New Zealand artist Dera Meelan started on his journey in electronic music when he was a kid, playing on his Nintendo 3DS.
"As surprising as that sounds, there was this program called Rytmik, and it was a pretty comprehensive DAW interface considering it was on a handheld gaming device," Meelan says. "That really hooked me into what production was and I slowly built my way up from that to Cubase, Ableton into GarageBand on my phone and finally landed on Logic Pro. I’d say things got serious in 2018 for me, I started building up some semblance of a name and sound in the underground music community in Auckland and have been going at it ever since."
Meelan says that his sound is a melting pot of influences.
"A marriage of all the music that has inspired me since I was a little kid.," he says. "It’s definitely dissonant I’d say. A lot of off kilter sounds and pockets - I’ve always thought my sound is this weird cross section of my love for electronic music and hip hop, and so you get this grimey bass heavy sort of love child at the end. Not sure if that sounds enticing or scary, but hey, it’s interesting."
His latest release is "ON MY MIND."
"‘ON MY MIND’ is a bit of a different release from my usual work, it’s a lot more melodic in some areas but a lot more sparse too," he says. "I really enjoy the simplicity of the song and its ability to hook you in emotionally. The repeating vocal top line is what I feel the track orbits around, and so you have this main element that the rest of the track progresses around throughout the track. The vocal repeating 'You’ve been on my mind for like way too long' throughout the track felt like a representation of grief of some sort, and so I wanted to reflect this chaotic nature that in some way could relate to how it feels to process a breakup, and have the elements support that."
As for gear: "I’m essentially all in the box so it’s my MacBook, Logic Pro & my Audio Technica ATH-M50x’s that I’ve been rocking for the past five years.. for DJ’ing I use the Numark Mixtrack Platinum FX and Serato."
Looking ahead, Meelan has plenty planned for 2025.
"I’ll be releasing music every month and have two shows with the gang coming up in Australia in April," he says. "April 11th in Melbourne & the following day in Sydney!"
