Nostalgia has always had a penchant for dirty and nasty music. I first found him looking for drumstep back in 2009 with ‘Crackin Skulls’ and then he burst onto the scene back in 2010 with his bootleg remix of “Muse – Knights of Cydonia.” I’ve been a fan ever since. That’s why it gives me so much pleasure to give you this exclusive look at his new EP out today, Know Me.
Four tracks, all dubstep, all filth. As Andrew Hill, aka Nostalgia, mentions in the following interview, he hadn’t been doing strict dubstep for a while. A little drum & bass, drumstep, even some trap was sprinkled throughout his productions in the past year or so. Yet, there are so many new innovators for dubstep coming out of the woodwork that he felt it necessary to throw his hat back in the ring. With such a grand re-entry to the dubstep scene, you would be crazy to write it off as “just another dubstep EP.” 
Andrew pulled out all the stops and worked on flexing his creativity with these four enormous tracks. ‘Butterscotch’ is my absolute favorite for its unrelenting craziness and utter horror. It’s at least as terrifying, if not more, as anything that Figure, the king of bass horror, has ever released. ‘Gun Dem,’ while it tones it down a bit with the vocal samples and bubbly synths, still goes hard with the bassline and keeps the whole EP together. ‘Know Me’ and ‘Roll’ are absolutely filthy tunes that I hope will push the dubstep scene further to be more creative. The sound design and everything else is far beyond what 90% of dubstep producers are putting out these days.
I was so enamored with the new EP, I had to ask Nostalgia some questions that had been burning at the back of my mind. The answers are an awesome insight into how the EP was made and the whole process behind his production.
You just released the Perfect Lie EP shortly before Know Me. Were you working on them at the same time, or has the Know Me EP been in the works for much longer?
It took me a lot longer to write the Perfect Lie EP than it did for me to write the Know Me EP actually. Perfect Lie, the title track, sounded way different when I started it last year and it had my vocals on it haha. But then I got my buddy Frank to record new vocals, and when he did that, I decided to re-write the song with different chords and a different drop as well 😛
Other than Butterscotch, the Know Me EP only took me a little over a month to write.
There’s a lot of very unique sound design and use of effects in every track on the EP. I know a lot of producers say, “I just make music,” but was there anything you were trying to prove, either to yourself or to your fans or to the community?
I’ll be honest with you, before writing this last EP, I was pretty sick of Dubstep. You may have noticed that the King Koopa EP was a blend between Trap and Dubstep (Each tune was written at 150 BPM!) The Corruption EP, which came out after that, features a breaks/dubstep tune, a 150bpm dubstep tune, and two drumstep tunes haha.
Anyway, after taking a break from traditional dubstep for a bit, I started noticing some people were making really creative new dubstep tunes that brought me back to when I first got into the genre. People like Jphelpz, Coffi and the Gentleman’s Club, Bukez Finezt, Dubloadz, Haunta, Trampa, and the ridiculous Midnight Tyrannosaurus. Inspired by that, I set out to write another Dubstep EP, but not just any old Dubstep EP, something that was me flexing my production muscles making sure those who don’t know, would get to “Know Me” 😉
The preview for ‘Butterscotch’ has been out for a while, and it’s probably my favorite track next to ‘Roll.’ How did you come up with the idea of using a Fallout quote? And how were you able to make the track so utterly horrifying?
Hahah, it is pretty frightening. I got the idea for it while searching the internet for video game soundboards to sample 😛 I’ve never actually played Fallout to be honest, but I hear its a fantastic game with a unique mood/style. My buddy A.J. would tell me about it a lot.
For the producers out there, part of the scariness (other than the sample) probably comes from the de-tuning of the bass sound. The bass is almost a-tonal!
Might also be interesting to note that a lot of the way I deal with stress is through writing bass music…
You recently moved. Has the move been beneficial in your creative process? Or was it just for other reasons entirely?
I moved from Minneapolis, MN to Bloomington, IL. The reason I moved is because my wife got a full ride to ISU for costume design (she’s pretty amazing). We talked about it, and I figured I’m pretty mobile with the work I do so it wouldn’t be that hard to pick up and go.
The move was super beneficial, like I mentioned before, Know Me only took about a month to write. It went so quickly because that was one of the most frustrating/stressful times of my life.
I was living just outside downtown Minneapolis, in a cramped apartment with no A/C and a joke for heat. I wrote Butterscotch at that apartment. Packed up that place and moved our stuff to Bloomington when we got a place there.
Then we drove back up to Minneapolis and house-sat for my brother-in-law for a month which meant we went from a small apt to an apt the size of a bedroom. While house sitting, I wrote Know Me (the intro is actually a sample of my bro-in-law’s upright bass that we recorded when he came home).
THEN finally moved to Bloomington just to realize that the electricity was dirty at the new apt and I needed to get that sorted somehow. In a huff, I drove to my parents new house in Marion Iowa and stayed there for two weeks and from my parents house I wrote Gun Dem and Roll.
What’s next?
Tonight, actually, is the first broadcast of my new bi-weekly radio show on Mixify! Me and some friends are having an online release party for the EP tonight @ 10pm CST (I go on at 11pm).
http://www.mixify.com/dnbnostalgia/event/nostalgia-know-me-ep-release-party
On the off-weeks of the Mixify show, I’m doing an all Drum & Bass live show on Rood.FM, check them out they have some killer shows there streaming live 🙂
I’m continuing to do my YouTube production tutorials and they get less cringy by the episode so check those out as well haha 😛
I’ll be playing some shows soon, Midwest area, best way to stay tuned to that is on the Facebook page so be sure to link up there!
Thanks for having me and I’ll see yall tonight at the party!
www.facebook.com/dnbnostalgia
www.soundcloud.com/nostalgia
www.youtube.com/dnbnostalgia
www.twitter.com/dnbnostalgia
