Cold brings us straight to winter in the middle of Summer. With bold, Ice Cold, hard hitting 808’s, and bone chilling synths – representative in many Raucous productions. This newest release boldly embodies your classic, punch you in the face type of trap beat, and maintains a great energy while bringing some new and interesting frequencies to our ears. We got to discuss their newest release down below.
The newest Raucous release embodies the Trap 2 and Experimental Trap styles to a tee. With a great blend of catchy melodic structure in the intro, to the hard hitting 808’s and drop leads. If you could choose one word besides “Cold” to describe this production, what would it be and why?
Raucous: One word that comes to mind is “heavy”. I like to make songs that have a powerful impact and that mostly stems from the drums. To me, the more aggressive the drums sound, the heavier the song is. Combine that with a bold 808 and some screechy sounding synths, you got yourself a heavy song. Both drops are chunky and heavy sounding and that’s what sticks out to me.
What or who are some of your biggest musical inspirations, and what has led you to producing the type of heavy, hip hop / trap influenced music that you do?
Raucous: For Trap, a lot of my inspiration comes from NXSTY, Yojas and Jon Casey. The way they are able to create unique sounds and combine them with their signature flows is incredible. Their flows, creative fills, and sound design stood out to me the most and helped shape my sound. For hip hop, I’ve been really inspired by Enuar, Sans, and ELK. Same thing as the others, their flow stands out to me a lot and how clean their drums sound in their mixes. I feel like I am able incorporate what I like about their music, into my music and put that Raucous “sauce” on it. One thing they all have in common is bass. I can’t exactly tell you what it is about bass but something about it has my heart. I absolutely love bass driven music. Whether it be an electronic trap song or a hip hop beat, I am there for it.
“Cold” is an absolutely slapping production. Tell us a little bit about this track. How you found the spark to create it, the inspiration behind it, and how it came to be.
Raucous: Originally this song started out as just a hip hop beat with that melody you hear in the intro. The more I kept working on it, the more I was hearing ideas in my head to turn it into a trap song. For the drop, I knew I wanted to have a bold 808 with some kind of layer sitting with it. The layer on the 808 (the high pitch screech sound) is a serum preset from wasteurself’s wasted series sample pack. I was messing with it a bit and then wasteurself helped me get it to how I was hearing it in my head. Major shout-out to wasteurself. From there, I was not sure what to do for the leads but I ended up resampling some of my lead sounds from the Partica 10k sample pack. Once I had those in place, the rest came pretty quick. Most of the time, I can hear the flow in my head and apply that into the song.
It was great having you on the IMPACT Festival burning man live stream in 2020 with Partica, alongside us here at Above and Below; were there any other memorable shows or moments throughout the past year and a half for you? How do you look back on your growth from the start of the pandemic until now?
Raucous: IMPACT festival was easily one of my favorites from last year! That one and Brochella was a lot of fun to be a part of. Since festivals and shows shifted to being online last year, there were so many but IMPACT was the one that stood out to me. The line up for that festival was so stacked. Especially for trap. It was awesome to hear multiple sets that were trap oriented. During the pandemic, I feel like was able to focus more on my production and finding “my sound” I took a lot of time to learn more about sound design and mixing. Trying to “level up” my production game. Even though I was still working full time all of last year, I found myself having more time to spend on music which turned out to be pretty rewarding.
You’ve dropped 3 fat tracks already this year, and a couple of them were collaborations with other amazing producers. Which was your favorite to work on in regards to collaborative workflow, and why?
Raucous: I couldn’t be more excited to be releasing all this music this year! One producer that easily stands out to me for collaborations is Snxxz3. For Trap music, we think alike. I can tell that Snxxz3 feels music similar to how I do. Our styles mix well together and we have a very good understanding to how we go about music. It is honestly hard to put into words. It’s just something you feel. We have worked on several tracks together and we have more we will be releasing in the future!
What are a couple major musical goals of yours for the near future? What are some personal goals you have for the rest of 2021?
Raucous: For the EDM music, I am hoping my music will get me on the path to start playing music festivals! Since those are starting to come back around, I’ve been working towards making that happen. For the Hip Hop and RnB music that I make as well, my goal is to land a placement with a bigger name artist. For the rest of 2021, I am going to keep grinding, doing what I love, continue to learn, and improve my music. Right now, I have a few people in mind that I want to collaborate with. My goal is to see if I can get that to happen this year.
Can we expect any other releases or announcements soon that you’d like to tell our readers about right now?
Raucous: No big announcements or anything yet but definitely be on the lookout for a lot more music coming out this year. I have a ton of music that I’ve been sitting on and the releases are going to continue to come! Some EDM Trap, some RnB and some Hip-hop stuff. Can’t wait for you all to hear some of these!
Thanks again Raucous for taking the time to talk with me. Go stream “Cold” now, available on all your favorite streaming platforms!
Raucous: Thank you to all who took the time to read this and major thank you to AboveandBelow for this opportunity. Big shout-out to the team for making this happen! I’m looking forward to see what the future has instore for the Raucous project & thank you to everyone who has been supporting me this far.