First on SoundCloud: Studio Sessions Berlin launches with San Holo

As fans of music, we typically hear a track when it’s done, dressed in its Sunday best, served up on a silver platter. Its production is pristine and harmonies perfectly blended. We don’t see the process: the meals artists skip to pay those first studio fees, the sleepless nights spent mixing or dreaming of beats, their drafts 1, 2…16.

So today we’re taking the spotlight off of the stage and into that room where the magic happens, with the launch of our new series, First on SoundCloud: Studio Sessions.

The project gives artists who got their start on SoundCloud the opportunity to use the state-of-the-art production studio at our Berlin headquarters and access to an in-house sound engineer, so they can do what they were born to do: create. Without all that red tape. And maybe they’ll stay for a chat and take us back to the early days – their first upload, their first instrument, their first side-stage cameo.

The first creator to grace our booth was Dutch artist / producer and electronic music trailblazer, San Holo. He might sound familiar because you’re one of his half-a-million SoundCloud followers, or maybe because his moniker is an inversion of your favorite Star Wars character. Regardless, his friendly familiarity is a feeling that’s not just name-deep; his music possesses a comfortable nostalgia that dives below the surface of traditional synth & beats. He even plays guitar and sings during his live sets, adding a human element to the very computerized genre of EDM.

Holo’s first passion was guitar, which happened to be the instrument he picked up when he swung by the Berlin studio to record “worthy” and promote his first album, appropriately titled, album1 (out today). While in the studio, Holo revealed it was important to get back to his music-making roots with this project, using recordings of real instruments and even birds chirping in an attempt to harness a sound that’s organic and intentionally imperfect. He reminisced about being an emerging artist using SoundCloud as a unique tool to collaborate and connect, saying, “Back in the day, there was really a SoundCloud scene going on in terms of young producers experimenting with sounds and uploading them to SoundCloud and finding each other. I knew something special was going on.”

He’s still uses SoundCloud for its community – over the years, he’s worked with bitbird prodigies DROELOE and teamed up with James Vincent McMorrow on a few projects. After his first-born’s release, we can expect San Holo to prop his feet for like five minutes before continuing his domination of shows across the globe while continuing to push the boundaries of electronic music.

But first, be the tastemaker in your friend group. Stream album1 HERE, add “worthy” to your queue, and watch the video below to get a peek behind the curtains. And share the goodness: from first rework to album1, what’s next in music is first on SoundCloud.