On Sun Shone: In conversation with Loradeniz

Have you ever heard what the silence of the void could sound like? Sun Shone-Amsterdam-based producer, DJ, and sound designer-Loradeniz’s debut album surrounds you like the soft touch of a moment passing. After encountering her at Amsterdam’s bar San Francisco amid bodies enamoured by the texture of her sounds filling the room like wind, we knew we had to get to know her better. Kind, introspective, and passionate – Loradeniz’s beguiling character is suffused into her music that sounds like the diverse whispers of the moon. Your favourite producer’s favourite producer, Loradeniz’s reign in electronic music has just begun. We had the chance to sit down with her and dive into her process of producing Sun Shone, our shared love for the Amsterdam-based music label Music from Memory, and more. To learn about Loradeniz is to be enchanted, read for yourself if you don’t trust us. 

Hi! So nice to be here with you to talk about your new album! How are you doing?
So nice to be here as well! I’m doing good, a bit tired with life, but good. 

Fair, I relate wholeheartedly, the grief is immense but so is the joy… I had the chance to listen to your debut album, Sun Shone, for the first time during the launch party – and I was blown away, as you know. How do you feel now, two months after the release on the label Music from Memory?
Thank you, first of all. It was really nice meeting you that day. Now, I feel calm about the album release. But I think I felt the whole excitement and the euphoria of it when I first learned that I was gonna release with Music From Memory. And I think for around 8-10 months, I was on cloud 9. There was a lot of excitement. Now, it’s released and everyone’s texting me “Oh my gosh, you should be so excited”. And actually, I don’t feel excited anymore – now that it’s released I’m proud of my work and myself and the whole… I’m grateful to the universe. I’m just waiting for the feedback now. You know, waiting to see the feedback and experience and enjoy it.

Amazing! That’s so nice.  I would love to start from the beginning, how did the name Sun Shone come about?
A few months before I learned that I was going to release on Music From Memory I was asked to do a live show, and that was going to be my first live show after a long time. I thought I would be showcasing a set full of brand-new music for 45 minutes – I had one month and went hardcore and made music for a month straight. This period was also not the easiest for me, mentally I was feeling very down. And while producing the tracks, I thought about how this live set will be the sun that shines. So before even compiling the project together, I decided to name the project Sun Shone – to also manifest it into existence. So that was the intention, and then I kept it because I really like how it sounds. That’s the story…

The sound design on this album is insane. It’s absolutely insane.
I appreciate it!

Your voice becomes the wind, the air, and the feeling that sticks to the listener. I know you studied sound design at the Masters level but how was the process of composing and designing your first ever album? Did you face any challenges?
I mean challenges, they always exist, but you know – we’re here to nail them. The challenges I faced were not technical or on a production level, this was the first time I had to complete a story. I initially had four tracks and I needed to make four more, for the B-side, and I never worked that way before. So that was the only challenge I faced, the vibe was clear on the A side and the B side needed to complement it.
So then I thought “Okay, now what am I going to do,” and the label asked me to do something more rhythmic on the B-side. They just said rhythmic but, what does that mean? So it was a lot of listening and researching for two months. I didn’t even make music, and that was a challenging period because I couldn’t place where I should be putting that rhythmic idea into that melancholic A side of the album. But then they came together. I just made four tracks in a month and it was finished.

The energy of the album is both heavy and also very light. Much like the name suggests, it captures a void symptomatic of an unnamed event – What galvanised you to release this project as an album?
That decision didn’t come from me actually, it came from the label. The owner of Music from Memory was at my studio and then we listened to the A-side of the project. After that we were just drinking, chatting – and he said, “Let’s make this an album”. It was going to be released on their sub-label Second Circle. It’s also really good, please check it out. A bit more left field. Very nice stuff.
After I finished the B-side, he expressed his desire to release it on Music for Memory.

What happened to the queue? That’s amazing.
Apparently, the queue had already passed and he could squeeze it in. But he also didn’t want to wait because I waited too long to finish the album. I would say that I didn’t really mean to make it an album. That was not the intention, and I don’t know if I would like to do it again soon. It was hard to research for 2 months without knowing if I was gonna be able to deliver or not. It’s similar to planting seeds – they grow and you eat the fruits, you have to teach yourself to be patient.

I’m pretty sure you’re the second Turkish artist, and first Turkish woman to release with Music From Memory – if I’m not mistaken this is something you’ve been manifesting. Can you dive into your desire to release with Music From Memory and its significance for you as a label?
Music From Memory means a lot to people from Amsterdam – I’ve come to realise this as time goes on. The projects thatI’ve listened to from Music From Memory opened my mind so much, and it inspired me to try different genres or blend genres at least. I can’t remember the name but there was this one album that taught me to slow down and reminded me how beautiful it can be to slow down, go deep, and be simple – yet effective. 

