Aeon Shift (Ten Questions with...) & Guest Mix
Aeon Shift is a collaborative project between Irish trance DJs and producers, Seán Beresford and Adrian Boland. They first collaborated in 2018 after booking a gig at a back2back DJ gig in Dublin. In 2019, they officially formed Aeon Shift. The guys have already released releases on labels such as Borderline/Activa Music, Always Alive Recordings and Infrasonic Recordings. I invite you to an interview conducted exclusively for Visions Of Trance.
Seán - Trance for me became a way of life, I first discovered trance over 20 years ago when I was 16. I had heard some trance tracks when I was younger, 13/14ish around the turn of the millennium, but a holiday to Ibiza in 2002 was when it struck me, that was in August and in December I got my first set of turntables. I started buying vinyl and compilation CDs, namely Gatecrasher, Godskitchen, Euphoria, and anything I could get my hands on, I was obsessed. I was a huge Tiesto fan in my late teens and early 20s, I had all of his compilations and DVDs too. I never went out on nights out to normal clubs or concerts, I've only ever been to one concert and that was Kings of Leon last year. It was always a night out where trance was being played. As I got older and began earning more money, I started to travel abroad for festivals, particularly Luminosity or Lumo as we call it here in Ireland, which usually sparks debates online haha. I met my fiancée through our love for trance, and most of my friends, maybe 85/90% are trance lovers. So yeah, you could say, trance is and always will be a staple point in my life. For me, it will always be a part of me, I've not heard any other music like it, and the emotion it can evoke in me is unrivalled. I truly love trance music.
Adrian - I first discovered trance music around the age of 9 or 10, (30 years old now) I used to have an old cassette radio in my room which I used to record songs I had heard on the radio on blank cassette tapes, 3 tracks that stand out to me in my memory from then was CRW - I Feel Love, Atlantis - Fiji and Thrillseekers - Synaesthesia. I can still visually see myself rushing to hit the record button when these tracks came on the radio for the first time in my head, i then discovered Tiesto at that point and I asked my mother to buy me Tiesto Live in Concert 2003 for my 10th birthday and the rest is history, from then on it was just a pure obsession! I was that kid in school who was music-obsessed, so it always felt natural that one day I would eventually venture into making my own music.
In a way, Trance music has shaped my life and brought very important people into my life (Seán being one of them) who I never would have met if it wasn't for trance music, and for that I will be forever grateful.
2. How do you perceive the state of the current trance music scene?
Seán - This is such a difficult question for me to answer, on the whole, I still think the trance scene is vibrant, not as much as it was 10/15 years ago, but I think that's due to the cost of living and the loss of so many nightclubs and venues. Here in Dublin or Ireland for that matter, the scene has almost completely diminished. We usually get 1 maybe 2 big club nights a year. JOC and Kearney will always pull the crowds so they're usually sell-out gigs, whereas the smaller club nights, don't seem to get the traction and support they deserve. We have a lot of talented DJs and producers on this small island, but unfortunately for most of us, we don't have much of a following or fan base. I think it's a lot harder to build a fan base these days despite social media. For us, Adrian and I are quite introverted, most of our spare time is spent in the studio. We both have full-time jobs and try to get into the studio as much as we can, sometimes going back to work after having only 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Our main priority is the music, there are not enough hours in the day for us!
Adrian - not much to add here as I would have similar views to Seán here on this topic
Seán - My goals have changed in the last 4 years, when I first started to produce music, it was to get gigs. I remember being told that unless I started making music, I would never get any gigs. So I started on the path of production a long time ago but it was around 2018 when I decided to take it seriously. I had a friend rebuild my computer, I bought some of Allan Morrow's tutorials and started to lock myself up in the studio whenever I had free time. I met Ado in 2018 and in 2019 I made the move from FL Studio to Ableton and we started to work on music together after we were booked for a Back2Back gig. Ado was already on Ableton, so, I kind of learned my way around that working with him. Back then our aim for making music together was to get gigs, but by the end of 2021, after Covid, and how the scene had gone in Ireland, we had a long discussion about our goals and aims as Aeon Shift. We decided that we were going to take "getting gigs" off the table. We stopped making music aimed towards specific labels and started to make the music that we felt was lacking in today's scene. It's still difficult to make music, some tracks have been made in 2 studio days and some have taken 4 years to make. We're by no means prolific producers. We know enough to make a track, it's making something worthy of release that is what we strive for, it's about quality not quantity for me.
My main goal now is to make music I'm proud of, something I can look back on when my career (however big or small it becomes) is all done and dusted and say to myself "I've made some amazing music, and enjoyed every moment" that to me is why I do it now, and anything else is a bonus.
