The definition of progressive is to be characterized by continuous change and improvement. It comes as no surprise that Elevven is at the forefront of the progressive music scene as their sound is ever-evolving as they grow as producers.
The pair, Elevven (Eskai and SNR) have been rising to the top with their chill-inducing tracks released on Statement! Recordings. Having recently performed at ASOT 950 Utrecht, they took the crowd by storm with an absolutely stellar performance. Before they took to the stage, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with Shahin aka Eskai of Elevven and here’s what we talked about!
FMF: Hello, this is Nadine from Fresh Music Freaks. I am sitting here with half of Elevven, which is a special musical project between SNR and Eskai. These guys are killing the game in the progressive scene with a lot of recent releases via Statement! Recordings. A couple years ago, your remix of ‘You’ by Gabriel & Dresden was declared Above & Beyond’s favorite track of 2018. Where do you find the inspiration to put together such incredible tracks?
Elevven: That’s a really deep question. Our style is kind of unique because we both are into different kinds of music. I’m really into the more melodic stuff. I listen to a lot of uplifting, and even a lot of film scores, a lot of pretty stuff. Neil really likes bass-heavy music. It shines through in our music a little bit. You can definitely hear his influence on tracks and when you put our styles together, you have this mishmash of bass and melodic stuff. It’s really cool and I hope people are into it.
I know you’ve got a great fan base. I love your music and a lot of my friends love your music too. The two of you haven’t produced and DJ’d together forever. How did you guys meet?
We used to release extensively on a label called Silk Music. This is going way, way back. An older alias of mine — even before Eskai — was Shahin and Bench. I had a single with a buddy of mine (Bench) and the single’s called ‘Viridian’. And Neil — under his old project SNR — remixed it. At this time I was living in England. He also had a single with Jan Johnston called ‘Beautiful Change’ in 2013 or 2014. So, I remixed that and he remixed ‘Viridian’ and then we just became friends. Eventually, I ended up moving to San Francisco for work-related reasons and what not. When I got there, we just became good friends. I needed someone to show me around and we hung out a lot and we started working on a lot of music together.
We became Eskai and SNR and we used to release a bunch of collabs together. We did a track called ‘Swipe’, which was on ‘A State Of Trance 2017’. That was one of our first breakthroughs. Armin van Buuren played it a lot. It was a big, big song for us. We did a few remixes together. We did a remix for Solarstone. We did one for Ruben de Ronde. Eventually, it just got to a point where we were working so much together. We were like, ‘let’s actually make a project out of this.’ Eskai and SNR is not the most catchy alias ever, so we started to make the alias Elevven and now we’re here.
I love it. I love the combo. Between the two of you, who’s the better singer?
I’m pretty terrible, but I think Neil would be more terrible. He would probably disagree with that, but I’m standing by it.
All right, so we’re going to have vocals from both of them on the next track.
It’ll be auto tuned so much, people will think that it’s a female singing.
You can do that like a chipmunk sound. Trance music and music in general is a huge part of both of your lives. Since we’re here at A State Of Trance — what does trance mean to you?
I’ve not always been into trance music growing up actually. I got into it about 10 years ago. For me, it’s captured a lot of what I really love about music. It’s music about feelings and I really love that. And even the bass-y stuff we do, there’s an emotion or feeling behind that. There’s a certain power behind it. For me, it’s all about trying to communicate something without words. Trance music is a genre that makes that a core part of what it is. That’s why I love it. Really. I think Neil would say the same. It’s feelings beyond words basically.
You don’t even need vocals in trance and you can feel the emotion behind it.
It’s funny, not everyone feels that way and that’s fine. Some people like other stuff and that’s totally cool. But for me, I can tear up for a really nice melody.
That happened to me just now during Armin’s Warmup Set. He dropped a remix of ‘Dreams’ and I got goosebumps up and down my spine and I was like, ‘Yupp. This is why I love trance. This is why I’m here.’
Exactly. Everyone has their own thing that they’re into and that they get joy out. For me, it’s nice melodies and chords and stuff.
Same with me. I’m glad that you make that kind of music and I’m sure you’re in the studio cooking some stuff up now. Tell us, what’s going on, what’s happening this year?
We have a new single coming out in a couple of months called ‘One Last Time’, which is maybe my favorite single we’ve done together. That’s coming out in March. It’s a vocal track and we’ve been playing it around a little bit. We played it in Mexico. We played it at the Statement! party in New York. We finally just finished it and put the final touches on it. So it’s finally coming out and I’m really excited for it. We also have a few remixes in the works, which are hopefully going to be big and we’ll see how they go.
Nice! I’m glad and I’m happy we get to hear them soon. Where can we hear you play them live?
In about four hours, you can hear them here at A State Of Trance — asot.tv! We just finished playing a bunch of shows. We played with Armin three times last week in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which was crazy. It was awesome. We did two opening shows and then a closing set. For our opening set, we definitely played the deeper tracks and a lot of stuff from our previous lives. And then for the closing set, we played our more club heavy stuff. It was really cool. For our next shows, I don’t know. This (ASOT 950) was a big one. I’m sure we’re going to have some stuff coming out really soon. We’re in discussions right now around certain shows around the US. There will be a lot of Statement! nights. I was speaking to Ruben about it earlier. Hopefully, we will be traveling around with the statement buddies a little bit again soon.
I’m sure I’ll be at one of your shows coming up. Is there anything that you want to say to your fans out there?
Thank you so much for listening to our music. That was like a dream when I first started. To make a song that somebody likes, other than myself. That’s still the goal for me. Thank you so much for listening. We do genuinely appreciate it and it’s still pretty surreal sometimes.
Thank you for sitting down with me today. I’m excited to see your set later. This is Nadine signing out!
*Featured image via Elevven*
