A man who’s quickly become a mainstay of the Australian dance circuit, Roland Tings has left the budding bedroom producer of his past behind. Instead a fully-fledged artist has emerged, one who’s continued to provide us with some of the most disciplined, inventive electro of the last few years.
This Friday his six track EP Each Moment A Diamond is dropping, an expansive new journey for the talented producer. Eager to hear his take on the genesis of these fresh cuts, we hit up the man himself for a track-by-track run down.
What lies within Roland Tings’ upcoming EP Each Moment A Diamond? The producer runs us through his latest, most disciplined dance record to date.
Turn Your Face Towards The Sun
I made this just before I went on tour with Chet Faker two years ago. I had an idea for a track that was a cycle of chords speeding up from very slow to very fast that I might be able to use as an intro for live sets. When I play it live sometimes I speed it up to like 150 or 160 BPM, since there are no drums it gets quite disorienting.
The crowd sometimes get way too hyped and then feel a bit bummed when a kick doesn’t come in at 150bpm. Sorry about that. It’s found life as the intro to my EP. That’s great. Its just one take of Juno 106 with a little delay and some silly FX.
Hedonist
I started this about three years ago, it was inspired mostly by a hiking trip I took with my girlfriend at the time. It was a very nice trip and I wanted to capture an impression of how the Australian bush landscape felt to me after coming back to it from European winter.
Slow Centre
This started as me testing out a Yamaha DX7 I had just bought. It had a lot of freaky tuned percussion sounds, I kept layering and layering them. It was just before I went on the Listen Out tour in 2015 and I wanted something with a really huge kick drum combined with loopy digital percussion.
I took the loop version I made to my friend George Nicholas and he helped me flesh it out in to the absolute banger that it ended up as.
Higher Ground
This song went through a lot of versions, I worked on this version with Ben Plant from Miami Horror when I was in LA recently. He reached out to Nylo, she came by Ben’s studio and we put together the vocal very quickly.
This song will forever remind me of late nights walking between my buddy’s place in Echo Park and the studio in Silver Lake during the start of what passes for winter in LA.
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Garden Piano
This track happened in a haze. All I remember is that it was late night in winter and I had just got back from being stuck in Indonesia due a volcanic eruption. I worked until midnight, went out and partied til real late, slept about three hours, came back to the studio and kept working on it.
In the end this is what came out.
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Monument
This is my favourite song on the record. Matt from Total Giovanni played guitar on it and he totally nailed what i was going for. I spend a lot of time making and listening to droney ambient music, this is bringing a little bit of that to Roland Tings.
Each Moment A Diamond is out March 10. Roland Tings is also hitting up all the major Aussie cities on a massive tour beginning on the 31st of March in Canberra. Grab all the deets, dates and ticket info right here.
