LAMP ARTIST FEATURE | EAS
Hey there LAMP Fam. We are excited to share some new music with an artist who has been steadily been building up a name here in the underground technos scene in Southern California. HIs name is Emmanuel Andreas Santamarina or EAS. The co-owner of Tympanum Records is known for developing industrialized, monstrous noise, contrasted with his eclectic tastes and stylizations. In addition to heading up his own label and releasing music there he has also signed with Soma, Perc Trax and Pure Hate to name a few. His most recent release is a collaboration with Crisis Of Man label owner Selective Response (who we recently interviewed Click here to check that out) titled Immortal Flesh. Released March 25, 2022 EAS’ track Perfect Immortal Machine is a gritty, industrial techno, breakbeats masterpiece, characterized by massive and perfectly layered percussion that pounds away in the best way possible at your musical soul. The release is currently available on Bandcamp and is linked up above so go show this artist some love and grab your copy. We also had an opportunity to ask EAS some questions as we do here at LAMP and he has given us a wonderful interview and more insight into his world and how it inspires the music he is creating. Scroll down to check that out along with socials to follow and the full release of Immortal Flesh. Cheers Fam!
Hello EAS and thank you for the opportunity to ask you some questions. I recently connected with Selective Response for his release with Sara Landry and am looking forward to sharing your upcoming release with him to our audience. Let’s kick things off with the new release. It is titled Immortal Flesh a play on the names of the two songs one coming from you and the other from Selective Response. This your first release with Crisis of Man, tell us how you got connected with the label and what it was like working with Selective Response on this release?
Absolutely! Kane (Selective Response) and myself met during 2020, I had known about him around the last quarter of 2019, but I had never formally met him up until that point, but as soon as we met up and hung out, we got along great, and decided to work with each other regarding our labels, and even collaborate on some originals, which should be coming out soon. The entire process of endeavouring this release was very streamlined, a couple texts here, a call or two there, no troubles or issues, and we’re both very happy with it. So, all in all, the best kind of release someone could ask for. He’s a great guy, and a fantastic producer. I’m happy to be a part of his imprint!
Can you tell us more about your music history, do you have formal training, maybe something many people don’t know about you?
I’ve always had a pretty natural ear and feeling for music. Ever since I was a baby, I basically always have music stuck in my head. I used to play some guitar, but I’ve never really been that good at it, not good enough to be in a band or really make any music with it of any sort. Perhaps something interesting that people don’t know about me is, I never really thought I would ever be producing or writing music. I was originally considering being either an English teacher, or a journalist for film and media.
Reading your bio on Soundcloud it seems you have a very wide ranging palette of music you enjoy. What or who were your early passions and influences and how have they shaped the music you produce today?
There’s a great deal of music that I enjoy or have enjoyed! I grew up with the bands that my parents were really into, and I still listen to that stuff sometimes. There’s quite a bit of alt rock that I love too. But perhaps the type of music that really influenced me in what I do now that isn’t a genre of electronic music is heavy metal. The energy and pure, raw punishment and extremity of it is something I still try to match in a lot of my own productions. I definitely don’t listen to it as much today, since most of my time is taken up by listening to Techno, but I still love bands like System Of A Down, Meshuggah, The Faceless, Vildhjarta, Humanity’s Last Breath, Suicide Silence, and too many others to list.
How did you get into the techno scene and what are your first memories of techno music?
The first forays into electronic music for me was when I was 10 years old. There was this old block of anime series on Cartoon Network called Toonami, and they would always have these, pretty much, mini music videos that advertised the featured anime on there, and they always had these incredibly mind-blowing sounds, like breakbeats, really incredible hip hop style sampling, but it felt so leftfield. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, and through most of my life, I had no idea what it was until one day I discovered that it was this whole world of Techno and Jungle, and dubby sounding music. That stuff was incredible to me. Eventually, I started getting into different types of electronic music, like Trance, Drum N’ Bass, Happy Hardcore, Future House, but I remember all of this led me to digging through YouTube one day, as a kid does. And I found this opening cutscene for an official videogame for Ghost in the Shell, on the Playstation. And it uses a track with the same name by Takkyu Ishino. That was absolutely the track that made me want to create music like that. When I first heard it, it absolutely racked my brain. I don’t want to be over the top about it, but it really did change my life! I just thought that this was something I wanted to make for the rest of my life. I’ve been producing Techno for 7 years, and it’s been the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done in my life so far.
