Sphera – New album from an unusual producer

Sphera – New album from an unusual producer

We have been waiting for this debut album from Sphera for a long time. Liran Elkayam has been releasing music for almost 15 years already, and it was always smart, interesting and full of feel. Finally the Sphera album “Every Mind is a Place” is released on Iboga Records. We used the occasion to ask Liran a few questions and understand who stands behind this unique project.

Enjoy his set at Boom Festival while you read!

Sphera @ Boom Festival 2023 [full set movie]

Tell us about the man behind Sphera.

My name is Liran Elkayam, I’m currently 34 years old. I love cooking, walking along the city, spending weekends with my family, having coffee with a friend outside, having a dinner with my girlfriend, writing and listening to music, being alone for many hours in the studio, sometimes just to get lost among a million YouTube tabs. Football bores me to death and computer games don’t do it for me either. For the past few years I also lecture weekly at BPM college in Tel Aviv on sound & production.

Your new album ‘Every Mind is a Place’ just released on Iboga Records – tell us your story of making it.

While the album contains materials of which some were written many years ago – the oldest being ‘Be You’ with Perfect Stranger that started in 2016 – I started the actual work of collecting materials and producing them in 2019.

Get Sphera’s album – ‘Every Mind is a Place’: https://www.beatport.com/release/every-mind-is-a-place/4436213

The work was carried out over what I would call a number of very intense waves – at the end of each of them there was a mental burnout that required weeks (at best) to recover because all my energies were directed into this thing so intensely. No sleeping routine, every day looks completely different. As I progressed through the process, at the end of each wave the erosion was deeper and required a longer recovery time. Sometimes this happened before I could finish a certain section, which meant that going back to it required a bit of a re- adjustment curve to remember what the track DNA is all about, what is really important and what is less. Add to that the need to “test” the music between different events and come back with conclusions that need to be applied and tested as well, and you end up with quite a lot of time in the process. It was a hectic few years for me on the technical level but mostly on the mental level, and forced me to deal with many “demons” like the difficulty of being exposed and standing up to criticism, because I knew that in some tracks I went quite personal.

With Perfect Stranger on stage.

If it weren’t for the mild pressure exerted on me by the label and Yuli (the infamous Perfect Stranger), I wouldn’t have let it out until this moment, so I thank them for that of course.

Liran, how did you discover Psytrance? What was before Psytrance for you?

I was exposed to this music at a very young age (12-13) through a friend at school and started researching about it on the internet, specifically in a legendary website you may know called Isratrance.com. I was also exposed there to the fact that there are parties that are about trance only, and it drove me crazy. I wanted to know everything about it and I memorized the biographies of all the artists obsessively as if I was studying for a doctorate. However, as mentioned, I was very young, so being at the parties themselves came at a later stage.

I started creating without any desire or pressure to release the music but to meet the standard I wanted to be at, at that time. One thing led to another, and a friend who was a party promoter decided that I was good enough to play at his parties and also made sure that my music reached the relevant labels.

Do you remember your first Psytrance party?

The first parties I went to were in the mid-end of the golden age of progressive trance in Israel, which was mostly based on Scandinavian progressive sounds, of course. This shaped my taste, and I tend to recognize many characteristics from it that resonate in my work to this day.

Your project is called «Sphera», is there a special meaning for it?

Well, I chose this name somewhere in 2008 quite intuitively, I was looking for a name that would reflect my artistic vision in a certain way. In fact, this is the Hebrew pronunciation of the word ‘sphere’, a geometric shape that conveys balance and harmony, and thus I actually made a promise to myself to give priority to these characteristics over others in the music I wrote from then on.

Tell us more about your studio setup, what do you use more in your creative process?

It varies from time to time, but what I can say is that I am not of the “imagineers”, those who have the whole vision in their head before a single sound is placed on the canvas.

Get Sphera – ‘Every Mind is a Place’ – album on Vinyl: https://www.diggersfactory.com/vinyl/316679/sphera-every-mind-is-a-place

Therefore what usually happens is that I have to create some kind of reality and when it is in front of my eyes I begin to understand what suits me and what is less. That’s why it turns out that I actually write or rewrite each track twice at least, with the first time being a sort of beta version. the different processes are not separated in terms of mixing, sound design and arrangement. They are all part of the same thing for me.

My studio setup is as simple as possible, a nice computer and my good ol’ speakers that I’ve had with me for 15 years or so and that’s pretty much it. I like analog gear, but don’t like possessions. So my desire for a minimalist environment with as few belongings as possible outweighs my desire for unnecessary equipment.

Your music influences?

Jon Hopkins, Telefon Tel Aviv, Oliver Huntemann, Stephan Bodzin and many other good artists, while not necessarily belonging to the psychedelic movement by definition, are worth mentioning. In a closer circle there is of course Perfect Stranger, with whom I had the privilege of working frequently for over a decade now. I tend to believe that influences from these artists are present in parts of my various works, including the album itself.

Your favourite Psytrance track from all times?

The truth is that I never gave it too much thought, there must be more than one of course, but every time I think about it Vibrasphere – Purple Floating (Cosma Remix) comes to mind.