Adrian - similar to Seán, mine have slightly shifted over the years, I started producing over 6 years ago as I was told "I won't get gigs without making music" My principles have changed a lot since then, I don't make music in the hope of getting gigs, I make the music that makes me happy and if it impacts a few people in the way it does for me, it makes it worthwhile! My main goal now as a producer is to constantly keep striving to improve the standard of my music both as Aeon Shift with Seán and as a solo producer, although my main priority is the Aeon Shift alias, I still like to work on my own stuff on the side as my solo style is very different to the Aeon Shift sound, it helps keeps things fresh for me
The main focus has been and always will be building the Aeon Shift sound, we have a select few target labels we would love to release music with and that's what we are aiming towards.
Seán - My favourite producers are M.I.K.E. Push, Airwave & Activa. I'm a huge fan of the Bonzai, Vandit and Anjunabeats sound, so obviously, we can't speak about inspiration without mentioning Above & Beyond, Paul Van Dyk, and Ferry Corsten, the list is endless. Trance on the whole is my inspiration, I'm over 20 years deep into collecting music, vinyl, CDs, and digital, and I'm only ever one click away from being inspired.
Adrian - My biggest inspirations in the early days I would have to say, PVD and Tiesto, as I mentioned before the Live in Concert DVD was the one that ignited the fire in me, in the last 10 years I would say Activa has been my favourite producer, I was a huge fan of the old Discover Records label and that's where I first came across Activa's music.
True Story, I was at Luminosity Beach Festival in 2017, during Activa's comeback set on Sunday, I was so inspired by what I was hearing and finally getting to see a DJ/Producer I followed for a long time live, I had turned to a friend who was with me at the festival at the time and told him I was going to get serious about starting music production when I got home, 2 months later I had enough money saved to buy a Macbook, I got set up with Ableton and a few plugins and never looked back.
Seán - It's like asking a parent who's their favourite child haha! It's tough to say because they all have different meanings behind them, our first track Aeon Shift track 'Ataraxia' was my first ever release so that will always be special as it was my first ever solo release 'Mångata', I have huge thanks to Daniel Kandi for signing these, as it gave me such a confidence boost in production. I had many tracks refused by labels, so to have my first releases signed to Always Alive was a massively proud moment.
Our track 'To Live or Exist' pulls on my heartstrings because of the vocals in the breakdown...
"Do they hear me, I think I've lost it all,
Do they hear me, I think I've lost control"
This track was made during lockdown in 2020 and I felt like I was losing my mind, we couldn't go anywhere, and there were no gigs. I hadn't seen my fiancée for nearly 4 months and it was starting to get to my mental health. We started this track and finished it over 30 hours in 2 sessions via Zoom. We had the track down in full and we found the vocal in 2 different parts from the same vocal pack on Splice if I remember correctly, when we added it to the track, with the melody and everything else, it just got to me so overwhelmed, I just burst into tears.
Then 2 weeks after the release, it was St. Patrick's Day and Armin played it on his ASOT show, our first and only ASOT play, talk about the luck of the Irish... Haha.
Then we have our latest track 'Breathe You In' This is the first track we finished after deciding to make music for ourselves, both of us are huge Activa fans, so to have him sign our track to his label, and then tell us he wants it for his Movement: One compilation and that it would be part of the vinyl release! Well as you can imagine, it doesn't get much better than that. It's funny because Ado wanted to hold off sending the demo to Rob until we had more music of a similar style finished, but it was in January and it was Friday the 13th, and I said to Ado, "We need to send this to Rob today, I just have a gut feeling about it" and so we did, we had to do some changes to the track at Rob's request but it was worth it, it's given us a level we need to keep producing our upcoming tracks to.
If I had to choose one, it would probably be 'Breathe You In' as I feel like this is the one that sets the tone for our future productions, this is the level of trance, both technically and musically where I feel we've managed to create what we've set out to do in the beginning of our careers.
Adrian - yeah this is a hard choice for me, our first release as Aeon Shift, 'Ataraxia' will always hold a special place in my heart, that tune just had something different about it that you don't hear too much in today's trance sound around that bpm range
'Breathe You In' is the track where I feel we stepped up a few levels with the standard of our productions, it then helped achieve some of our dreams of having our music released on CD and Vinyl compilations, and we will be forever grateful to Rob (Activa) for that opportunity and hopefully, it will be the first of many
As a solo artist my last track 'Follow The Path' which was released on Regenerate, is a track where I feel I took a massive leap in the production quality of my music, 3 years in the making, a lot of work went into that track and the result I couldn't have been prouder of.
My first track on Always Alive back in 2020 'Release' is always going to be a track that holds a place in my heart too
Seán - My main focus at the moment is to get more of our Aeon Shift projects over the line, we have a lot of projects and sketches to work on so it's just finding the time to finish those.
