Artist Profile – Power Shift (Netherlands)

20 year old Kasper Hopman goes by the artist name of ‘Power Shift’, and he made contact with us this week with by sending an absolute heater of a track by the name of ‘Mental’. After the first 10 seconds of the opening riff we knew we had to talk to this exciting new producer from Maastricht in the Netherlands.

We’ve been away for a while but as regular visitors to the site will know, exposing new and up and coming artists to a wider audience is what we love to do best, so without further ado, we bring you Power Shift.

So Kasper, you’re from the Netherlands, but whereabouts exactly?

I am from the south of The Netherlands, specifically Maastricht. Though I will be moving soon when I start my study at the Rockacademie (a Dutch music school based in Tilburg) as a drum and bass producer.

Wow! That seems like a dream come true! You must have been overjoyed to have gained a position at a place like that?

Definitely! I had been applying to a different school for a couple of years, which incidentally caused me to make ‘Mental’ for a round of auditions. But after I found this study last year, the music produced and the learning program there seemed so much higher quality, that I went into hyper-focus and cancelled my audition for the other school. Luckily it paid off when I got through both rounds of auditing after a lot of work.

And the course itself, what areas of study will that entail?

It’s a fairly broad study, which means alumni range from EDM artists like Hardwell to Dutch pop-stars, drummers or anywhere in between. It teaches a bit of musical history as well as theory but a lot of it is focused on getting yourself in the scene, business, music making and what you feel you need to progress as an artist. It also works great for networking, so you can expect me popping up at parties in Tilburg every now and then!

And you’re into sound design too, as opposed to using ready made sounds?

I definitely design a lot of my own sounds. I often have a good idea of what kinds of sound I want and designing them myself gives me more room to experiment and think creatively, as it sometimes dictates where the structure of the song will lead. For instance, my release ‘Mental’ was a challenge to create a track with less than 10 sounds, so I knew I wanted a sound that could play throughout most of the tune. After making that sound it directed me as to what elements I needed next and what vibe to aim for. In the end I finished that song with only 7 sounds, which would have been a lot harder without designing some of those sounds myself.

The restriction of having a maximum amount of sounds to use really gave me more creative ideas in the end, ending up with only 7 out of 10 sounds used was something I didn’t expect as I easily use far more than 30 for any other track.

You like all sorts of music though, and have been making music in lots of different styles up until this point though, right?

I’ve always found music quite important in my life and have often used it as an ‘escape’ since I was little. I started with a very different taste in music: hard rock, classical, folk and hip hop to name a few, but at the end of primary school I got introduced to electronic music, with which I instantly fell in love. I first made genres like future house and big room and later switched to hardstyle and tried a few others in that time as well.

I started producing drum and bass a little before I went to the Rampage free party in 2021, which really opened up something inside of me, so I’ve been creating drum and bass as my main genre ever since. I’ve been producing for 6-7 years, starting on the shared household computer, then moving on to a cheap laptop and now for the last couple of years I’ve been using a somewhat professional bedroom studio.

So far, under my current artist name I’ve self released 5 songs on all platforms like Spotify and Itunes and 6 that are exclusively on Soundcloud and YouTube. A few tracks I especially enjoy are ‘Alive’ and ‘Miss U’ on Spotify and my remix of ’Stay’ on Soundcloud. Before starting my study I lined up 6 releases, of which ‘Mental’ will be the third, so I’ll keep you posted about that!

So you do all of your own mastering?

Yes, from start to end I make all my songs myself, the creative process as well as the boring mixing and mastering. I know very few drum and bass artists, or EDM producers in general in my life, so the only people to give me feedback every now and then are instrumentalists or family. Hopefully I can start up some collabs in the near future!

Even though you’ve been making music for a while now, how have you found the music game itself, as in the business end of it all? There’s a lot to learn, right?

Yeah, I am quite new with going about this ‘professionally’, though I’ve been making music for 6-7 years, my last 2 releases were the first to have (part of) a promotional plan, so in that sense I am still a very new artist. It’s also quite a lot of work, making lists of people to send my music to, press kits, promotional material, pictures and the like.

How have you found things like artwork, scheduling and promotion?

Almost all of the artwork I make myself with my limited design skills. The couple of press photos I have, I made together with my sibling who also has zero experience with photography or posing, so it’s all very DIY. I get some help with how to structure my promo plan from an intern at the preliminary study I go to, who is the guitarist for ‘Endeavour’ and does most of their promotional work. For instance, he helped me space out my releases and gave feedback on how to make my press-kit.

