Genre: Other

Interview: Zak Waters September 3, 2012 Comments Off I have written about Los Angeles native Zak Waters a few times already here, but now that he has teamed up with boy wonder Madeon to bring us ' The City ' the time has come for us to learn more about him trough an interview. Definitely also check out his ' Walking On A Dream ' remix and the perfect summer anthem ' Skinny Dipping In The Deep End ', which I have personally played a lot, below. 01. Can you introduce yourself to the readers that haven't heard of you yet? Hello, hello! I'm Zak Waters. I am here. 02. How was your summer? Summer was great for me. We started it off nice and stressful with shooting the video for "Skinny Dipping." It was also tons of fun though. I mean whats not fun about spraying an entire jacuzzi full of people with champagne? But, try wrangling about 60 drunk extras...lesson learned. Other than the video, I've spent the majority of the summer in a studio, went to the beach once! Hey thats pretty good for someone like me. I'm really into working instead of doing fun things. It's a problem sometimes. I'm in the process of learning how to do that thing called "relaxing?" 03. Your top 3 favorite tracks of the moment are? No particular order. And I tend to obsess over songs, so some of these tracks are months old, but I just haven't been able to move on yet! 04. You teamed up with Madeon which resulted in the upcoming single 'The City'. How did you guys meet? I sure did! Long story short, a couple years ago now, my writing/producing partner Jarrad Kritzstein was working with a UK artist Rachel Furner (now Tich). Her A&R person had suggested that this 16 year old kid do a production of the song they wrote....So obviously we went and found this kid, we were like "who the hell gets a 16 year old to produce a song, this is ridiculous..." But then we LISTENED, and looked at each other in awe. We were blown away. So then we started talking to him, we emailed back and forth. Talked about what plug-ins and synths we were using etc... you know music geek stuff. We had kinda went back and forth for a while with the possibility of him doing a remix for me, and then me singing on one of his tracks. Then one day about a year ago, I received "The city" in my inbox asking me if I wanted to take a stab at writing to it. So i did. and now here we are!! 05. What inspired you when writing the lyrics? Well, the track was always called "The City." Hugo (Madeon) had this vision of some far away place. Hence the sound effects in the intro. He had told me he visualized someone opening the door to some magical hidden place. I loved that! So I stuck to that, and thought of ways to ground that idea with something that still felt mysterious but also real and relatable. 06. How was it to work with the only 18-year old French producer? Its amazing, age aside, I still think he is one of the best producers I've ever heard, let alone worked with. But even outside of music, he very intelligent and extremely well spoken. So there's never any trouble for us understanding each other even though French is his first language. I'm extremely proud and excited to be a part of his journey. 07. Are there any other producers who you would like to work with in the future? Tons! Always really wanted to work with Benny Blanco, Teddy Riley, Babyface, Justice, Daft Punk, deadmau5, Danger Mouse, Timberland.... to name a few off the top of my head...I'd like to somehow mix all of those production styles together! Thad be cray! 08. You also have a solo album coming up, what can you tell us about that? I Do I do! Well Jarrad (Kritzstein) and I have been working on it for the last 8 months or so, taking a little break to start shooting a music video for the next single and then getting back to it! Aiming for January release..next single will be out in october though! 09. What inspired you when writing the tracks for the album? Oh man...so much...I'd say when we started this record I really wanted to just do what I wanted. We were a little constrained when doing "New Normal." Being signed to a major still, we were always trying so hard to write a "HIT." This time around me and Jarrad both had grown so much as producers, and I had really absorbed a ton of music between finishing new normal and starting this new one that I really wanted to explore with this record. I'd say at the core, the place were these songs come from is the exact same. Still very early funk and soul inspired, but our palate of sounds has grown far beyond that. Before I wanted to stay away from anything too indie sounding or anything too R&B. Now its all fair game. That being said this record will have a wide range of vibes and be pretty eclectic. I know...scary.... but I'm very proud of and excited to share it!!