We are going to be doing some collabs though, we have started a collab with Jack AKA Dreamy, however is won't be under his Dreamy alias, that's all I can say about that, and we're quite close friends with David McClelland (Amos & Riot Night) we've spoken about doing a track together next year. We'll be planning a trip over to the UK in the new year to get to work on that.
As for other collaborations, there are a few people I'd like to work with for a vocal track, so maybe a vocal track from us next year.
Adrian - yeah as Seán mentioned above we have a collab with Dreamy in the pipeline when the time suits us all it will happen, David aka Amos & Riot Night is someone I have personally collaborated with already, we released a track called ' So Far Out of Reach' on FSOE back in March this year. Great producer and an even better person, we will be making plans to work with him at some point on an Aeon Shift/Amos Riot Night collab this time round.
Seán - Everything, even as broad as that sounds, I see patterns in the way the trees blow in the wind or the sound of the sea. I hear potential percussion grooves at work when I'm using power tools, or the pitter-patter of footsteps from my nephew running around the house with the dogs. I'm always inside my head creating soundscapes, which is much to the annoyance of people in my company as I tend to drift off into my own world a lot... Haha. My biggest inspiration comes from music though. I love finding new music, I record a lot of mixes at home, and I've got a few hundred mixes on my hard drive, for every one I put up on my Soundcloud, there are probably 20 more I haven't uploaded. I create mixes for when I'm going to and from work, on road trips or on holidays. It also helps me to get to know my music, and which tracks work with each other and which don't. I like to know my collection inside out. Listening to new music always gets me inspired to get into the studio.
Adrian - sounds a bit cliché but personal life experiences and my emotions/feelings at the time whilst producing are what bring a lot of inspiration to the music I make, if I listen to some of my older tracks I can hear the emotions that I was going through at that time within the music, sometimes you don't realise it at the time of making it but when I come back to the track after some time, it's in there, 'Release' is a prime example of this for me, that was a track I made during the lockdown. Lots of worry, uncertainty, loneliness and feeling lost but also a sense of hope that things will get better, all these emotions I can hear in that track still to this day. That for me is the power and beauty of music. A few people personally messaged me about that track even a few years later to say how 'Release' got them through some really hard times in life. If you're asking about what inspires me to make Trance, I say what more inspiration do I need than that right there?
Seán - As previously mentioned I'm using Ableton, no hardware, it's all software-based synths and plugins I use. I have most of the leading soft synths and plugins you'd expect to find in a trance artist studio. It's been an expensive collection to compile, I've invested a few thousand euros over the years. My go-to synths are Diva, Spire, Sylenth, Zebra2 and Serum. My top picks for plugins and most used are Fabfilter Pro-Q3, LFO Tool, Portal and Arts Acoustic Reverb. These are what's used in all of my tracks.
Adrian - Same as Seán as we use the same software, add NI Massive to the list and that makes up the list of main synths we use frequently. In the past year or two we have been diving more into sound designing so it's been fun learning what's under the hood of some of these synths, my top 3 'can't go without' 3rd party plugins would have to be Soundtoys Echoboy, Arts Acoustic Reverb, Fabfilter Saturn.
Seán - It's huge, I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing though. I'm very introverted, and I don't know a lot about marketing or using most aspects of social media for creating content, so I don't think you'll ever see me with this big online persona.
We have recently set up an Aeon Shift Tik Tok you can find us here @aeonshift, so the plan is to get to 1000 followers so we can do livestream, we plan to do live mixes and hopefully try to build a fan base from there, based around the love for music and sharing what we love with others.
Adrian - I'm personally not a big fan of the social media side of things as I am quite introverted like Seán, but we are trying to make more of an effort in that area too.
Plans to make some production tips/tricks & track walkthrough content in 2024, you can follow our TikTok @aeonshift to keep an eye out for this
10. Finally, what would you like to say to your fans?
Seán - To my fans, all 7 of them haha. I'm not sure if I have too many fans, but I do appreciate all of the messages I get about my music, and I do reply to them all as soon as I can. As we all know, there's no money to be made from production anymore, so our reward comes in the form of messages from people. My message to anyone who is a fan of ours, if you do like my music, let me know, give me a message. It makes me appreciate all the hours spent in the studio to know that something I created had an impact on someone's day, even if it was only for those few minutes they listened. That's what it's all about for me.
Adrian - Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to listen, buy and support our music, we hope you're going to like what's to come next from us.
To finish up, thank you for inviting us to do this interview, we hope it gives everyone a good insight into us. If you see us on a dance floor, come up and chat with us. We hope you enjoy the guest mix. Maybe one day we'll get to share our music with you in a club.
