FloFilz is a German beatmaker with more than 200m combined streams to date, his single ‘Uteki’ featuring UK Jazz composer Alfa Mist is out now. Read on to learn more about this talented artist and his creative process.
Introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from…
My name is Florian or just Flo, I’m from Germany and lived in Belgium from age 10 to 20.
I then moved back to Germany to study violin / classical music and only got into beatmaking when I was around 21 years old.
(Just realized that it’s been almost 10 years!)
Since my parents are both (classical) musicians I’ve always been surrounded by music and my dad got me into Jazz by playing his favourite records (Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole..)
Other than that, I love photography, nature, design, discovering new places and also nerdy stuff like video games & collecting all kinds of things (mostly records).
Name one person who has had a big impact on your music career and tell us how they have helped you?
If we are talking about music in general then that must have been my violin professor from University.
He taught me so many things about music but also life in general. He always encouraged me to go my way and believed in what I was doing.
What is your favourite piece of music equipment and why?
It must be the sp404. I don’t really produce on it but it’s been with me all the way from when I started making beats and I have used it for all of my live shows.
I love the effects, the puristic approach and the history behind the SP machines in general.
Like Madlib using the SP303 to make beats in Brazil or J Dilla (RIP) using his to create Donuts.
Describe your creative process / routine..
I would say it’s rather spontaneous, I just create whenever I feel the urge to (which is mostly in the evening / at night).
In general, I spend a lot of time listening to music for inspiration and looking for samples.
DAWs like Fruity Loops and Ableton are my main “instruments”, I dig using the push 2 to lay down ideas and then keep working from there.
If I am working on a specific project it becomes a bit more “serious” and sometimes a deadline helps me to force creativity and get things done.
While growing up in Germany you studied classical music and played in Orchestras, how did you adapt your style into such a brilliant blend of Lo-fi, Jazz and Hip-Hop?
I got into Hip-Hop pretty late, when I was around 19 years old. I had always listened to Jazz but for some reason hadn’t discovered the continuation of it.
That changed when A Tribe Called Quest entered my life. I was blown away, kept listening to all of their albums on repeat and got into more similar music from there until
I decided that I wanted to try and create something similar. I downloaded Fruity Loops and taught myself to use it for like a year before getting some listenable results.
The orchestra and beat world are 2 completely different ones – classical music can be very strict and perfectionistic so I really enjoyed the freedom of making beats, my own music where I could do whatever I want!
What song/project/album are you most proud of to date?
Probably my album “Cenário“ from 2016 as it contains some of the tracks that I like the most.
But I’m also very proud of the project that is going to be released soon as it was a challenging and exciting one and I’m really happy how it turned out!
You have collaborated with some huge artists including MF Doom, Barney Artist & Biig Piig to name a few. Which collaboration was your favourite to do and why?
It’s quite hard to name just one as I love working with other musicians in general and every experience has been really cool so far!
One of the best ones must have been the session with Alfa Mist though as I felt like we just clicked and it was incredible to witness his talent in person and exchange ideas!
What are you currently working on that we should be excited about?
I just finished a project which is going to be released rather soon, 4 tracks taken from it are out already (“Uteki” feat. Alfa Mist, „Early Waves / Nacré“ and „Levada“ feat. Dal)
but the most exciting tracks are yet to be released in the upcoming weeks!
Any advice for new artists?
Do whatever you wanna do and try not to focus too much on things like playlist placements while creating.
Seek out people who inspire you, a mentor of some kind is the best thing to have.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help and don’t be afraid to put your music out there!
Try reaching out to artists you love, connect to the local music scene or to other artists online and collaborate.
Don’t collaborate for the sake of it though, always make sure to really feel what the other person is doing and check if you are both on the same wavelength.
Listen to every kind of music not just the one you want to make, there’s so much amazing stuff to discover in any genre!
The new FloFilz album, ‘Close Distance’ is due out this April, follow him on Spotify to hear it first.