Krystal Klear talks Cold Tonic, music-making and the magic of NYC

Let’s start out by going back to 2010 when you released ‘Tried For Your Love’. What was going through your mind at the time?
“Well, I was obviously a bit younger. I was throwing shit at the wall basically, making hip- hop in the style of, I guess, people like J Dilla. It was purely because my cliché at the time was Hudson Mohawke and All City Records. I was constantly trying to do something that I wasn’t born or made to do. I was fighting the tide. I was buying a lot of records in my teens and early twenties to make beats out of, a lot of disco, funk, boogie and electro, plus some housey stuff, a lot of the French sound too. I remember I just woke up one day and thought, ‘I’ve got an abundance of great music here that I know inside out and that I really like, but it sounds nothing like the music I’m making. There’s something significantly wrong here!’ My honest perspective was — am I, as a white, 22-year-old Irishman, going to try and make African-American music? And it was kind of a challenge, because I wanted to see if I had ‘the funk’. For the want of a better phrase, that’s kind of how it was. I just wantedtoseeifIcoulddoit—anditcame10 times more naturally than making anything else. I made ‘Tried For Your Love’ in a day, and I sent it on to Benji B — who I didn’t know — and he got it, and told me he loved it, and before you know it, it was getting played on Radio 1. That was before it was signed. It ultimately changed my life, and it also changed the whole perspective of my musical career, which may or may not have even happened if I hadn't tried to do something outside my comfort zone."

Do you think getting that level of success so fast can be dangerous?
“It was just really unbelievably exciting. I think my ambitions just went up to 100 [percent] when the music started getting heard. I just wanted to get out, I wanted to DJ as much as possible, and I wanted to do all the things that I’d seen friends and old peers of mine do. I wanted to tick them off a list one by one. In hindsight, I think everything happens for a reason, but I do wish someone had come in at the very beginning and harnessed my ambition a bit better — and maybe put me in my place a bit more.”

We’re sitting in your flat in New York — what was it like the first time you came here?
“I came once to New York with my dad, and I was really disappointed. I was like, ‘This isn’t how I saw it in The Sopranos’ [laughs]. But the second time when I came over, I was backpacking for three months and — I sound like a total gimp saying this but — it just had this pure energy. I lived in Brooklyn when I moved over for a summer with an Irish friend, and I just thought, ‘This is it!’ I just got such fulfillment from even walking A-to-B in the city, and I guess that’s one of my clearest memories. It was the energy, it was addictive.”

You’ve done some great things in the time you’ve been in NYC — like releasing on MadTech and collaborating with Nile Rodgers — but why did you choose to move to America?
“When I first announced I wanted to move, management were like, ‘This is a bad idea’. Honestly, I’d hit rock bottom a little over a year ago, and I had been coming here a lot for personal reasons. I just got sick of what Europe had to offer in terms of what I was trying to achieve. I got tired of the whole DJ thing and I felt there was a lot of fakeness in the world that I just couldn’t adapt to. I’m kind of outspoken, to my detriment, and some things just pushed me into a dark place mentally — those kinds of things started to build up. And I’d set up and built a studio in Dublin, and was commuting here to see my ex. I just felt I needed to press refresh. London wasn’t doing it for me, and God knows how much I love being Irish in Dublin, but it’s the same for everyone — you’re born somewhere, so you can hate it and leave, and then love it and come back again.”

You founded your own label, Cold Tonic, and also released the first track on it, ‘Squad’. Why did you decide to do the label?
“It was purely born out of a frustration with dealing with labels at the time. I’d had a few up and down experiences with majors and indies, and I just thought I wanted to have a bit more creative control over what I’m doing. I was sitting on a lot of material that I really liked, and I just thought, ‘I’m tired of waiting’. It was just a case of wanting to showcase a bit more versatility in my productions.”

There’s not that many releases on Cold Tonic — are you saving the label mostly for your own productions?
“Cold Tonic is like an art project for me. If making money from Cold Tonic was my agenda, trust me, I’d do it in a very different way. I release music under the simple principle of, ‘This is what I like, I can do something with this, I have a vision immediately when I hear the music,’ and it’s as simple as that. It’s not about having two records every quarter, and it’s not my home anymore, but I’m trying to make it a home for other people. The last record was Sandboards, and we did a record with Gerd [Janson] and Lauer obviously, and I’ve got a new kid coming who’s making some unbelievably deep, thick, Jersey-style house. For example, we want silver artwork for a record we’re doing, and it’s going to cost a bomb. We’re probably going to lose money — but I don’t mind doing it because it’s an art project. It’s for me as a nerd, who likes records with little details. To me, that is purely Cold Tonic. There could be a year where I don’t release anything on the label. If I find something I like, I release it. Simple.”