psybient.org Posted July 9, 2014 Share Posted July 9, 2014 Hello guys! Thanks for taking the time to give an interview. Firstly, for all the people who dont know you, tell us who you are and where youre from. Were Jeffrey van der Schilden, Nick van der Schilden and Peter Spaargaren. We all live near the capital of The Netherlands, Amsterdam. Together we form the project Easily Embarrassed, which stands for electronic music with atmospheric waves, psychedelic influences and raw retro synthesizer soundscapes on top. What are your musical backgrounds? Where do you come from musically and what led you to psychedelic downtempo? Jeffrey: Its been a long journey; growing up with a Commodore 64 sparked my interest in the sound of synthesizers. My tastes switched from general 70′s and 80′s pop music, to house, to hardcore, to club trance, to goa / psy trance and eventually I ended up in 2003,2004 exploring stuffs ranging from Brain Eno and Jean Michel Jarre to Shpongle, Carbon Based Lifeforms and Solar Fields. Nick: I grew up with the same interests as my brother Jeffrey. It all started with the great synthesizer sounds of the Commodore 64. I Started playing the acoustic guitar at the age of 10. I listened to a lot of music from my brother, so I grew up with the same taste for music. But I think I discovered the psychedelic music around 2000. Started with psychedelic goa trance like Infected Mushroom, but Shpongle came across as well. I made some psychedelic goa as solo artist and later started to work with Peter on a goa trance project, but with no real success. The real downtempo psychedelic journey began with the start of Easily Embarrassed back in 2006 and always been listening to that style ever since. Peter: I started making Hardcore around 2000. After that I really got into experimental music and Techno. I then got intrigued by Psychedelic music when a friend introduced me to Infected Mushroom and Shpongle. Nowadays I still make Techno (and other strange things I cant fit in EE) as a solo side-project. It seems you all have a shared love of the C64 sound. How would you say that has influenced your music? Nick: I grew up with this device. Most people from these days would say Im crazy. All those bleeps and bobs are only annoying sounds right? But actually there were some great composers who made masterpieces from an only 3 channel synthesizer. Names like Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway and Jeroen Tel are 3 of those. I learned that music can make or break a game. Music can bring you in a specific mood and if the music is good enough to give you this special feeling it can make a game for over 50% a winner. Thats really what has keeping me on in my past. A lot of C64 music composers were inspired by names like Jean Michel Jarre, or Tangerine Dream. Synthesizer music with a classic retro sounds. Mostly played in minor scale. And I think thats exactly what we do. Of course were looking forward and extending our melody lines to combine more styles with each other, but the C64 is where it all started for me. Jeffrey: A lot! The sound is what got me hooked to filters and the effects of phasing and flanging which they could achieve by offsetting the few oscillators they had in the C64. Also the music in the C64 games and demo material would all take huge influences from the epic late 70s Jean Michel Jarre stuff and there was lots of classical music inspired stuff, or actual classical pieces played trough the C64 SID sound and there were also lots of rock tunes played trough the C64, which makes it synth rock like of course. All that definitely made it back into our music. Peter: All of the above! It also was a huge influence to me. I also think that the fact the sound of the SID chip cant be emulate by any softsynth is really intrueging. Just like some old analog synthesizers theres just nothing that matches it. You mention running a solo-project on the side, Peter. Whats it called? And does Jeffrey and Nick also have project besides Easily Embarrassed? All of us used to have our little hobby projects, like Nicks Saiko, Jeffreys Nekativ and Nick and Peters Plantbane. You might be able to find some of these around the web if you dig hard enough, but the quality of these projects is not really up to our post EE standards Only Peters Void Pointer project is remains active today (although his focus mostly lies on Easily Embarrassed). - See more at: http://www.psybient.org/love/interview-easily-embarrassed/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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