We are joined today by Deon, AKA Damage for a quick interview about his upcoming Single, Master Tortoise.

Please tell us, why Master Tortoise?

I was trying to clean an old hard drive and had to go through a lot of old samples I’ve collected over the years and discovered this dialogue from an old movie which was rather comical, so I decided to use it as the intro for the single. Master Tortoise actually used to be an old Turtle.

I see. What inspired you to do this single? It’s shorter than your usual stuff.

Every time I do a new track, there is usually some concept behind it. This time, I wanted to produce a Psytrance single that was exactly 4 minutes in length, with as mush as possible dance time, meaning mostly beats with very little breaks in between. It was challenging at first and I had to edit out a lot of what I wanted to keep in the track, but I stuck to the 4 minutes vibe and it all worked out in the end.

What gear or software did you use for this one?

Ouf! Basically almost everything I own. I have a lot of nice hardware gear in my studio that I rarely use, just because it’s a mission to wire everything. However, I forced myself to do it this time, so there’s a lot of hardware fx and processing going on. I also used a fair share of guitar pedals on the synths.

As for the synths themselves, Serum, Avenger, Nexus, Sylenth1 and a Nordlead 4.

Does using the external hardware improve the sound?

No, not at all. Plugins are really good these days and it keeps getting better. However, everyone is basically using the same popular plugins, so if you want to have your own sonic signature, hardware can help with that. It`s more expensive than plugins, so producers take more care in selecting hardware they really like. Especially if we`re talking about guitar pedals and distortion.

What can we expect from you in the future?

I’m currently working on a Hardcore track, which may or may not be released. We’ll see. I`ve been dipping my toes into this genre and want to get more serious about it. It`s a very different style of production that I quite enjoy. There’s also a chapter three of the 20 Years Of Damage series that might get released this year as well. It depends if there’s an open slot for it on the Diss Master Records release schedule. Hopefully there is. Certainly, I will be working on more Psytrance tunes as well, so stay tuned!