Syzz on Finding the Perfect Balance [Exclusive Interview]

Syzz on Finding the Perfect Balance

1/28/2019

Let's start off with a softball question: How did you two come together to form Syzz and where did the name come from?
Ryan: I think it was some time in 2011 that Jesse and I meet each other in real life at Club Seven in The Hague. Back then, I was an organiser and resident DJ at the club and Jesse would send me demos that went over really well with the crowds. Not many people were sending out promos to DJs, specially not people from the same city you lived in which is what made him stand out.

After a while, we starting trying to do some stuff together. I gave Jesse a slot at my parties to play and from there we grew closer. At the time, we were around sixteen and eighteen and we just tried some stuff, fooled around, and had fun together. After working more and more, we didn't just become best friends but also partners since our music career was actually starting to take off with our tracks getting support from DJs like Dyro, Hardwell, Joeysuki to name a few. We were still going by the the name "Jesse Draak & Ryan Fieret" so we thought that it was time to come up with a name that is shorter, can have a cool logo, and is overall catchier.

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A post shared by Syzz (@syzzmusic) on Dec 15, 2016 at 3:48am PST

It's been great to see the project continue growing over the years because for me, there was no real backup plan. At the age of thirteen-fourteen, I had one goal and that was to make a living out of DJing. At the age of eighteen, I dropped out of school and stopped organizing events to focus on music production and starting a new career with Syzz. So if this fails, which could still happen, I'll have to go back to school and find something new.

How would you describe the evolution of the Syzz sound?
Jesse: We produce tracks with two different trains of thought: On the one hand, we want our tracks to work well with a crowd so that DJs want to play it out, but labels wants the tracks to garner Spotify streams. So we try to combine different elements even from other genres to create something fresh. Looking at "90s Better," we have a really good club track but also one that you could hear at the gym or playing in people's cars.

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New or Oldskool? 90s Better is out now on Revealed Recordings! â–¡

A post shared by Syzz (@syzzmusic) on May 21, 2018 at 9:05am PDT

Ryan: We always try to implement something that's different than other tracks. So what you can hear in a lot of our tracks is that there is a lot of groove going on; think Smuggler, Muscular, Psycho, 90's Better, Be My Love, etcetera. Also with "Donut," we really tried to make something that would smash the stages at big festivals while still maintaining our very own edge. You can still hear that LFO lead sound in our newer tracks like 90's Better and Be My Love as well.

You've just wrapped up four shows in China for the Revealed Tour as well as an extra show in Macau for DJ MAG ASIA. What have been some of your most memorable moments while on stage?
Ryan: The tour in general was amazing! It was super fast paced with a lot of traveling. 5 Flights, 1 long train ride from Beijing to Shanghai, and 1 boat trip from Macau to Hong Kong in 7 days.

The crowd in China is can still be unfamiliar with some of the songs with English lyrics, but it gets better every time. However it still makes it a bit harder for my sets because I love to play a lot of mashups with well-know lyrics, but because of the language barrier, I try to mix things at a faster pace and stay away from from some of the longer breaks since there's a chance the crowd won't resonate with it. The hits from Swedish House Mafia and Alan Walker always go over well though!

Shanghai was probably the coolest show. It was on a Saturday night which is usually the busiest, but what was special about this one was I did a meet and greet before and after the show. I was so happy to see that so people wanted to do that! Not only Chinese fans, but people from France, Russia, United States and so on. It was a really cool and unexpected experience!

Also, the tour was a really good way to test some new tunes and see what works even though with people who might not necessarily be fans. Those honest reactions are truly invaluable in the creative process!

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Shanghai was crazy @mystshanghai Thanks everyone for coming â¤ï¸! last show of the tour tomorrow @clubcubic

A post shared by Syzz (@syzzmusic) on Dec 23, 2018 at 3:48am PST

It's been over a year since making the decision to separate touring and producing duties. We've recently seen SaberZ follow suit and adopt a similar duo dynamic. How has this new division of labor affected your music and more importantly, your friendship?

