THE ELECTRONIC CORNER
Delysid Dharma
Music to Elevate Your Spirit
Delysid Dharma says:
My main intention is to create unusual music
Techno grunge for me is the means to happiness
I come from a family of artists
I have been influenced by the italian and chilean roots on my father’s side
From Ecuador, Delysid Dharma proposes a unique blend of electronic music.
Let’s see what this is all about in this interview to The Electronic Corner.
Sir Joe: My introduction to your music was through the album UY Scuti. When I finished listening to it, my first thought was: “I like it, even though I’m not sure what I just listened to … or maybe I like it EXACTLY because I’m not sure what it is”.
Is it your intention to surprise people with your music, or am I the first one who had this impression?
Delysid Dharma: Well, my main intention is to create unusual music, new music to suit to any mood of the people, to be versatile, to go a little off the beaten path of what electronic music does or how electronic music is seen, that is only heard at parties or in discotheques, or at raves, or after parties.
I want to move beyond that, and make electronic music to be listened to at any time, independently if you are working, exercising, studying, at a party or in meetings with friends.
So, my main intention is to generate new music, something original, something that hasn’t been heard before.
In this form, I think it is a fusion with grunge, which is another genre I like a lot. I also like techno a lot, so that’s what I try to do, a merger of genders so that the electronic music that I make adapts to any moment, whether you are partying or driving and so on.
It is also my intention to generate music that in some way motivates you and generates serotonin, dopamine, it makes you feel happy and alive, it makes you feel different, leaving aside what is conventional.
I sent my songs to people who usually don’t listen to electronic music, and their comment was something like: “Your music is really different, I liked it”.
So, you are not the first person to have that impression about my music.
SJ: What does “techno grunge” mean to you?
Delysid Dharma: Well, techno grunge for me is the means to happiness.
Techno and grunge are the genres I like the most since I was a child. I’m from the 90’s, I grew up with 90’s music. At that time, rock was dominating, namely grunge rock, and the electronic music that existed was practically the origin of the music that was listened to in the 80s and 90s, the origin of electronic music.
So, to me techno grunge is happiness, because I’m merging the genres I like the most and it makes me feel like a child, it makes me feel creative, free, happy.
SJ: You describe your music as “having vibrations that elevate you to a point of supreme energy”. How do you create these vibrations?
Delysid Dharma: Well, we all know of the existence of negative and positive energies. A rude word, a word said with bad intention generates negative vibrations, and a word said with good intention, a kind word, generates positive vibrations.
Also, in the Universe you find the frequency of the entire Universe, which is 432 Hertz.
I make my music at that frequency, at 432 hertz, and also the titles I use for my songs are positive titles, about good things.
Likewise, when I create my music, I feel happy, I feel good about myself. I never make a sad song, because obviously with a song like that the vibrations would be different.
So, when you listen to a song every day, or songs at frequency 432, and furthermore you listen to positive songs that motivate you and make you dance, make you feel happy, make your body produce serotonin and dopamine … if you listen to those on a daily basis, your body will get rid of negative toxins, it will expel negative energies. This thing will make you feel good, you will elevate and your energy will be supreme.
That’s why I say that listening to Delysid Dharma will make you feel good, it will make you feel connected with the Universe and with yourself, it will make you have an introspection and think about yourself unconsciously.
It doesn’t mean that you will feel the change right now, but listening to this daily in your brain will cause changes in your organism, and changes in your energy and in your attitude, and when you change your attitude, there are changes in your life.
It’s going to be better, everything is going to prosper, because these vibrations are generated by listening to my music, which is made with a lot of love and with positive frequencies.
SJ: In 2023 you have released 3 albums, maybe even more. How can you be so prolific?
Delysid Dharma: In 2023 I released exactly 13 singles and 5 albums. Two albums were compilations of the best songs I have ever released since I started this solo project.
When I was about 14, I already felt the desire to start making music. So, I got a guitar, my first guitar and with it I started to create a lot of songs, quite grunge and acoustic, and I also started my first band, with people who were also learning to play instruments.
I learned to play my instrument and, well, little by little I started to get in touch with more experienced musicians.
Likewise, I was gaining more experience in music.
My brother had Garage Band installed on his computer, and I started to monkey around with it when I was a bit more than a teenager. I liked Garage Band and I created about 500 songs with it.
I was spending all my time doing that, but there was something which made me think: “No, I’m just putting sounds together, I don’t feel this stuff as mine”. Therefore, when I started to investigate what other software I could use to create music, that’s when I found some DAWs like Fruity Loops studio.
When I was about 17 or 18 years old, I started to create music with those apps and I enjoyed it much more because it wasn’t just about sound but I was creating everything, from the sound of a key to the sound of a cymbal and many other sounds that I could create myself.
