Currently laying down some heavyweight sonics on Murcor’s China-based MO7 imprint, collaborating with MC SAS and getting straight up wavey and weighty, young Yannons is the latest in a growing line of producer talents to emerge from a certain Dutch town named Groningen.
Carrying the torch for his stomping ground alongside with the likes Former, Posij, Fre4knc, Zonderling, Khas, Dope DOD, Seven Headed and of course all three members of Noisia and their various projects and aliases, Yannons is a product of his environment and you can feel it in his sparse, bleak productions. You can see it in his actions, too. As a core member of the city’s Bassface events, Yannons and his friends are continuing to reinforce their hometown’s reptuation.
Groove-heavy, minimal and furiously futurist, prior to his current single on MO7, Yannons has appeared on the likes of Transparent Audio, Ekou, Engaged Audio and Midas Touch. Right now though it’s all about Weighty and Don’t Let Me on MO7
Don’t let us hold you back from finding out more…
You’re from / based in Groningen… I don’t need to list the amount of AMAZING talented artists from your neighbourhood! This is a good place to start our conversation. How is it for you? Is it inspiring? Is it daunting? Is it something in the water because there are an abnormal amount of people with such great skills?
I absolutely love Groningen! I grew up in a town just outside of the city and have lived in the city for all of my adult life. Groningen is a relatively small city and I’m pretty sure half of the citizens are students. With so many young people and also international students living in the city, it has a super active and diverse cultural situation going on, of which we most definitely find the influences in the rich music & nightlife scene. Somewhat similar to Bristol, we’ve build a pretty large underground music scene in the city and it continues to grow and develop. This city is absolutely inspiring!
That’s amazing. Is it the Noisia effect or is there something special about the town which lends itself to this art and culture?
You can’t really talk about drum & bass and Groningen without Noisia being at the centre of the conversation. If it wasn’t for one of my good friend’s older brother to introduce me to ‘this cool party with weird music’ over 10 years ago, I would never have had this passion for drum & bass.
This event was Noisia’s hometown event called Machtig and it got me in contact with drum & bass for the first time and got me to look up their music and grow a passion. Seeing Noisia grow to becoming probably the biggest drum & bass artists in the world and being able to enjoy all the artists they brought to Groningen to play DJ sets has created a very strong drum & bass scene that has really outgrown the relatively small size of the city.
As I said before the city’s circumstances allow for a scene like this to flourish, but without the amazing drum & bass artists that built this scene it definitely wouldn’t have been anything like this. I’ll also need to give well-deserved credits to Fre4knc for doing basically the same thing but with the focus on the deeper side of drum & bass, something that in the end stuck with me even more.
You’re clearly part of a community within Groningen too with Bassface so tell me everything about that…
So Bassface is this events series that myself and a bunch of friends started over 10 years ago. When I started DJing, together with aforementioned friend’s older brother, we quickly grew tired of DJing to our bedroom walls and we wondered if we could play a party somewhere. He knew super small little club space that we could use for free on a Friday because no-one would ever go there anyways. It was a bit shit but we all invited a couple of friends and ended up with a small but fun party.
Over the next year we moved to a slightly better venue and kept doing these low-key nights but did start booking local and up-and-coming DJs. When the place shut down after a couple years we got the amazing opportunity to move to Simplon, the venue that started it all for us and that had hosted the Machtig events that we had attended religiously for years. From there we grew the event and we’re now able to book artists that we think are doing cool stuff for five events every year and are hosting a serious event now. We’re still not really sure how that last part happened… I tend to take care of the musical side of things, bookings and venue contact.
That’s awesome. Community is the main thing in regards to everything here isn’t it?
It’s the thing that keeps me going and motivates me the most. Within the city but especially through the labels that I’ve been able to work with, I’ve met so many new people and gained a group of close friends that share the same passion. It’s a lot more fun to do this thing together!
100%!!!! Now let’s talk about your music! Tell us about your journey into production…
I have been DJing for a long time but haven’t really grown up with music before that. My friends and I have been going to drum & bass events since we were 15 and the DJing started not long after that. As a young, starting DJ it always seemed super cool to be able to play my own music instead of other’s and at some point in school we got a super basic afternoon course in electronic music production as part of some kind of culture programme.
That introduced me to Ableton and it’s when I started to look into drum & bass production. With no musical background and no clue where to start, it took me years and years of searching Youtube and the internet aimlessly to get to know Ableton, understand what drum & bass actually is and how to make these sounds. I think that only after 6 years of trial and error I first finished something that you’d be able to call a track. After sharing that online I started learning a lot more and through a local Facebook group I got my first ‘release’. From that track, Tom at Transparent Audio contacted me if I wanted to release on this label that he was planning to start. I released the second TA single and it really kickstarted everything for me, for which I can’t thank Tom enough. After that I got to release with Engage Audio and Midas Touch and ended up releasing this new single with MO7.
