Canadian music producer Wertyo is gearing up for his next worldwide album release, “Luna // Sol”. Dropping February 28, we decided to hear all about it from the artist himself.
Q: How long did it take you to make “Luna // Sol”?
Wertyo: “I started playing with different project ideas right after releasing Theophany II. For a couple of months, it looked like the next release was going to be purely electronic- that ended up going on the back burner [laughs]. A big part of me longed to return to the solo piano feel of Tartarus, but the other half of me wanted something fresh. In the end, I decided to go with both ideas. The first disc of the album is solo piano, and the second is film score; a genre I’ve always wanted to dabble in. All in all, it took about eight months to get it done.”
Q: What does your creative process look like?
Wertyo: “It’s all over the place! I’m constantly playing with different sounds and instruments without a solid idea of what I’m looking for. I probably have fifty projects going at any given time. Eventually, there will be a large enough group of projects that I feel will work well together and decide to shift my focus to those. Having a concept for an album is pretty important to me too; I spend a lot of time preparing an overarching theme for all of my LP releases. Usually, this ends up being tied to historical or mythological ideas in my case.”
Q: Who are your biggest musical influences?
Wertyo: “This is always one of the harder questions for me to answer [laughs]. As you can tell from my musical releases, I like to genre hop a lot. This is reflected in my listening too- I’m all over the place. What most closely influences my music though I suppose would be traditional artists like Chopin, Debussy, or Ravel. That being said it might surprise you how much I enjoy trap beats [laughs].”
Q: If you could collaborate with any other artist, who would it be?
Wertyo: “The first name that comes to mind is Blank Banshee. His music is so mesmerizing… I’d really love to pick his brain. When I was working on Ego Death I must have listened to each of his albums a hundred times over. He also lives in Canada, so it wouldn’t be much of a trip to meet up [laughs].”
Q: What’s the story behind your name?
Wertyo: “When I was a little kid, my friend came up with the nonsense word “wertyo” and for whatever reason, it just stuck with me for 20 years [laughs]. We’re still close to this day, and it’s a cool little nod to our lifelong friendship. A bonus of the name is that all of its letters on the top row of a qwerty keyboard, making it super easy to type quickly.”
Q: What’s next for you?
Wertyo: “Who knows! I’d like to release at least one more project in 2020 so we’ll see what I end up piecing together. What you can expect is to not get something that sounds like anything I’ve put out.”
You can listen to Luna // Sol on February 28th on all major music platforms. For more information, check out www.wertyo.com