Hi Bjarke! Happy to finally share this 100% production mix by Talons, your newly launched alias – can you tell us about the project?
Last year I got to a point where I was feeling incredibly uninspired in the studio: I’d go there, open my laptop and just sit there making a whole lot of nothing for hours on end. When I’d bike around the city all I was listening to was old Maurizio stuff: Rhythm & Sound, Basic Channel, etc. and I started obsessing over the elegance of those productions. For instance, Quadrant Dub II, which is 20 minutes long, is built around the same 1 bar loop, but in the span of that time manages to stay interesting throughout. The subtle changes in texture and arrangement is nothing short of magic.
Before, I always wanted to make my tracks as short as possible, but that changed my entire perspective. Instead of sitting and staring at a laptop screen, I dusted off an old MPC 2500 I’d bought to make boombap, bought a cheap Allen & Heath Mixwizard on DBA, and plugged all my synths up to it.
Initially I just wanted to have fun and play with my “new” toys, but something just clicked for me and some really good stuff started to come out of my speakers.
I then decided to give myself a “dogme”: Go to the studio, turn on the MPC, start building a loop, then once I had something I was happy with, I would press record on my Tascam tape machine and perform the track live. Instead of making an arrangement by copying and pasting sections on a computer screen, I would just vibe with the music and whatever happened, happened. Since it was very impractical to press save and come back to it the next day, I had to finish the entire track before I went home. Even if it wasn’t perfect, at the end of the day there would be a whole track that I couldn’t come back and tweak – because when I flipped the power switch, everything but the 2-track recording would be gone.
My studio is at Amager, so I just kept saving them as “Amar Dub 1”, “Amar Dub 2”, and so on. My goal was to do 20 tracks, then pick 4-5 of the ones I loved the most and put them out. The name Amar Dubs just kind of stuck with me so it felt fitting for the first release.
Previously I’d done a lot of hip hop production as Lille Høg, and I felt like that alias had become a bit of a straightjacket in terms of what I could release under it: I’d do a DJ set as Lille Høg playing strictly 130 stuff and some people in the crowd would be confused as to why I wasn’t playing hiphop. So for my own – and that audience’s sake – I wanted to have a fresh start, which Talons represents. The name Talons is of course a sneaky reference to Lille Høg (Little Hawk), so there is a bit of a sense of continuity. Big shouts to Main Phase & Eloq for helping me with that entire process.
This is fabulous to hear! What’s next for you then?
Going forward, I’m excited to put out some more stuff. I have so many great tracks in the
vault right now that just need to find a fitting home. To me it’s kind of mindblowing that a year ago I was considering quitting music entirely, and now I’m filled with the same excitement I had as a 13-year-old downloading the Ableton trial the first time.
Seems like you’ve been pretty good at turning the tables around for yourself – Do you have any good advice for anyone struggling with creative inspiration and motivation?
Good question honestly – it’s a hard thing to answer because everyone’s situation is so different. I found that a lot of advice on the internet didn’t really work for me.
But when it comes to music, I feel like the common thread for all of us that decided to do this crazy thing, is that initially we just did it because we thought it was fun. Not even with the intent of making tracks, but just fucking around and making cool noises. Drenching stuff in tons of reverb. Listening to your own voice with Auto Tune for the first time and having fun with that.
When I started out producing, I did it because I had more fun in Ableton than my friends were having inside World of Warcraft. And I wasn’t even making tracks, I was just messing around. Once I started doing music professionally, it started to feel like a repetitive process. I would make all these arbitrary rules about how I should approach making a track. I would create from the audience’s perspective instead of my own. That really sucked the fun out of it, and I didn’t realize it until it was too late.
Basically what I’ve found is that when you’re not having fun, that translates through the speakers, and people don’t connect with that. If you leave the studio and feel like “phew, I’m glad that’s over”, how do you expect anybody to resonate with your track?
