Jay Pei talks About His New Album ‘Ocean of Stars’, The Process of Collaborating with Classical Violinist Karolina Beimcik & Kohra and teaching at the Global Music Institute in New Delhi

Hi Jay Pei, thanks for joining us. Can we start by talking about your new release ‘Ocean of Stars’ on Qilla Records. What can you tell us about the process behind the release, are there certain tools in the studio you tend to use and what was the inspiration behind each track?

Hey, thank you for having me. Sure, “Ocean of Stars” is basically a follow-up release to my last release on Qilla “CC129”. There’s a track on CC129 called ”Mexican Standoff” which has a unique melody inspired by my favourite Western movies. I had this idea to have at least one track which is in the same space in terms of tones and textures, but melody inspired from different cultures of the world for every consecutive release on Qilla.

I started working on the title track in Jan 2019. It took a while to come up with the melody but in the end, I think I had exactly what I wanted emotionally, it is quite evocative and captivating. Originally I had named this track Nashira which is a star in the constellation of Capriconus but as I kept hearing the tune, again and again, I just felt like the release should be titled “Ocean of Stars”.

I waited a while before I sent this to Kohra, I wasn’t sure how he would feel about it but then he had the same feelings as me, and even asked me to send the parts as he wanted to make his own version out of it, that’s how the remix happened.

I met Karolina at the school where I teach music technology, she is a brilliant vocalist and violinist. At the end of every term we usually have a school concert where we showcase students and faculty performances. It was an impulsive idea to play the main track to her and asked if she’d be interested in playing the melody on a violin for the concert, and it just so happened that she loved the track. I went back to the studio and made a few changes for the reprise version, we recorded the parts and it felt great. I thought this track should be on the EP too, so I sent it to the label and they felt the same.

However Antimatter was made much later for the EP, I felt the EP was strong musically but it needed a dancefloor track with the same attitude. I named it Antimatter because of the lead. It’s heavy, gritty and mean.

Coming to the production bit, sounds from my Sub37 and Prophet 8 are on every track that I write. Apart from my two favourite synths, I also us Mother32 along with a bunch of guitar pedals that I mainly use for tone shaping. My DAW of choice is Ableton Live, but I’m not particularly into using soft synths as I like the workflow better on hardware. Having said that, I love how being able to use software plugins on recorded sound just opens up a whole new realm of sound designing possibilities. For the reprised version, I used Cascade C77 ribbon microphone to record Karolina’s violin. I felt that it would be the ideal microphone to capture the voice and emotion of the piece, based on its frequency response and overall warm character.

Your new release features a reprise with classical violinist Karolina Beimcik and a remix from label boss Kohra. Is there anything in particular with both artists sound that stood out for you and what influenced you to choose them?

Like I said, I didn’t really choose them to work on this EP, things just sort of happened organically. When I sent the title track to Kohra he told me straight up that he wants to do something with the track, and so I sent him the parts. It was that simple. Karolina on the other side had never played violin on an electronic piece before so she was just intrigued to learn how both of these different sides would work together.

To be really honest, I was a bit excited when Kohra said he wants to remix the track. He is like a mentor to me and also a phenomenal DJand producer who’s been around for more than 17-18 years in the scene, and there’s so much to learn from him.

Karolina Beimcik performing her ‘Zorya’ album live in New Delhi

You teach music at the Global Music institute in New Delhi, and met Karolina Beimcik there. What do you specialise in and teach at the facility and how did this all come into place?

I teach Music Technology and Ableton live courses at GMI. It is one of the best institutes in India for music performance. I teach recording arts and techniques, mixing, mastering, post-production, foley for film and visual media, video game music and sound design.