My name is Strahil Velchev
I am known as the electronic music producer ‘Kink’
and right now we are in Sofia, Bulgaria
in my home studio sweating out
because all the machines are on.
I've always been addicted to listening to music
At some point that addiction
transferred to a desire to make music
Slowly doing tape edits trying to
manipulate home stereo led to
manipulating audio on a computer
And there was no sudden moment when
I said “Right I'm gonna quit my day job”
and I'm gonna make music full-time
It was just naturally transforming from a music listener
to someone who edit music
to someone who compose music
to someone who perform music live
The role of DJ is to make people happy but also to educate them
a little bit so I guess balance between both
we have to know how to deliver
We have to learn how to read the crowd
sometimes we have to know how to bring them
in a new territory for them
There is nothing better than having
this big sound system and you turn one controller
and something is happening
and people are reacting, this is priceless!
I find inspiration for my music
mostly by listening to other people's music
very often in the club
meeting friends talking about music
Events in life, good or bad events.
My studio is a very big influence
not only playing the instruments, but just looking at them
All these lights on my system
Generally everything, the city I live in
the neighbourhood I live in
We have these raw buildings, those blocks
it looks very industrial, futuristic in a way
in an apocalyptic way
The little park or a garden we have in front of the block
the shapes of the whole garden
It looks like old abandoned Russian area
for launching spaceships or something
that's the way I see it
or the way I saw it when I was a kid.
I'm obviously obsessed with space and technology
And all I see around me kind of reminds me all of that.
People say the limitations are creative
I think in that terms
Being in Bulgaria
being a bit limited with informations is a good thing
You can be bit more independent in your music taste
in your music style
because you don't have much going on locally
You are inspired by the whole world
You just have to observe everything else
if you don't find anything here
to inspire you
The space I use now it's not perfect
The room is too small it's too hot
which brings certain tension in music as well
so maybe that tension in the room
transferred to my music which
sometimes can be nice but sometimes my music
can be very heavy with a lot of tension.
I have different ways of making music nowadays
Sometimes I can start with the beat
sometimes I can find a sample
that could be the main element which
trigger my creativity
Sometimes it could be the look of certain instruments
It just tells me “PLAY ME”
In the beginning I was very connected to the beats
The beats would were the most leading elements
Every time I make something new
I have a different approach to it
And I think I have an identity
in terms of sound design in terms of character
And colour in my sound
A hardware sampler is something very important
As long as the device add some colour to the sound
I have the TORAIZ SP-16
Because of the specific analog colour
because of the Dave Smith low-pass, high-pass filter
and the saturation unit
All the sounds are coming out of my computer so I need
a good sounding analog mono-synth.
There is certain quality I really like
with the synthesiser
They're pretty amazing custom scales inside
out of the European equal temperament
But now you should have SP-16 and then the AS-1
All these can go together in sync
it's just such a logical chain
The technology it’s not only making it easier
it made it possible for me to perform live