Do you also bridge the gap between production and performance with DJing, like many of your contemporaries do?

I DJ very little but I want to do it more. My own controller has broken and it’s taking very long to be fixed so it’s hard to prepare for events, which is why I’ve only played small gigs for my preliminary study so far. This Friday I will play at my first semi-professional party in Maastricht. Soon I will have access to more DJ equipment through my study as well as contacts with event organisers, so I’m aiming to be more active within the live scene as well.

We did an article on neurodiversity recently, and this struck a chord with you, right?

It did! I’m a sociable introvert, I love going to drum and bass parties and talking with people, yet I get tired very quickly, in part due to being neurodiverse. I have struggled (and still do) with my mental health for quite a while, which caused me to slow down music productions for a couple of years, but in the end it also helped me to discover a lot about myself and the world (we understand this fully, and often take breaks in between website activity ourselves!)

One of the turning points in my mental health journey and becoming who I am was actually the Rampage Free Party in 2021 which my sibling took me to. It got me out of my shell a bit and showed me some of things that I do want in life, which are connections with people and good music. I love nature and especially the mountains, they inspire me and are one of the few places on earth where I feel truly at ease.

Sounds good. We are HUGE advocates of making mental health a priority. What other things interest you then, apart from making music?

I am very involved in social justice and feel it’s a topic that should shine through in music as well. It’s also where my name comes from and another thing that inspires me. I am still learning about politics in the context of music and music in the context of politics but that is very interesting to me.

Okay. So, expand on the Power Shift name a little bit for us? Why the interest in politics?

‘Power Shift’ very simply comes from the idea of power to the people, or to ‘shift the power’. My interest in politics came from hearing about the climate crisis for the first time only after I had quit school due to a burn-out. After getting involved in national and local initiatives, I realised it was a systemic issue and it actually causes many other problems as well. For me, it mostly comes from wanting everybody to have the best life they can, which starts in making that possible within society.

And will you be moving across all of the sub-genres on your musical journey? What do you think of many different styles of drum and bass out there right now?

I’m definitely not confining myself to 1 sub-genre, I love experimenting and hearing new ideas in other artist’s songs as well. The big range in genres can really help people, me as well, express themselves how they want. I might not enjoy every song as much as another but that’s exactly what makes music so great, there’s something for everyone!

And who would you cite as influences in your music making, both past and present?

A few names that I really enjoy right now are Imanu, Sano, Yaano,  A.way and Buunshin, but it can vary a lot what inspires me. Usually I listen for sounds and structures that captivate me, and I subconsciously use that while I’m making my own songs. I have a new project using granular synthesis for the atmosphere, and now I’m working on the rest by looking at different elements in other genres and songs that I like. I took some vocal editing ideas from jungle, drop ideas from some more aggressive forms of drum and bass and a build-up that might usually fit more in style like dubstep.

Tell us a bit about what you like to do outside of music then? What are your other hobbies and interests?

Though I’m mostly inside glued to the music, I love going to hike in the mountains whenever I have the time and money, which is not all too often unfortunately. Some of my favourite memories are still from exploring new trails in nature though, I also used to go mountain biking quite a bit, which has slowed down due to the cost. I don’t have many close friends in Maastricht I can hang out with at the moment, but I love to whenever I can, also with my sibling with whom I share many interests in nature, music and politics. To relax I like to watch anime sometimes, as it offers such a nice retreat from reality and can put you in a mood that’s more fit for creating.

What’s the DNB scene like in Maastricht and the Netherlands generally?

The DNB scene is not as big in Maastricht as I’d like it to be, though I guess that will forever be the case for a DNB head. I’d say the main spot for drum and bass in Maastricht is a place called Landbouwbelang, which hosts intimate and affordable DNB parties about once a month, unfortunately that place is under threat of gentrification at the moment. I don’t see a lot of bigger events here, though sometimes you might find an event at Muziekgieterij or Complex. The Netherlands in general is quite fond of DNB though, many well known festivals and labels are based here and artists like Black Sun Empire, Imanu and even Noisia are Dutch. Just at the Rockacademie alone you can find artists like Tantron and Sano, and next year me as well!

Fair play! We wish you the very best of luck 🙂

FIND OUT MORE:

https://instagram.com/powershift_music

Stream Power Shift music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on SoundCloud