INTERVIEW: Sinden

I sit myself down on the cold concrete. My interview with SINDEN doesn’t start for another few minutes so I thought I should take another look over the questions I had ready in my book.

Sinden is heading over to our side of the world for the Grizzly Tour, that features himself and good mate, BRENMAR. Both boys have just released a track called ‘One Two’, and if you aren’t familiar with it, look it up because it’s a cool jam. I pick up the phone and dial all the necessary numbers- and it begins.

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So you’ve moved to sunny Los Angeles, how’s it treating you so far?

It’s great, I’ve really settled in now it’s become like home to be honest. I love it out here, I’ve got a great spot and am just enjoying it, yeah.

Have you noticed a large difference between the music from back in London, and the music in LA?

Yeah, there really is a difference. LA has it’s own kind of music and London has it’s own kind of thing too, it’s very particular the music that comes out of London, [whilst in LA] they are really getting into house and techno. But the really big thing out here is the whole kind of beats stuff, a bit more West Coast, coming from rap music and electronica as well. The vibe of the place really lends itself to it. Here it’s a bit more of a flowing pace, [whilst] in London it’s a bit more ramped up and bassline, garage and dubstep and things like that. I’m really enjoying the mood out here, musically it’s really good to be able to explore stuff.

Are you looking forward to coming back to Australia to play the Grizzly Tour?

Yeah I can’t wait to be honest! I was last there in 2011, and it’s going to be really good to get back out there again. Australia is one of the coolest places to play, there’s definitely a lot of energy, I’ve always liked it there because I’ve has a lot of successful tours and shows, and it’ll be really cool to do something this time that’s a bit different.

I’ve been hearing a lot about the tour recently on the internet and I’ve heard a lot of people talking about it so everyone seems pretty glad you’re coming back.

That’s so cool! Sometimes you put this music out and see you see the buzz around the stuff, but you don’t really see it in person. When you do, it just brings it all a bit closer to home, because of all the hard work.. It’s just a good feeling you know? I can’t wait to see when people connect with it.

What’s the community like at Grizzly?

What the kind of relief is, even though the artists are kind of different from one another, the strength of the producers really kind of make the label what it is. Being able to do choose things very carefully and not rush too much, just trying to hand-pick the releases and the remixes and the artwork and just things like that. We aren’t releasing too quickly and just taking over the market, we are just taking things slowly and pacing ourselves and just releasing the right music.

It’s really working with the people and the family - everything is really tight knit. A lot of the artists from the label just do collaborations together, like Brenmar and myself - and 5kin and Bone5 are working with a rapper called Mikey Bank at the moment. A lot of the artists come from a rap background as well, so they’re bringing something diverse to the table. It’s really exciting because I feel like I’ve seen these guys play early on, and it’s really good to see how their careers are blossoming. I just want to be nurturing people and give them the break that I got when I went through.

That’s really nice!

Yeah I feel like I was really blessed, because I had lots of mentors around me and I dreamed of having my own label one day, but I didn’t want to dive in and kind of do it half arse. I wanted to do it all properly and get a team together, and that’s why its great now because we have our label manger, and our PR team and that’s in the US and the UK as well and there are lots of good little things going on.

'One Two', your collaboration with Brenmar has just come out and it’s been described as sort of a genre-bending track, do you agree?

Yeah I think it’s pretty weird because it’s kind of palatable, people can play it at pool parties and outdoor festivals, it’s got a really weird Tropicana sort of feel and an eastern drum vibe to it as well. It’s kind of a mixy pop track which is what we like. I showed Brenmar some stems and he just totally brought the tempo down and that was surprising because he usually works quite quickly - so that bit definitely surprised me. But it was good to see that he was willing to try something new.

Have you and Brenmar become closer since collaborating on “One Two”?

I’ve known Brenmar for about three years now actually and I think it was back when he started doing his solo stuff. I’d been interested in getting him on board from an early point, and now he’s done two releases for us. He’s remixed me twice and he’s definitely someone I consider close, kind of a music peer, and he’s also become a good buddy too because we’re always trying to hang out when we can. We met up in Hollywood last year which was pretty fun, and both of us[ended up] making music all hours of the evening [laughs].

And what are your plans once the Grizzly Tour is wrapped up?

After that’s over then Brenmar and myself have a show in Hong Kong and then we’ll fly over to Japan for a couple of shows which’ll be really cool. I love Japan it’s great, it’s the coolest place in the world. We’re gonna do a couple of shows there and finally get back to LA in late April and get my head down. I’m working frantically before I leave for Australia to get as much music made as possible. There’s a lot of things coming up, but there’s not that much that I can really talk about [laughs]. There’s just a lot of stuff happening whilst we are working out publishing bits and all that rubbish. But there’s definitely going to be a lot of music coming out before the summer (Australia's Winter) for sure!