So, I started to experiment but I still had my bands with other musicians. We played punk, grunge, rock. Actually, I also had the opportunity to be in a band playing reggae and medicinal music.
While all this was going on, I liked electronic music too, and I wanted to merge electronic music somehow.
That’s when, in 2017, I had the idea to create Delysid Dharma. Once I did it I thought: “This is going to be my electronic music project, and I will merge it with other things I love, like grunge, rock and punk”.
Once Delysid Dharma was in place, I started to improve songs that i made earlier, since now I had more knowledge. So, I started to create and create, and the first finished songs I got as Delysid Dharma, in 2017, were uploaded on YouTube and SoundCloud. At that time I was doing other things, besides creating music: I was working, studying, so I was busy in other activities.
Then 2019 arrived, and the pandemic with it. The lock-down, staying at home with not much to do, made me think: “I’m going to resume my project with more strength, I’m going to dedicate myself 100% to what is happiness”.
That’s when I found out how to post my music on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, well, all the streaming platforms.
So I started publishing, and the lock-down helped me a lot, I had a lot of time to create music and I was actually spending day after day, making songs, making images and posting.
In 2023, which is when I posted most songs, I launched a challenge to myself, I said: “I’m going to make a monthly release at least”, and I did it. Every month I released a single, or an album, or two singles, so I managed to release as many as 13 singles and 5 albums, in 2023.
I don’t suffer from creative blocks. For example, there are days where I just don’t feel like making music, I just feel like doing other things: going for a walk, watching movies an dso on.
But there are days when I really want to make music, I wake up and I feel the need to pick a guitar, a bass or even the computer and start to create. That’s when ideas flows, they start to flow by themselves. I may start with a bass, build a melody with it,choose a scale, the tonality, and once I have all these things,another idea comes and then another and so on.
I was a super creative child, not always musically but always artistically, I’ve always had a lot of creativity. Now, as an adult, I direct that creativity mostly into music, and I believe this is the reason why I’m so prolific.
SJ: The covers of your albums and singles look very psychedelic. Do you make them yourself? If yes, which software do you use?
Delysid Dharma: Yes, I make them. You must know that I come from a family of artists. My mother, her husband and my uncle are all painters, and my niece makes tattoos.
Sometimes I use drawings made by them, but it’s not that I take a painting and use it as it is, because usually the frame is rectangular but to upload an image for your music you need it to be square. So, in the paintings that I have used so far I have modified the dimensions to make them square.
The app I use to create videos is After Effects, and for image creation I use Photoshop. Nowadays there are many tools for smartphones which help a lot, such as Photoshop for smartphone, Canva, Mirror Lab, EZ Glitch, and Prisma. All these applications help to change certain things on the images.
I use various processes, it’s not that I only use one application or a program to do this, but I create all images using several apps before they are ready for publication with my song.
SJ: Has growing up and living in Ecuador somehow influenced the way you make music?
Delysid Dharma: Yes, living in Ecuador has definitely influenced a lot my way of creating music. Living in Ecuador allows me to be exposed to many musical genres that perhaps are not popular in other parts of the world.
For example, we have “pasillo” and “techno cumbia”, two genres which I find beautiful. There is also ancestral music, the music of the east, which is very beautiful. Then there is tropical music, the music of the coast, and the music of the Sierra, the andean music. We also have rock, many kinds of rock.
I believe that I have been influenced by the italian and chilean roots on my father’s side as well, which made me do a little research on what music they listen to in those countries, on their cultures, and gave me the opportunity to discover good musical genres too, and great artists in other genres such as hip hop, pop and rock.
In Italy I found many good electronic music bands, and those bands brought me to the european electronic scene, to the music created in France, in Germany, also in England.
There are many bands from England that I love. Actually, I think most of the bands I love are from England.
So, more than living in Ecuador, it’s the fact that I was exposed to music from all over the world: african music, asian music, classical music, ballads and rock, mexican and argentinian rock, american rock.
What flows in my music making is that now all genres influence my music creation.
SJ: If you could collaborate with any artist, who would it be?
Delysid Dharma: Well, the list is large, actually. For example, the top 5 artists I would like to collaborate with
would definitely be this: Gorillaz, The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Boys Noize and Nina Kravitz.
Those would be the top 5 artists I would collaborate with without a second thought.
SJ: What software and hardware do you typically use in your music production process?
Delysid Dharma: Well, for music creation I use a lot of instruments: guitar, bass, drums, pedal boards. I also have a multi effects, a mixer and the computer is the main tool I use.
For DAW, I like to use Ableton Live and FL Studio, Or Fruity Loops.
(Now I invite you to watch the following video, starting at 19:02, where we can listen to a snippet of a track which has just been released).
We say thanks to Delysid Dharma for the nice interview and wish him all the best.
Don’t forget to visit his Soundcloud page
You are also welcome to check the other interviews for The Electronic Corner