Name: Shyam Anand aka Snad
Nationality: Indian
Occupation: Producer, DJ, label co-founder at We R The Aliens
Current release: Snad's Bubblescope EP is out December 6th 2024 via Smallville.
 
If you enjoyed this Snad interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit him on Instagram, Soundcloud, and Facebook.  
 


When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Unfortunately I am not synaesthetic.

I listen to music with my eyes open and closed but do not see anything. However, I find listening to music with my eyes closed helps me focus on the spatial elements and hidden sounds that I perhaps may not have noticed upon first listen.

How does listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

There’s a physical element to listening to music on a sound system which I find very hard to replicate via headphones. For example, feeling the low-end frequencies reverberating through my chest is an experience unique to stereo systems.

Listening to music via headphones provides a more isolated experience which I feel gives way to absorbing more spatial information which I also find to be special, especially in deeper music.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

I really love listening to D’angelo, there’s a certain rawness in his sound and I absolutely admire the recording process that he undertook for all of his albums, cutting most everything to tape and layering multiple passes on vocals to achieve chord-like voicings. In my mind, D’s music represents the absolute pinnacle of musicality.

I’m a massive fan of his debut album Brown Sugar, but I grew to love Voodoo more.



In the dance music sphere, I’d say I have a soft spot for early New York/New Jersey Garage and Chicago house and West London Broken Beat. Artists like Chez-n Trent, Kaidi Tatham, Mood II Swing and Danny Tenaglia in their 90s hey-day particularly stuck out to me and were what drove my love for house music.

Danny’s work with The Daou, Daphne and his Ballroom mixes or Mood II Swing’s immaculate Crustation "Borderline Insanity Dub Mix" (or the vocal mix for that matter) among their other seminal hits ranging from “Move Me” to “Slippery Track.”



For me, my favorite sound in dance music is the Chez-n Trent Prescription Stab found on tunes like “The Choice (Full Dosage Mix)” or Noni - "Be My (27th & 10th Ave Mix)," not to mention their other seminal hits like “Don’t Try It,” “Morning Factory,” or the “Nature of Retribution 12”.”



Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

Certain sounds definitely give me goosebumps, like the pads in the Mood II Swing remix of Crustation. Some other tunes can even give me upper body shivers.

Recently I’ve felt this listening to the Masters at Work Thunder Mix of Janet Jackson - “Go Deep.”



I think most humans respond to vocals and for me soulful R&B / Neo Soul vocals and a lot of the vocals found in early 90s house and garage immediately grab my attention and often stay stuck in my head on loop for hours or sometimes days.

I am also touched by complex atmospheres such as strings or their synth emulations; I’m a huge sucker for deep pads with nice chord voicings. In terms of visceral reactions, I think I tend to quickly make stank faces at big, in your face basslines.

And as I mentioned in the previous question, the Chez-n Trent stab definitely elicits a different sort of knee-jerk reaction from me. I would say that stabs in general are some of my favorite elements in dance music and I am equally titillated by dub techno stabs as found on Maurizio's “M4.5” for example.



Aside from stabs, I really really love the timbre of the Rhodes electric piano; however I also love hearing great keys players like Kaidi Tatham riff on synths; I think more powerful than the instrument in this case is a musician in tune with chord voicings.

The voicings themselves evoke emotion and when played in the right order, hearing a progression resolve in an unexpected way can be like having a magic spell cast over you.

[Read our feature on the Fender Rhodes]

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

I think one of my least favorite sounds has to be the horns on lorries in India, they are deafeningly loud. On that same note, I would put European sirens up there.

In general, I am not a fan of shrill tones, but I think a large part of it has to due with sensitivity to loud noises.

I think I could listen to synth pads or electric pianos for hours, especially if the chord voicings are pleasant.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

I suppose some train stations have very impressive reverb. One that comes to mind is 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. I always make sure to get a few claps / snaps / shouts off in there. There’s even a 30th Street Station convolution reverb preset on the Ensoniq DP4.

On the other hand, I’d mention just being out in nature. I really like hearing the sounds of cicadas, grasshoppers, birds or waves, it’s just calming to me.

The title track of my Loop Dreamzz album for KM4.5 has some birds and waves at the beginning of it. If I had to guess, the recording was taken from the first time I visited their club in Tulum.



Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

The one that sticks out to me is the Bahai temple in Evanston, IL.

There is a general rule to be silent in the temple and I remember at one point I could hear people breathing more than 20-30 feet away from me. I’m not sure how much of that had to do with the room, but that’s the only place I can really recall silence being viscerally ‘broken.’

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

All of my recording is done in my studio or friends' studios. So I guess I’d just say my music room at my parent’s house.