How would you describe your style of production to someone who doesn’t listen to electronic music at all?
Think death metal and disco, having a baby together.
For most artists, originality is first preceded by a phase of learning and, often, emulating others. What was this like for you? How would you describe your own development as an artist and the transition towards your own voice?
My entire process of people that have inspired me and how my music has followed suit over the years has always been something that I hold on my sleeve. For example, there’s plenty of tambres, instrumentalizations, like snares and percussion, that you can definitely connect to my influences from, say, Perc, or Ansome, very industrial style Techno artists. But the way that I mix things down, or EQ certain sounds, or compress certain sounds, or generally mix things down in the arrangement. The technical process is where my sound starts to really come through. I think the reason for that is because I would rarely watch tutorials or the like when I was first learning how to produce, and the person that I was learning with (one of my best friends, Josh Sturges), really helped me train my ear on what sounds good in a mixdown, regardless of how you’re getting to that finish line. That, combined with the fact that I make more than just industrial Techno, starts to mix into a pool of different sounds and styles that leads to my voice as a producer. I think that’s the best I can do to kind of dissect what I’m doing in the studio, I’m not very good at explaining it. I’m sorry.
Let’s say you’re working on a new tune and you’ve got the chance to program some remixes for the EP. If you could have your pick and money, time etc were no object who are some of your favorite producers right now that you’d want to have a go at reworking your tracks?
Well, first and foremost, Perc is like a hero to me, and one of my absolute favorite producers ever, so, of course I’d want him every day of the week. Something totally different from that. I’d love to have Jensen Interceptor remix something of mine. I absolutely adore Electro music, especially the stuff coming out lately. I’m not sure how he’d go about remixing a harder Techno track, but I’d love to see him try. He’s incredible, and so eclectic and fun. Also, I’ve been absolutely dying for Somniac One to remix one of my tracks. She’s one of my absolute favorite producers of all time at this point. She’s very picky with who she remixes because her process is very slow in production. But, shit, I’d wait years for her to finish it, I don’t care, she’s amazing.
You also have your own record label Tympanum. Can you tell us more about the that and it’s genesis please?
Tympanum records was something that Josh (Sturges) and I had wanted to make for a long time. He’s one of my best friends, as I mentioned before, and we have a deep connection when it comes to music, so, we thought, why not start a label together. We were both also going through releases from other labels that we weren’t really happy with, because we felt like our creative freedom was really being stifled when dealing with certain imprints, especially on the side of album art. Because of this, every Tympanum release has unique album art, and we either work with artists whose work we love and appreciate, or we design the art ourselves. When we work with artists, we give them our music for the release, just to give them something to work off of, and let them go. We understand and respect their process, and we don’t want to creatively shackle them. We just love their work and want to be a part of it in some way! Our imprint is basically a passion project, and a platform to just release whatever we want. As experimental or straightforward as we want. We’re not just limited to Techno music either. Whether or not the label is necessarily successful, or has a fanbase, isn’t much of a concern to us. We just want a platform we can distribute off of, and something that we can call our own. That being said, we appreciate the people that have come to support the music that has come off of Tympanum, of course. We’re very slow to release music on it, when the time feels right, we’ll have more music on the imprint in the future.
Outside of music what other passions and creative outputs do you have? What are some that you’d love to add to your mental vocabulary?
Definitely the second biggest passion for me in my life is anime and manga. At this point, music is really the only creative outlet that I have, but at some point, I’d love to launch an anime and manga related podcast, just talking about that stuff with people really gets me excited, just ask Kane, or a bunch of my friends in LA, they can back me up on that.
Is there anything else coming up in your world that we should know, or you want to tell us about that we should be keeping an eye/ ear out for?
Well, I’ve got a ton of music lined up for this year. The ones I can actually talk about is, I have an EP that is coming out March 25th called the “Step Beyond” EP, which leans more toward the industrial, saturated Techno side. I also have another EP coming out April 21st on WarinD’s label called the “Cease And Desist” EP, which will lean more toward a ravier style of Techno. I like to keep things eclectic and not monotone in my music releases. Expect to see more of that in the coming months!
Thank you so much for your time. Looking forward to hearing and learning more about your productions and hopefully run into you up here in LA. Please let us know when you’re playing up here next and I’ll send a message out to our followers. Cheers.
Thank you so much for the great questions!
Support the artists and pick up this EP on Bandcamp