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<<Message about Syzz>> Hi guys, with this little message we are going to clear up something for the future. Some of you mightâ€™ve noticed already that only Ryan was playing our latest gigs for Syzz. Well, we started out as a duo playing and producing together. This worked great for us when playing our own country, The Netherlands. But, when we did one of our first international tour, I (Jesse), enjoyed playing for you! But, I was bummed I couldnâ€™t make music all the time. I worked every minute I could during these tours, in the plane and in our hotelroom, but the quality was just not good enough. I couldnâ€™t achieve the quality we wanted for Syzz while not in the studio. Ryan and I sat down together to discuss what would be the best for the future of Syzz. We came to the following conclusion: Ryan will do all the Syzz gigs. Jesse will not go on tour but instead, working hard in the studio to maintain the quality of our music! We are convinced that this plan will benefit our career as Syzz. If you have any questions just drop it in the comments or send a message and we will get back to you! Thanks a lot for all the support so far in the meantime. We can't wait to drop some new music soon! Catch Ryan the 30th of August @ Sky Garden, Bali! - Jesse & Ryan â–¡

A post shared by â–¡â–¡â–¡â–¡ (@syzzmusic) on Aug 28, 2017 at 4:08am PDT

Jesse: It's one of the best decisions I made on a personal and business level. I like DJing but I'm a producer at heart. So when we were on tour, I'd sometimes get frustrated because I couldn't work on music on the same level as I'd make in the studio. So now Ryan goes on tour and I keep on working in the studio to finish our own music and co-productions at top level since it gets my full attention. I do enjoy going with Ryan to some of the shows because it's great to see music you make get played for a live crowd. It will inspire you and it makes you understand why certain elements work or don't work in a track.

Ryan: I completely agree. This was a healthy decision both for business and life-wise for us. We can be way more efficient while I'm on tour because Jesse is working his ass of in the studio.

For example when he's in the studio and I'm out for dinner with a promoter, the promoter will tell me that the crowds love stuff like this or that we could make our intro like this. Then I'll send those notes to Jesse and he can look into it while I'm still out with the promoter or doing other stuff. It all works out really well.

We also do a lot of co-production. So when we were on the road, we had trouble working on a lot of music. Finishing our own stuff when we also had to work on our clients' stuff could get messy and resulted in some Syzz productions getting put on the back burner in favor of the clients' which wasn't an ideal situation to be in.

Your Spotify Wrapped statistics were among some of the most impressive I had seen! How did you go about adapting to the increased consumer preference towards Spotify over Soundcloud?
Ryan: 2018 was a very good year for us. We did a lot of Revealed releases and streaming wise, we were happy surprised about the success of 90's Better, since we really didn't know what to expect. We were just trying to evolve our sound and try out new stuff.

I think the key of having success on Spotify is to have something that is listener-friendly or have something that is so hard and cool people go complete ham on it for workouts or parties like "Mangalam" by Maddix for example. It has really high streaming numbers while still being a super hard song.

In the end, if your fans love your music, they will stream it. However, Spotify playlists are really important so you have to impress them as well. However it's hard to know what'll resonate in the future. Like we thought we thought with Be My Love that we had made a better version of 90's Better, but it didn't get much support from Spotify, so that's always hard to see.

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A post shared by Syzz (@syzzmusic) on Dec 6, 2018 at 7:38am PST

How do you both like to spend your time when you're away from the decks and studio?
Jesse: Food is my second love after music. I'm getting a bit into cooking these days, but I'm definitely more of a eater. I have a pretty specific appetite, so when I still went on tour, I started rating hamburgers in hotels. Hamburgers are the best, so why not try one in every country you go to? I also used to game just for fun but that slowly died off as studio days got longer. Nowadays I'd rather throw my ass on the couch and watch some TV.

Ryan: At the moment, I mostly play CS:GO and League of Legends. I played Fortnite for a bit during the summer and ranked at like #950 worldwide in duos. Besides that, I love traveling together with my girlfriend but she is currently super busy with her pharmacy studies. We also live in different cities so unfortunately I don't see her as often as I used to. For other hobbies, I like to cook and I love Asian cuisine so traveling to Asia is never a problem for me in that regard!

Where do you both see yourselves in ten years?
Jesse: In ten years I see ourselves having more acts than just Syzz. We have a lot of output so I wouldn't be surprised to see us working on different acts and projects with totally different music.

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A post shared by Syzz (@syzzmusic) on Jun 19, 2017 at 3:46am PDT

Ryan: I think that is the hardest question you can ask a musician since we don't even know what we are going to release in six months! We hope to keep releasing music but also we will try to make something that's more for the mainstream audience and radio. To take things to the next level, I hope we can keep up our release schedule and get more shows every year. For videos, I would love to make something like The Martin Garrix show, but there is just no budget for that. We also don't have as many crazy shows and or lifestyle like he has. (YET).

For 2019, we will release some more progressive house than we did in the years prior. Also we will have a few super thrilling collabs. Of course we will also keep releasing groovy and big room stuff for sure!

A massive thank you to Syzz for taking the time to answer our questions! Be sure to show them some love and follow them on social media using the links below!