Regarding playing my music, I would say some of my favorite spaces to play it include Heideglühen in Berlin, Hot Mass in Pittsburgh, and Papaya Playa Project in Tulum.

There is something satisfying about playing tunes on a massive sound system on the beach. I love playing in clubs, but the outdoor nature element adds a whole new dimension to the music.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Yes definitely, I think I realized this the most when I was working on my forthcoming Smallville 12”s title track “Bubblescope” and its B1 “Lukewarm Lava.”

The process involved using my modular synth as a carrier for my Ensoniq DP4 vocoder which processed a signal from my E-mu Orbit, Proteus or Roland JX-3P. I have a Serge Resonant EQ which I would modulate which was cutting and boosting frequencies which would cause the vocoder to react differently to the incoming pad signal and it really felt like I was sculpting a sonic space, especially when the pads pulsed over time due to the resonant filter on the modular synth (carrier signal).

The process for recording both of those tracks was just slow modulation over 10-20 minutes. Choosing my favorite sequences from the recordings was extremely difficult because I had this odd attachment to almost every note. The way certain sounds occupy space in the frequency spectrum like a 909 or 808 kick drum, or a 909 rim shot / clap / snare / open hi-hat really has an almost physical representation for me in my head.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

I think if you look at noise polluted cities like Mumbai or New Delhi, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that being in noisy environments is at the very least overstimulating and can be very stressful, and exhausting (mentally, physically and potentially emotionally) for the average person.

I don’t know the psychological implications, but I would imagine that people in these environments are likely more ‘on edge’ than those in quieter, more calm places.

I think as a society, our acoustic health is not great, but there seems to be a more conscious shift towards hearing protection in loud spaces and I think that’s a great first step.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?  

I absolutely feel interspecies communication is possible. I would point to dogs as a rather clear example; our dogs can understand our tone and have a basic understanding of our vocabulary. In my parent’s house, we speak to our dogs in both English and Tamil, our south Indian language. Both of our dogs understand basic phrases like shall we go outside, however they also understand questions.

If we ask our dog Leila if she’s hungry, she often walks away from us. If we ask our dog Boo what she wants, she will usually bring us to the fridge or the door. Our old dog Loona would even get our attention and look up at the ceiling fan when it was too hot to indicate that we should turn the fan on. If we call one of our dogs, the other will not come and vice versa. I’ve even read that some border collies are capable of having a working vocabulary consisting of more than 200 words.

I have noticed however, that more important than the words we say to the dogs is the tonality with which it is said.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I have been regularly wearing earplugs for over a decade now. Originally I wore reusable silicone ear plugs when I would go to clubs, bars, festivals, and even movie theaters. However, I did not use earplugs when I would perform.

Around 2015 I got my first pair of custom made earplugs with -15 dB filters. I upgraded to -17 dB ACS ear plugs in 2017 or 2018 and started DJ'ing with them as well at the end of 2022. It took a bit of getting used to, but I find it extremely comfortable to DJ with earplugs in. I think I turn the monitoring volume pretty loud still, but at the very least, it quiets out the voices and other distractions allowing me to focus more on the music.

I will say that a lot of DJ headphones are very fatiguing to use and oftentimes after DJ’ing without earplugs, I would wake up the next day not with a ringing, but with a general fatigue and increased sensitivity.

I don’t think I have tinnitus, though I do think my hearing has gotten a bit worse over the years. In the studio, I rarely produce loudly and almost never get any noise complaints. I think monitoring at low levels is critical to sustaining a long and healthy relationship with music.

We can surround ourselves with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

I actually don’t agree with that sentiment. I love music a lot, I think about it constantly. However, I greatly value silence. There are very few times that I zone out and listen to music, one of the few being driving. I don’t even really listen to music on airplanes or in airports anymore. I spend most of my day in silence, except when I have an ear worm or something that I really want to listen to.

I really like to pay attention when I listen to things and I think by leaving music running all the time, I tend to value the experience less. However, I’m not sure how much of that has to do with phones getting rid of headphone jacks and my general distaste for dongles.

I’ve had amazing experiences listening to my own music while exploring cities and I tend to associate that freedom with a sense of mania. I vividly recall listening to Nujabes in Shibuya or D’angelo - “Greatdayndamornin’ / Booty" in a loop on my way to work in Chicago 10 years ago and those memories stay with me.



In general, I am wary of earbuds and do not like to put things in my ears, so this could also be a reason why I have gravitated towards silence.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

This is an almost philosophical question and I think in our modern world we need to listen more, especially to each other.

I tend to agree with this sentiment though and would once again refer to dogs and their sense of hearing and smell being much better than their vision. Tone can tell so much about what a person is feeling that perhaps a glance cannot.