Exclusive interview with Dusko, music producer, composer & sound designer recently taking his skillset to the world of NFTs

Since growing up with an affinity for everything music, learning bass guitar and drums, collaborating as lead bassist in State Of Anomie, and after choosing to take a break right when big producers started approaching that project, Daniel Joseph evolved straight into a self-disciplined lifestyle of electronic music and media under his own wing.

More recently he’s released some complex new audiovisual collaborations while squeezing in early morning piano lessons. One of my previous blurbs on this site covered an NFT that Dusko released with EverfreshDesign. After discovering Dusko’s complex creative history that has finally led him to a life of self-directed days in a little soundproofed studio, I had to ask him a few burning questions:

Band to Solo. Physical Instruments to Digital ones. What was the transition like?

After meeting with Bob Rock, and making a clear assessment of the team I had with me, I decided to take time off, and a year or so into my sabbatical I performed to a sold out Commodore Ballroom (Iconic Vancouver Venue) with 5 other musicians as a one-off. The Saxaphone player ran my bass and his sax through Ableton and it changed my world. He threw me a copy, and I was off to the race.

Going digital is the greatest decision I’ve ever made: with the same energy it takes to get 4 people to learn to hit the right thing at the right time on their instruments, those same people could dial a composition once and take that same energy to focus on making it sound as good as possible for the end user.

Losing a band member, and having to do the whole hiring process again is a nightmare.

I love flying solo, but I miss some of the shared experiences.

Jamming vs Programming. Do you like to compose or do you like to figure it out live?

I jam most all of it in a way. You can click around and be jamming, just keep a loop going while “programming”. I used to primarily compose by improvising on my keylab88 and finding my way to the songs motif and then quickly move to program the Midi notes to sound in time, before rolling out with the drums, bass and so-on from there.

My small library of recent bass music works are all composed with the Paint Splatter Technique, which can take a long time because it’s jamming out a mess of sounds all at once while in a loop. I’ll keep that loop going while messing about with the “splattered” audio clips to find moments of gold.

Love The Splatter Technique. Is that something you picked from Kursa?

No that was something shamtech (Shamanic Technology) was doing to generate ideas. At the time I was more focused on being very purposeful with each actionable step within the DAW to produce clean sonic palettes and compositions from the bottom up, rather than making a mess of it - which was a really good foundation for “throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks,” as it was originally titled.

My sound and score to motion design and animations allowed me to really hone in on “painting with sound” since the purpose is matching sound to visual feedback like foley, height, width, texture, material, size, setting, space etc etc etc.

Quick tip: Stuck in a tune? Go to one of your sound design folders and mindlessly throw your samples into the timeline. Move them, pitch them, filter, saturation - whatever you want, and that might show you the way forward.

You seem to have a pretty self-disciplined regiment. What drove you to adopt it?

I have no idea.

I recently found a photo of me as a child, slumped over a chalk board drafting table in my pajamas looking both determined and zombified, and I asked “did I always do this?”

If you could change anything about your production lifestyle right now what would you change?

Id make 1k / day composing and designing all audio for a sci fi franchise that hasn’t yet established their universe’s sonic palette.

What’s in your home setup?

I have 3 rooms that are wired up 1 central studio 1 recording room 1 piano (midi keyboard) room Bluetooth headphones Tablet Mirroring Studio Monitor

The goal is to not be in the same chair 24/7 and to do music related things without staring at a screen. I’m always experimenting with how different lifestyles and creative processes effect the art.

What drives your relentless self discipline?

At around 21 I was around some entrepreneurs that created Whistler Bounce (trampoline jungle gym) that they’d convert into a venue to bring in their favorite hip hop artists. One partner was the dynamo, and one partner was the builder. Everyday the builder would wake up, go to the kitchen and look at a big stylized sign that said “ain’t nothing to it but to do it” …he would look at the sign and realize all he had to do was simply take some actions to reveal the path ahead. Any action. From that moment onward I had a band saying ain’t nothing to it but to do it; I had a workplace saying ain’t nothing to it but to do it, and it’s definitely ingrained into me.

What’s it like going from music production to NFT’s? Do you like it?

I found a love for composing and designing sounds to Visuals long before stumbling into NFTs. 2 artists, who I had made a few pet projects with prior, were releasing their creations as an NFT. Ethereal Zephyr and Christian Whiticar. One is a Glitch Artist and one is a Motion Design Artist.

NFTs are no different for me, other than a different business model and a culture I feel aligned with. I love getting paid what I’m worth to experiment with different production processes.

And - with NFTs as a means of pushing artists to produce original works in every medium, I feel it’s time to finish bass music projects which I stepped away from while learning to better manage DUSKO’s ecom operations by studying the subject and applying the lessons to several start ups - and currently one business acquisition.

You haven’t released anything other than audio / visual material since the Artifacts Remix LP. Why is this?

I actually put some intensely laboursome projects into a time capsule. Refused to touch them until the time was right. Woke up the other morning unsure of which direction to go, and cracked them open. I could place them on a typical label. That could help get shows - which I’m not interested in as a rev stream right now, so where’s the money coming from? Spotify? That works for some genres, but not whatever art-first concept I was building back in 2019.

I love great visual aesthetics. Architecture; Oil Painting; Motion Design; Animation; Sculpture. I love when it matches perfectly with Sonic Aesthetic as well: textures of visuals represented as timbre in sound, and the power of Audio and Visual in sync to enhance the audiences’ immersion in your creation.

They really embellish one another when perfectly aligned.

Emotional Stirs. Feelings of Awe. Synesthesia.

Where can your work be found?

Here