Deep music for the soul

DIGITAL BUDDHIST·FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2018

Digital Buddhist is an emerging electronic musician from the midlands, UK. Producing a mixture of bass-driven psydub, ambient electronica, trance, breakbeat and a few things in between. In the studio, Jay mainly uses FL Studio and Audacity to produce beats at unspeakable hours in the morning. Live, he mixed his own music into tracks of artists he likes, whilst using Ableton’s MIDI functionality to live-edit and perform synth. An avid (although somewhat rusty) pianist and guitarist, Jay’s classical background helps with some epic trance synth riff progression, over breakbeat / jazz influenced drums and dubstep influenced heavy bass.

“I started out many years ago when MIDI wasn’t that old... we’re talking back in the early 90’s - a time when computers were still booting from floppy disks, and a 500 Mb hard drive was considered to be a substantial size for your average computer. My first sound card was about the same size as an old VHS player (google it if you’ve never seen one).

“Technology has moved along quite a lot since that point, and my music has grown with it accordingly... we live in a great age where digital music seems to have come of age, and the technology has finally met it. Ableton is one of the centrepieces of my live setup, as it allows me to seamlessly mix audio like a DJ, as well as live-produce synth work and edit tracks as they’re playing out. Part of my future plans include live-syncing of lighting and VFX to produce a whole show.”

2017 was the year DB finally got out of the studio and out on the road, including some notable live shows around the West Midlands festival circuit. Being involved with the Electronic Music Open Mic nights has also seen DB perform in several major cities across the UK, including London, Manchester and Bristol.