Your first releases were in 2021 as we were coming out of lockdown. How did that particularly weird time in all of our lives affect your musical journey or your sound?
My first releases came at a bit of an odd time. I had just finished my uni studies, which was quite a stressful time. The reactions to my first proper release were super cool to hear and motivated me to work on a lot more music and finally start playing my own music. Lockdown then started and was a tough time for anyone with a passion in music and events. Although it wasn’t a particularly inspiring time, it did give me more time to work on music at a time where I was super motivated. I did make a lot of new music during that time, learned a lot and developed my sound. With these new contacts gained from my first release and other labels becoming interested in releasing, it was quite a fruitful time. It was of course even more frustrating that we couldn’t do events and I couldn’t share or listen to my music in the place it was meant to be listened to, the club.
Yeah I hear that! Club music is best felt in the right situation! Regarding your sound, you definitely have a signature developing. You love an ice cold groove don’t you?
You’ve got a keen ear there Dave, it doesn’t happen too often that people grasp what’s really at the centre of my music and it is most definitely the groove! No matter what genre of music I listen to, I’ve always been a huge fan of music that flows and grooves well. It could be J Dilla hip-hop beats, Kaytranada soul flips or Mall Grab techno, these all rely mostly on proper grooves and cool sounds. I guess that inspiration is something that ends up in a deep and dark version in my music.
You can feel that! What have been your favourite moments on this journey so far?
That is a tough, tough question! Top of the list is definitely releasing with labels in the UK, it’s something that I might now take for granted but definitely is not something 18-year-old me would have ever expected to happen. Next to that there’s also anything to do with meeting and hanging out with the people that I’ve gotten to know throughout this journey. From having these guys play sets at Bassface, travelling to Bristol together, making music together in all kinds of places and doing a writers camp with TA, all of these moments with people that are now great friends, have been amazing!
Amazing. How about any challenges you’ve experienced?
Obviously the (music) world isn’t all sunshine. It can be super challenging and stressful to release music into the (online) world. It’s a vulnerable position to be in to throw this piece of art that you’ve made into the world and to wait and see what people think of it. Especially in current times, where followers, likes, plays and #1 positions on Beatport lists (unfairly) seem to define your success, it can be tough for your mental health to see a release not get those numbers. Things that have nothing to do with your music such as social media presence, money and marketing tricks are necessary evils in the music industry these days. Music always has been a hobby for me rather than something I expect to make money with so I’m a bit less dependent on ‘(financial) success’ than others might be, but it can definitely take away from the fun of it all and be challenging to your mental health.
I fully agree with that! Amen!! I would say your MO7 tracks are two of your strongest pieces of music so far. How do you feel about them?
I feel like these tracks are definitely a result of the learning I continuously keep trying to do. From a technical production perspective I’m always trying to get my music to sound better and I hope the release after these MO7 ones will sound slightly better than these as well!
Tell us everything about Don’t Let Me. There’s a kinda Sofa Sound / Skeppy kinda vibe on this one…
I’d be lying if I said artists like Skeptical and DLR haven’t influenced my musical style. Their groovy, sub bass heavy rollers have always been something I’ve looked up to and it’s cool to hear you compare the vibes! This track really shows a progression of the more stripped-back style of drum & bass that I love and have tried to produce since the start.
Tell us everything about Weighty too! Love to hear MC SAS on the track!
Haha, I will admit that this track is the result of a period in time where I went a little wild in the sound design department! I felt like doing something different than usual and in the end blended that into a track that still feels like me. It was super cool to be able to bring MC S.A.S. on the track too, who is an MC that I’ve always wanted to work with! I had never expected him to pick this track but it’s turned out really cool!
What’s the weightiest tune you’ve ever heard?
I am proud to say I’ve heard many weighty tunes over my time, but one that comes to mind immediately is Gravity – Rage (Badklaat & Requake Remix). By today’s production standards it might slightly lack a little weight, but 10 years ago my friend shattered the rearview mirror of his car blasting this track on full volume. Back then, it felt like you’d need a forklift to lift that sub bass!
Haha. Now that’s what I call weighty! What comes next in the life of Yannons?
I’ve got quite a busy second half of the year planned! I’ve recently made my UK debut playing an event for Engage Audio (and I’m very happy to do that more often…) and I’ve got a bunch of shows planned throughout the Netherlands for the rest of the summer. Next to that there’s at least an EP and another single release coming later this year which both have a lot of music involving the aforementioned friends I’ve made along the way!
