they are quite well followed when they do take place with names such as Crissy Criss, Hazard and Doc Scott all having performed recently.
Can you tell us a little about your introduction to the music? What were the biggest influences in terms of artists and songs?
My ‘first contact’ with D&B was through the PS3 game ‘Motorstorm’. It featured Pendulum’s blockbuster ‘Slam’, and since then I have been absolutely hooked with nothing coming close to the excitement and energy this genre can create. Noisia’s back catalogue really inspired me too with tracks such as ‘Block Control’ and ‘Exodus’ (still one of my favourite introductions) getting constantly replayed in my library, not forgetting Pendulum’s mixtape ‘Jungle Sound Gold’ which I still listen to today. These tracks may sound entirely different to the music I’m producing currently, but they introduced me to something that, I hope, I can spend the rest of my life pursuing and make a career out of.
You mention your early drum and bass influences were more to the heavier sound of the genre, what made you move over to a more liquid focused sound?
A lot of Pendulum and Sub Focus’ tracks appealed to me more than others, and after exploring I found that people tended to categorise the sound as ‘liquid’. These were the tunes that I’d often find myself creating extra melodies to in my head whilst listening, and the general uplifting feel of the tracks were something I really wanted to recreate in my own productions. Further exploration into this ‘sub-genre’ only reinforced my feelings. I’m starting to write a lot of my music from the piano nowadays and the style that evolves from the chords foundation I guess can be classified as liquid drum and bass, although I’m not a strong user of sub-genre terms so people can brand it whatever they like (apart from chillstep, I hate the word chillstep).
You have had releases on Med School, Hospital and recently Bachelors of Science’s CODE Recordings; these must have given you some fan boy moments?
The phone call from Will (Keeno) telling me we’d got ‘No More’ on Sick Music 3 was probably the biggest fan boy moment I’ve had in my life. I still can’t quite believe how we managed it, both at the age of 18 messing around putting a D&B break over the top of a piece of orchestral music thinking nothing of it, but which would inevitably turn out to be our first major release. Getting the release on CODE was really big for me too as BoS were a group that I really listened to whilst getting to grips with Drum & Bass. To have their support 7 years on, and them wanting to release something I’d written is quite a special feeling.
How do you go about producing a song? Take us through the process from the original idea to the finished product.
There is no set method I use to produce a track, every single one is different whether it be that I start with drums, chords or a bass line. In terms of musicality, I often seem to have a basic chord progression as the core, which I will then evolve and bring in new elements which sit nicely within the key. I also tend to ‘mixdown’ my tracks as I add in the different elements, although a final mixdown is always required. Once you feel you’ve finished the musical elements it’s good just to tighten it all up and give it that shine and glossy feel, something a lot of newcomer producers tend to overlook.
What’s currently going on in the life of Whiney? What can we expect from releases in the future?
A lot I’m happy to say! I’m working hard on getting a good collection of tracks together which all feature the extremely talented LaMeduza, Ed Tullett, Flite, Louisa Bass and Conduct, whilst continuing to write music with best bud Keeno. I’ve also just finished two official remixes for a duo named Franklin and solo singer Violet Skies, both due out at the end of 2014. I’ve also been recording my first ever podcasts for the brand new club night Drum & Bass Sessions Manchester, all of which can be found on my Soundcloud and Facebook. As for releases, there are a couple which I have to keep quiet but am otherwise having a tune forthcoming on BTK’s ‘Dutty Audio’ label along with the official remixes previously mentioned getting released later this year. Be sure to watch out for a couple of free downloads I’m going to be giving away in the not so distant future also.
Finally any music guilty pleasures you care to share with us?
Ah. My biggest recent guilty pleasure was probably ‘Talk Dirty’ by Jason Derulo; there’s just something about that saxophone… I may have even attempted a bootleg at some point before I slapped myself and took a long, hard look in the mirror. One of my mate’s at university may possibly have the corniest music taste in the world and has been shoving Chris Brown and Mariah Carey down my throat over the past 12 months. I can assure you however that none of this will be recreated in any shape or form in any of my future productions.
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