Interview: Poldoore (producer)

It was only a few months ago that I went to go see Poldoore in small club in Berlin.  After the set, I  felt an obligation to personally thank him for gracing my mind with the phatness to pump up my world.  This short exchange led to eventually premiering "Midnight in Saigon" off his recent release The Day After. In that post, we had the chance to pick the brain a bit of the man behind Poldoore, Thomas Schillebeeckx himself, with a few questions (link to premiere + interview).

For Part II of this interview, we are fortunate enough to have Thomas throw together an impeccable collection of music for the minimix series. This set of melodic medicine kicks that vibrancy into our ears with some unreleased remixes, originals, and classics.  May this mix serve you in exactly the manner that you need it to. Tracklist can be found in our mini mix post.

Hey Thomas! It’s great to have you back - this time in the mini mix. I am curious to know how things have went following your release of The Day After. What have you been up to?

Hey Mike, thanks for having me again man. Everything went pretty well to be honest, I did a variety of things: played a lot of DJ and live sets around Europe, made new music, took a graphic design course, traveled around with my girlfriend... Basically just enjoying life at the moment.

Last time we caught up, you spoke about how The Day After was your first album largely free of samples, including live recordings and more musicality.  How do you think this undertaking shaped your concept of sample-based production?

That’s a good question. It’s weird, the focus is totally different. When sampling I would spend hours or even days looking for a piece of music that caught my ear, but as soon as I found one the beat would be finished in a matter of hours. I got so tired of spending more time looking for a sample than actually making music. When recording live instruments and composing music myself I became way more creative and started focusing on chord progressions, song structure and musicality in general.

The tracks on The Day After are ‘songs’ rather than ‘beats’ in my opinion. They exhibit more structure and variation. I obviously still love sample-based music and will definitely still produce it myself, but working with musicians is currently more interesting for me and pushes me to try new things and approach the production process from a different perspective.

One of your big hits “But I Do” came out nearly four years ago – what are some noteworthy personal or professional approaches that you developed since then up until now?

Yeah man, I’m still stunned by how popular that song is. I feel kind of bad about it, because I’m not owed too much credit for it, really. It’s more of a re-edit of the original song. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, I just started making music. I took an old song I liked, pitched it up, re-arranged it, added a drum beat and called it my own. People often ask me: “Who played the bass in that tune?” or “Can you give me that singer’s email?”. So funny. But of course I’m very grateful people love it. In a couple of cases people would even complain after my DJ-set that I didn’t play that one. Anyway, I try to be more original nowadays and create my own compositions.

You’ve done some touring and production in the past year – what should current and future listeners of Poldoore anticipate within the next year?

I’m definitely going to try to come up with a more modern sound while still maintaining that Poldoore feel, which isn’t easy. The music I released up until now was always in the standard 80-100bpm boom bap hiphop range, but lately I’m feeling like experimenting with new techniques and tempos. I actually made a 142bpm song last week, which I really like.  The people can definitely expect more music and more gigs this year.

Keep up with Poldoore to see what's next. Check out his Stereofox Artist Page.