I understand that completely,  when I saw that a Turkish woman was releasing with Music From Memory it made me so emotional actually. As a huge long-standing fan of, any release from the label excites me, but I think this means so much to a lot of people – especially the migrant community. It might be a small step for music, but it’s a huge step for people around.
Why do you think that is?

I think ambient music has so much potential as a social cause – just sound and sometimes cacophonic sound without a melody, riff, or bridge. It lies outside a very normative song composition, and I think ambient simplicity, the fact that you really maybe will not be surprised is a beautiful surprise in and of itself. To continue, I’m a proud believer that we should be thinking about methodologies more actively, what does your technical process look like?
Lovely, yes, I have a keyboard like where I get the piano sound. I didn’t use any acoustic instruments except for my vocals, but I don’t claim to be a singer, I call myself a human oscillator. I use my voice as a unique wave, the texture is what adds depth to the synths. I mixed a lot of analogue and digital synths, and I didn’t use any drum machine but I hadsome modulars on an electronic keyboard.
This is a little hard to answer actually because sometimes I start a track, “Cloud Sofa” for instance, which has one piano loop repeating for four minutes long, and then the vocals build on each other and the production is smooth. But then there’s “Waterbear,” which took me so long to complete the arrangement. I had a production block around halfway through the song, which is so interesting because I have heard from friends and the audience that they got goosebumps during a specific part of the track, and actually that part was where I had the block. I was stuck there and then I gave it some time – made other tracks. When I came back to it, I decided to take everything back from the composition and just keep the beat; after that, I could finish the track. It’s beautiful that both I and my listeners share a connection to that moment.

Wow, and how is producing an album different from DJing or sound design?
I think sound design is more personal, I think sound design is more powerful if I have it on my headphones. If sound design and DJing could be understood as people, sound design would be an introvert and a DJ would be an extrovert. The more I DJ, the more I understand how important it is to interact with the crowd and be a bit more extroverted. I also know very successful DJs who are introverted, but they are good observers and still exchange energy with their crowd. This album process was very personal and very individual. I did it on my own. I never even sent any track to any of my friends to get feedback, but that doesn’t necessarily mean every album-making process is going to be the same. For me, the album is the introverted extrovert. 

To consider the visual language of Sun Shone, what colour,  synesthetically, represents this album for you?
I mean, I think the colour is on the album cover. I think it represents the album really well. But, at first, I also wanted a bit of pink on it – originally, the typeface was pink! But I realized metallic silver was nicer, so we went for that.
But if it was going to be one colour, then I would say neon orange – the opposite of the visual representation now. The sound is definitely not neon orange, and I think that could be a nice balance. 

Is there an artist, person, or inanimate object that inspired you during the production, or inspires you daily?
What inspires me? I need to think a little bit. For the album, I don’t have an object that inspired me, but I have my affirmations that I do to set good intentions. So those are my charms – it doesn’t have to bring luck, but just flow and acceptance.
Music-wise, for the B-side, I listened to a lot of Japanese ambient music, especially Susumu Yokota. I also listened to Aphex Twin, I was studying his compositions and trying to dissect his production. 

That’s so illuminating, Sun Shone made me reminisce about Surround by Hiroshi Yoshimura, and now I can really trace the lineage – it’s dense on the sonic stage but it’s not oppressive, almost like a spider-web. It’s very impressive.
Thank you, I love that – after sunshine, it gets denser.

To close off this beautiful conversation, I’m a firm believer that sound is not only listened to with the ear. Can you describe the ideal listening experience that you would recommend to people who will possibly listen to Sun Shone for the first time, or who want to fully immerse themselves in the sound?
I would recommend everyone to listen to the album with headphones on! Hearing it on big speakers for the first time made me realize how big and nice the sounds feel after producing the whole album on my mixing headphones. However, I still suggest people listen to it with headphones. I enjoyed listening to it in the airport or in nature the most, and you don’t even have to be going through anything emotional, but the album just brings the emotions out. It makes you realise things that you suppressed emotionally. I think this album has healing properties; making it healed me. The feedback that I’m getting from people usually also includes that it healed something in them. And the album needs to be listened to from the first track till the end!
One thing I love about this album is that I think there’s a track for each person on this planet. It’s not one specific sound, genre, or style for each track. There’s a nice and subtle diversity in the tracks, which I love in other albums as well. I didn’t do it on purpose, but in the end, that’s how it came together. And I’m very happy that it came out that way.

It’s amazing.
Thank you so much. That was sweet.