When in life did you realize producing music was something you wanted to do?

I actually started making electronic music because at my high school instead of finals, we had a week where we just did a hands on project that proved we’d learned something. I had this teacher who was like, “I’m gonna host a project where you can learn how to make electronic music through Ableton” and I thought that sounded sick, so I tried that out and I didn’t learn a whole lot, but I learned what Ableton was and I loved it.

The next year, my third year of high school, this kid came to my school who went by the producer name Lidsky. He was a pretty well-known glitch-hop producer and he just blew my mind. There was so much more that could be done with Ableton and meeting this kid was when I realized I wanted to become better a producing electronic music.

Where did the inspiration for your name come from?

It’s kind of funny because it’s not really a name that means a whole lot. I used to make like silly EDM trap before I started making future bass and I was talking with my girlfriend saying that I should hop on the bandwagon and start making future bass. So we were trying to come up with ideas for what a good future bass name had and we said, “all lower case letters and some sort of a punctuation.” Then I came up with ye. and it just kind of stuck.

Is it pronounced like “yeah” or “yay”?

So that’s another funny thing, recently me and my manager haven’t figured out what to do. “Yay” seems to stick with people a lot more than “yeah” does, so what we’ve been doing is rolling with “yay” for now because more people remember it.

What was it like collaborating with Pluto on the track “Breath”?

It was really awesome. We met through this guy named Tommy Pax, he was the guy who basically taught me about marketing and promotion stuff. He connected me with Sam (Pluto) because I had this track that I was working on, I had the whole first half down, but I couldn’t finish the track. I felt like it had so much potential, but my mixing was bad and I didn’t know what to do with it. So Tommy was like, “you have to send this to Sam” because he had just started releasing some really good tracks. So I sent it to him and he finished up the track, the arrangement and it sounded great. Then we just did some mixing back and forth until it was finished, but I had a lot of fun working with him.

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exclusive interview

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Tell me about your experience at Camp Bisco.

Oh my god, it was unreal! I’ve never been to a festival before, so I didn’t know what to expect at all. I couldn’t comprehend how much music there was; the festival was so much more than I expected! Everyone was going so hard all weekend. We were going to bed at like 5:00 AM every night, I loved it. I saw my first live dubstep set at Camp Bisco too. Subtronics was insane!

Do you have a favorite moment or memory that you can recall?

So I got to meet Octbr over the weekend for the first time because we share the same manager. There was a little set back because of the rain and we were hanging with Kill Them With Colour and I think he was a little exhausted because he got put on another set to replace CloZee who couldn’t make it. So my manager was like, “you should all just go back to back to back together.” I hadn’t really used CDJs before and Octbr hadn’t either, but it went great. Playing with those guys was definitely the biggest highlight of Camp Bisco.

So UpNorth will be your first official festival performance?

Yes! Camp Bisco was actually a surprise. I didn’t know I was playing there until two weeks before, but with UpNorth they let us know in advance and I freaked out. They were like the first festival to ever reach out. I saw my name up there next to whereisalex and I was like, these are all my heroes in one place and they want me to perform, holy shit!

What kind of preparation goes into your sets?

So for bigger sets I actually plan out what I want to play, but I’ll have two playlists. I have one that has everything and one that is focused. The focused playlist is like, if nothing changes during the festival, if people are vibing the whole way through it, I stick with the focused playlist. If people aren’t vibing with it, then I have the backup one. That’s kind of what I do for smaller shows, I’ll have just a big playlist filled with everything that I like and then I just kind of wing it, but for UpNorth I’m definitely gonna plan it out, it’s gonna be intense.

Which song of yours is your favorite to play live?

See that’s tough because I have this bad habit where after I release a song, I immediately like it a lot less, but I think a lot of people do that. I have this They. remix in the works that still has to get approved, but I dropped it at Camp Bisco and I dropped it at Output rooftop and the crowd reaction was nuts! It was way more than I could’ve ever expected, but I love playing that track.

To what do you attribute some of the success you’ve seen as an artist?

It’s always tough to tell, but I would say the network of people I’ve met. I remember on Soundcloud there was two turning points; when I went from 100 to 1000 followers and when I went from 1000 to over 10,000 followers. Those are like the only two big turning points so far, but the way that it happened was through meeting these people called Orbitual at the very start, like when I only had ten followers. They were like, “we like your music, can we put you on our mixtape?” Then they invited me to their GroupMe and I started talking to all these producers, none of them were super huge, but I had all these guys that connected me with more guys and this network started to grow. Through Orbitual, I got to know this guy named Attic Beats who was in the Insomniac collective. From there I got to know Oceans and my network grew from just one collective to knowing the people that got me connected to Tommy Pax and that changed everything. He was able to teach me how to release music, how to promote it and how to connect with people. Orbitual and the Soundcloud guys got me up to like the 1000’s range and then once I met Tommy, he connected me with Pluto and that’s

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Is there a specific area in your production style that you’ve been working on?

Lately I’ve been focusing on two things. The main thing that I’m focusing on right now that I think my music is lacking is just basic song writing. At the end of the day, we aren’t just producing, we’re also song writing and my song writing is pretty weak. I always resort to the same chord structures, same approaches to voicing, melodies, and I want to learn how good songwriters work. And then also I’m just working on improving my sound design in general, trying to get cool sounds that aren’t just the same SAW waves every single song.

What can you tell us so far about the next project you are working on?

So I just released this project with Mothica, she’s a dope NYC artist that I met when I was in the city awhile back. She ended up putting a bunch of acapellas online, so I made this beat and took one of her acapellas, threw it on top and really liked the way it sounded. I’m always sitting on tracks though, trying to find outlets to release them through efficiently. Me and Squired have a whole album in the works too of just straight trap bangers, but I definitely have some stuff I’m trying to release in August before UpNorth.

Last question, where do you see yourself in five years?

It’s so funny because when I was telling one of my friends that I had to do this interview tonight, he was like, “let me prep you” and the first question he asked was, “where do you see yourself in five years?” But that is such a tough question, I guess some of my goals would be to make money and be able to travel the world. That’s the ultimate goal for everyone, be sustainable, but I think another goal that I have is to make music that not only other people like, but that I also like. Sometimes I have released songs in the past that I haven’t liked by the time of release and that’s just something I’m not really into. Sometimes you have to do that, but hopefully in the next five years I can release music that everyone loves and brings positivity.