Pragmatically, what worked for me was to identify which parts of the process I didn’t enjoy, and see if there was a way I could make each of those fun.
We all spend most of our hours awake staring at screens. To me, screens don’t stimulate creativity. Looking at a laptop is a right-brain-friendly activity. And to make matters worse, modern laptops are so powerful that they don’t impose ANY limitations on you. Want to have 190 tracks in your session? Go ahead. Want to chain three reverbs together and OTT the shit out of your snare drum? No problem. Want to pick the perfect kick drum from your 500 gigabyte sample library? Easy.
It’s beating a dead horse to say that limitations breed creativity, but there really is truth to that statement. I know plenty of producers that can create these limitations entirely in the box – I just can’t. I had to limit myself to 16 physical tracks and a fixed amount of gear. But those limitations meant I couldn’t just sit and obsess over the same 8 bar loop for hours. And most importantly, I had to become a beginner again to learn the MPC workflow. All of a sudden I was fighting the gear. And once you fight the gear, you need to work harder to make sure your original intention comes through. That, in a sense, made my decisions much more deliberate.
Then, there’s of course taking note of how your process makes you feel. I get such a great sense of joy from using hardware equipment. Any nerd will tell you there’s no such thing as “the hardware sound” and that you can easily replicate that on a computer. But what you can’t replicate is the feeling of history you get from using that equipment. If making a beat on Ableton feels boring, and doing it with hardware gear feels fun, that’s the magic inside the equipment.
If you’re creatively minded, I think your left brain will recognize routines and predictability and respond by shutting off. But you can use that downside to your advantage. Approach things from a different perspective, whether it be using old gear, a different DAW, or simply putting on headphones and sitting somewhere else with your laptop. All of these things trick my brain into sparking creativity.
Lastly, when it comes to “finishing” stuff, as someone who is notoriously bad at following my own deadlines, it really helped having to finish my tracks then and there. Once all my decisions had to be final, I found that my output drastically improved, both in quantity and quality. Instead of saying “ahh this track is 90% of the way there, I’ll come back to it tomorrow”, you could also go to the studio tomorrow and make a new, even better track. But finish both of them before you leave.
So, TLDR:
– If you’re not having fun, find out why, and figure out ways to still make music and avoid those things.
– Finish tracks before you leave the studio. Even if they’re not perfect, they won’t linger around in your brain’s growing to-do list.
– If buying new equipment sparks your creativity, do it. There’s so much amazing old gear you can get for under 3000 kr because it doesn’t have “legendary” status.
– Lastly, make music only for yourself. Fuck the listener. Fuck the industry. Make something you yourself really want to listen to. Who knows, maybe somebody else out there also will like it.
Tracklist
Talons – Parallel Planes [Amar Dubs Vol 1, 2025]
Talons – Amar Dub 33 [Unreleased]
Talons – Amar Dub 30 [Unreleased]
Talons – Amar Dub 32 [Unreleased]
Luki & Talons – Hold Still [Unreleased]
Main Phase & Talons – Three 2 Six [Unreleased]
Main Phase & Talons – Artificial [Unreleased]
Talons – 3 Levels [Unreleased]
Main Phase & Talons – Dream State [First Touch Archives 001, 2025]
Main Phase & Talons – Hurricane [Unreleased]
Main Phase & Talons – Staden Tool [Unreleased]
Main Phase & Talons – Left Eye [Unreleased]
Talons – Amar Dub 9 [Unreleased]
Talons – Prism Dub (Extended Mix) [Amar Dubs Vol 1, 2025]
First Touch – Specialist [BSP, 2022]
First Touch – Only Truth [BSP, 2022]
First Touch – Opus Project [Unreleased]
Main Phase & Talons – Stalker [Unreleased]
Talons – Amar Dub 12 [Unreleased]
For more news, music and mixtapes, stay up to date with Talons on Instagram and Soundcloud,
Listen to the previous Strøm Mixx with Maria – or find the all the mixtapes here.