[EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW] Jay Hardway Talks Sziget Festival, Music Production and New Music

As part of an EDMTunes ongoing interview series with artists from Spinnin’ Records we sat down with Jay Hardway for an exclusive interview. You can check out the interview below for an inside scoop of ‘Let Me Tell You Something’ as well as some production insights. Jay Hardway’s newest track ‘Let Me Tell You Something’ is out now on Spinnin’ Records.

Checking out your socials, you’ve had a steady stream of shows. How has 2018 been for you so far? Any Highlights?

I’ve had so many highlights this year! Playing at Tomorrowland and Sziget were definitely among them. I’ve played at both festivals before this year, but the energy is always a surprise for me. Such a rush playing there!! Music wise I’m also really happy this year with all the support of my music, by fans as well as colleague DJs! 

I know Sziget Festival is one of your favorite festivals to play, what was that like, and what makes it so special for you?

It was unreal. I played from 4:30 till 6:00 am and the tent was still packed! I think the energy is very special at Sziget, because it’s a festival with many different genres in music, not only electronic, and this makes that the crowd is so versatile, which is amazing. Very fun to play at for a DJ.

Your recent release ‘Solid’, was made for the 789ten.com tutorial from scratch. I read that here was no pre planning of the sound choices or the writing, how does that differ from your typical production style?

That is actually my production style as I always work. The video shows the raw process of me making or starting to make a new track. 99 out of 100 times I start my projects with the chords and the melody and work from there. Some chord/melody combination have a certain feel to it, which make me choose certain sounds. For instance, a beautiful ballad-style melody fits well with a nice piano sound, while a darker sounding melody could be a more bass/saw sound. Just an example but I think that the melody and chords are very important when it comes to selecting the sound.

Any word on when that ‘Cafe Del Mar’ Remake will be out?

No word yet! But I’m really glad to see and hear people asking me about it!

I saw that you created the ‘Jay Hardway Fan Community’, which features free tracks, Inspire Radio (podcast), giveaways, and even tutorials. What other plans do you have for the platform?

This platform allows me to communicate directly to my fans, the die-hard fans and for me it’s very important to keep that direct touch with my fans. I like to respond on my social channels as well, but as you know, you cannot reach everyone because of the algorithms. So this community allows me to reach everyone that is interested in my music and tutorials. I hope to create a real community out of it, so that producers and DJs can find and help each other as well. Kind of like the Laidback Luke forum, where I used to receive feedback on my music when I started out years ago!

You have collab’d with Martin Garrix in the past on Registration Code, Error 404, Wizard, and Spotless. Do you have any plans for any more tracks together?

I would love to work with Martin again, he is so talented and a great person. We’re both very busy with our touring and releasing schedule, so I’m not sure if there will be any collabs soon, but we always keep in touch so who knows! I would also like to release something on his label STMPD Recordings, which is releasing awesome tracks as well.

Your new track ‘Let Me Tell You Something’ is out on Spinnin’ August 24’th. Can you ‘Tell Us Something’ about the track? What can we expect.

It’s different from any other track I released in the past. It’s inspired mostly out of 80s electronic music and synthesizers. I started the track by making an 8 bar loop, with 80s sounds and drums. I then decided it sounded pretty cool and it would be awesome to sample my own music in a new project. This turned out to be ‘Let Me Tell You Something’ and I’m really happy with the end result!

Any major plans for the remainder of 2018?

 I’m looking forward to finishing all the projects on my computer. Some of them are 99% finished, some of them 50% and some of them are just chords and melodies haha. Other than that I can’t wait for ADE this year. I’m playing a lot of shows around the city and for any electronic music fan, ADE is definitely a recommendation.Â