Interview – Unveiling Musical Journeys: A Conversation with Julia Sound

What inspired you to pursue a career in music production and composition, and how did Julia Sound come to fruition?

I became obsessed with music as a young kid, and learned the piano, and later also orchestral percussion. I segued into recording and mixing in my 20s, which naturally led to writing and producing . I spent years producing for other artists, and then when the pandemic hit, it seemed a good time to focus on my own art – Julia Sound is like the cumulative result of all of that.

I’d always loved electronic bands like Massive Attack, Chase & Status & Leftfield, who have the core band members but feature different vocalists on many songs, and I wanted to emulate that model. I had a ton of beats, snippets of tracks and ideas, and wanted to complete the songs, so I decided to reach out to different singers and rappers to see if they wanted to be a part of this collective. The project snowballed and now I have three full albums of material.

I love working with singers and rappers, in fact, I think that’s one of my strengths as a producer. However, for this album I wanted to get a little more experimental and also give myself the challenge of a fast turnaround on the tracks, and as such didn’t want to be thinking about lyrical themes. The result is an instrumental album, and the pieces are more of an improvised study in synths and beats than my other work. 

I’ve been in the industry a long time, and for many years I was pretty much the only woman on the engineering and production side, in whichever studio and whichever city I was in. I’m really encouraged to see this has been changing over the last decade or so, with many more women entering the field from the technical side. I think it’s important all ‘voices’ and ideas are heard, and for so long, our industry has been the domain of men. I decided to make Julia Sound a 100% female (and non-binary) project to make space for this different sound and approach.

I think the 90’s and going into the 00’s was an incredible time for electronic music, and the scene in the UK was absolutely bursting with the creativity of brilliant electronic bands – Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Portishead, Massive Attack, Faithless to name a few. All these bands had tracks, albums and live shows that really resonated with me. Even if I listen to these albums less these days, they made an indelible impression on my musical tastes, so I think Julia Sound naturally leans into these influences.

I have a couple of old Roland synths (Juno 60 and JX3P) that I’d just got fixed, so they form the basis of some of these tracks. I also have a Korg Minilogue which is the key tone on ‘Quatre-Vingt-Quinze’. I tried not to get too prescriptive about what I used on each track, but I did find that blending a bunch of newer Native Instruments plugs, as well as Re-FX Vanguard with the analogue synths got me the results I was aiming for. 

I think the project has given me the confidence to see myself as an artist and composer, whereas until then, I was more a producer for other people. It’s also given me the flexibility to put myself out there as a creator of music for visual media as well.

As mentioned above, I think the trip-hop elements from some of my earlier musical influences naturally come out when I’m creating downtempo tracks. I also love listening to hip hop, so there’s crossover there from a beats perspective too.

I had leaned into some cool Native Instruments beats plug ins, with the Butch Vig drums forming the basis on a couple of the tracks. I wouldn’t have leaned into these tones on the first two albums, but they just seemed to fit this time round, probably because I was not focused on supporting any vocals and felt I had more freedom to increase the edge drum-wise as a result.

I also listen to ambient music, and all these elements form the basis of that genre, so naturally become part of the melting pot of tones that I draw from.

A goal I set for myself was to turn this album around super quickly, which in itself I guess could be considered challenging, because, as any music creator knows, the temptation is there to endlessly noodle and tweak. If I found myself going down a rabbit hole, I quickly stopped the track and moved onto a new one.

One reason for setting myself the challenge of working fast was that I’d love to get into more composition for film and TV, and I know that turnaround times can be tight in that field. I think this project proved to myself I can create compelling music that would work well for visual media, so that’s something I’m going to explore. Also, now that I have a large body of Julia Sound tracks to draw from, I’m planning live shows. There’s a big appetite for live music of all kinds where I live (on the West Coast of BC) so I’m looking forward to taking some of these pieces to live audiences.