Feel the Flow EP by Watermark High

I’ve been making music with Ableton for a long time and felt the need to mix up my workflow. I wanted to make some music without a computer, so I got myself a hardware sampler a couple of months ago, an Akai MPC One. This EP is the result of my dabbling with and learning that instrument, hence the title, “Feel the Flow” – referring to the experience of physically feeling/touching my “creative flow” (working with tactile buttons, knobs and pads opposed to clicking a mouse while staring at a screen).

A further self-imposed creative constraint for this release was to only use samples. This is something I’ve never done and the idea was inspired by some of my favourite artists’ earlier work especially, like DJ Shadow, RJD2, Four Tet and Gold Panda. Whatever I wanted to achieve sonically, I forced myself to stick to sampling and sample based sound design.

These songs ended up sounding more “acoustic” than I had anticipated but I feel it was just a natural result of the samples I had to work with and also what I was feeling at the time. There’s an organic beauty in that I think. This process has been extremely educational, refreshing and invigorating and it’s something I’m definitely sticking to and iterating on in the future.

I hope you enjoy these songs. I had a blast making them.
credits
released March 9, 2023

Produced, mixed and mastered by Watermark High
Artwork by Pegawai Ngaku Seniman

Written, produced and arranged on an Akai MPC One sampler
Mixed and mastered in Ableton Live 11