interview – Anton Yaz on his musical journey so far, Sydney’s scene & more

Anton Yaz – When I was 12 years old my mother bought me a little DJ deck from Aldi supermarket and after a few YouTube tutorials I instantly fell in love with mixing!

It wasn’t until 2017 when I was 17 years old, that I decided to give production a try as I really wanted to make hip-hop beats at the time. After an impulsive decision, I purchased FL Studio for almost $1,000 thinking it would be easy but I had no idea how hard production would actually be.

Fast forward to mid-2022, after multiple failed attempts at producing beats, my music taste started to develop into House Music. I downloaded FL Studio again and gave it another try. After a couple studio sessions I was listening back to my music in the car. I couldn’t believe my ears. I could not believe that I had created a taste of house music that I love and enjoy, and from that point on I was addicted to production.

MI4L – Can you tell us a bit about your musical background? Did you have formal training, or was it more of a self-taught journey?

Anton Yaz – My favourite subject at school was always music, after school I took drum lessons and during school I’d always look forward to music class, I even played in the school band. I ended up selecting music as one of my elective subjects towards the end of school, however we were taught to compose music classically on sheet paper and we were never taught how to use a digital audio workspace like FL Studio or Ableton.

Growing up I was always a bit of a computer nerd, I studied IT alongside music and for many years worked in a corporate 9-5 job managing IT hardware and software. I believe that understanding computers and music simultaneously, allowed me to establish deeper knowledge of the digital audio workspace and helped develop my sound and ability to produce music, despite never receiving proper or adequate training.

MI4L – Sydney’s music scene is known for its diversity and creativity. How has the local scene influenced your sound and development as an artist?

Anton Yaz – Sydney’s Music scene has always had its ups and downs. During covid, after being hit with an aggressive lockdown, the music scene almost died completely. Upon its revival, I personally saw boat parties a big success. There’s something about house music and being on the water in one of the most beautiful harbours in the world that people just really love and enjoy. My first couple gigs landed me on some of these iconic boat parties which really influenced me to shape this unique sound and style.

I remember one of my first boat parties I played a commercial Tech House set thinking that’s what everyone wanted to hear, however after listening to the other DJs who all played this amazing funky tech house, I was pretty blown away. That day I went home and downloaded heaps of new songs and completely changed my set to play the music I love; not the music I thought people wanted to hear.

MI4L – Your latest release, ‘For You,’ has been getting a lot of attention. Can you share the inspiration behind the track? What message or feeling did you want to convey with it?

Anton Yaz – I chose this track as my debut release as I think it perfectly illustrates my artistic vision, brand and style for Anton Yaz. Each of the elements were inspired by some of my favourite artists. The Lush chords were inspired by the Ruze Journey LP with PIV, the Acid Synth was inspired by Steve Darko’s sounds from his Dirty Bird records, and the vocals; “I wanna give this to you” was selected because I want to give my music to the world!

MI4L – What does your typical creative process look like when you’re producing music? Do you start with a specific idea or sound in mind, or is it more of a fluid, experimental process?

Anton Yaz – I love the technicalities involved with production, I love how every single little knob in the audio workspace can be changed and manipulated to create unique sounds.

Generally speaking, house music is a very sample based genre whether that be a vocal sample, an old saxophone, or a drum sample from the ’90s. However, I find more and more that my ideas come mostly from sound design. The first thing I do when I open a project file is open a synthesiser and start designing sounds from scratch. I always avoid using presets as I find that creating different sounds contributes to my unique style and by better understanding how each sound is created, I can manipulate that sound throughout the track to further develop my style.

I feel a creative process is like a secret sauce for any producer’s music, however, your creative process doesn’t come magically overnight. The biggest factor that helped develop my creative flow is that in 2022 when I first started producing, I made a track every single day for 365 days regardless of whether I was feeling inspired or not and regardless if the track sounded good or not. I take the assumption that there is no such thing as a bad idea and the studio is a creative space where there are no right and wrong answers. For every track I created, I learned something along the way that I could then implement into a future track and this process repeated again and again is how a creative flow is born and developed.

MI4L – Collaboration is key in the electronic music world. Are there any artists, locally or internationally, you’d love to collaborate with in the future?

Anton Yaz – Honestly this is a very hard question to answer, but I definitely need to name a few artists that it would be a dream to collaborate with, mostly because their music has been giving me all the inspiration I need recently. In no particular order my dream collaborations would be RUZE, Sidney Charles, Sem Jacobs, Stef Davidse and Marsolo.

MI4L – As a producer and DJ, what’s more rewarding for you: creating new music in the studio or performing live and seeing how the crowd reacts to your sets?

I think the most rewarding is a combination of these two things. In my opinion the most rewarding thing about being in this industry is having a crowd of people give amazing reactions to your DJ set, but only I know that my entire DJ set has been just unreleased IDs played back to back.

It’s these moments that always keep me motivated in the studio when I’m sitting down and running low on ideas. After a long day in the studio I’ll test my music in the car to see how it sounds, this is when I get to listen to it from the outside perspective and all I keep thinking about is when I’m going to be able to play this live.

MI4L – How do you see the Australian electronic music scene evolving in the next few years? Are there any trends or changes you’re excited about?

Anton Yaz – Unfortunately, the Australian music scene has not been doing very well particularly since lockdown and we have had many music festivals cancelled, and events have disappeared. It had been getting increasingly difficult to sell out tickets to any shows. Recently, and only within the last 6 months there has been an uplift with more and more events selling out and newer events taking over where these older events couldn’t.

It has also just been announced that the Australian government will be assisting music festivals by providing $500,000 grants to festivals over a certain capacity. This will be extremely beneficial as recently music festivals in Australia have had to increase ticket prices to hundreds of dollars just to cover costs.

I’m excited because as the music scene in Sydney continues to grow it’ll provide more opportunities for myself and similar upcoming artists to showcase our music.

MI4L – Beyond ‘For You,’ what do you have planned for the near future? Any upcoming projects, releases, or performances you’re excited to share with your fans?

Anton Yaz – I’ll be happy to announce that I’m sitting on a vault of over 100 unreleased IDs, all of them finished ready for release, so the hard part now is deciding which track is next. My plan is to have a release every 2 months for the foreseeable future as this will give me enough time to work on all the admin work associated with releasing music.

At the moment releasing my music is more important to me than any gig, because releasing and allowing people to hear the music I create can help me grow more fans and then more bookings to be able to play my music live with everyone.

MI4L – Lastly, what advice would you give to aspiring DJs and producers who are just starting out in their careers, especially in a competitive city like Sydney?

Anton Yaz – Something that’s always taught when you start DJing is that to get bookings you need to create connections and network to people that can help you grow. However, I find more and more that the best connections I’ve made have been the ones that have turned into genuine friendships such as with Aiden Sanchez who runs Peoples Party; we ended up running Peoples Party Festival together, and Daniel Tonik who runs The Area Collective, who is now one of my best friends and we’re doing so much together that has helped us both grow as artists.

But the biggest drive for this is needing to love the process, there’s no point waking up every day if your only motivation is to drop a fat DJ set. You need to love the industry, you need to love the people around you and your greatest networking opportunity is the friends you make along the way.