With two forthcoming releases this spring on Datsik's Firepower Records and 12th Planet's SMOG Records, at nearly 30 years old,Infuze has been plying his passion craft for years and is ready for the next level. The Brooklyn-based DJ, audio engineer, and producer is in his own words: "just a music fan at the core."
Born Eliot Leigh, Infuze has been producing for nearly 18 years after spending part of his youth in Belgium and starting at age 12. "It just so happened that there was a MIDI class in my school in Brussels and that was like the first time I've ever seen that happen, so I took that class for like six consecutive trimesters." Leigh continued, “I really liked it from day one,” and that it was his time in Europe during the "electronica" era that gave him a life long passion. In his eyes, “that style of music is a direct ancestor of everything that's poppin right now.” Leigh continues, “all of that stuff led into that heavier drum & bass sound that got popular at the end of the '90s and into the early 2000s and I mean that's the stuff I always followed and it all kind of maintained this, hard to explain it in words, but the vibe I always get is just ravey because I always imagine walking into a multi-thousand person rave in DC and hearing that music. That was my kind of late teens, going to parties. I was a raver kid.” Leigh, at nearly 30-years-old, adds perspective on how the scene has changed. “I think I went through my whole childhood as an outcast for liking that stuff, and so finally, it's nice to see that it's no longer outcast shit, but mainstream shit to an extent. I do think that the old rave scene was really cool because it was super accepting of anyone. If you went to a party in DC during that period, you'd see, black, white Asian, gay, straight, you know what I mean? It was so diverse in terms of the crowd and I would say that it just felt fruitier.”
Today Leigh approaches his grind with equal passion and a learned knowledge. “What's the expression, '1% inspiration, 99% perspiration?' I'm in the studio every damn day like eight hours a day, everyday.” That attitude. though. wasn’t always focused. “It's been a progression, so when I was younger, I wasn't in the studio all the time working on music. I had a lot of different stuff I was into, but that effort got focused when I went to college when I was 18.” Studying at the University of Indiana’s Jacobs School of Music, Leigh notes that “there wasn't really an electronic music scene in 2002” and that “there was a really grimy rave scene in Indiana at that point, but the governor of the state was trying to shut every party down so it became very difficult to have events.”
Unwilling to give in to the pressures of an evaporating scene, Leigh re-tooled his own scene. “I did end up getting my own place with friends, we got a big ass sound system with friends and threw our own parties all through college. They were pretty awesome and we didn't have famous DJs at them or anything, but it was us and just all the homies playing for hours and hours and that's what turned me into an accomplished DJ, to be honest, because I got to play in front of people through all that time.” After graduating from the University of Indiana’s Jacobs School of Music, Leigh moved to New York in 2006 to be a recording engineer and get going on his professional aspirations. Speaking earnestly on his path, “I worked at Sony Music Studios as an intern and then like a low-level assistant, I kind of learned the big studio grind.” The great learning environment though didn’t last as the studio closed in August of 2007 and it forced Leigh to re-commit himself to his path.
“It became really difficult to further your career as an engineer when you've put in a year interning, so I spent a few years just honing production craft and stuff like that.” That passion never died though and it’s exactly what kept him afloat. Today, Leigh works with Paul Savoy, “a really prolific songwriter” from the 80s band, a-ha. “At one of the hardest points in my life, I really needed a job, and I got super lucky and I ended up meeting him through a mutual friend and he needed a guy to run Logic for him. So I kind of fell back into the engineering craft and since then I've gotten to travel Norway with him a bunch of times. We just had an artist on Warner Norway put out her album with three songs that we worked on and I kind of did a combination of engineering, synth programming, and drum programming, but not songwriting per se.” The work with Savoy has clearly had a rejuvenating and clear effect on Leigh.
Reflecting on how he got to where he is today, Leigh says “it's been real interesting over the last year because I made a concerted effort about a year ago to go hard or go home with this Infuze stuff and I started putting music out as frequently as I possibly could and just try to catch someone's attention, I guess.” Leigh continued, “I was lucky from the beginning as a couple of my good friends were 'plugged in,' so when I started making dubstep, it became fairly easy. It was before everything got crazy with Skrillex and everything, so I had an early opportunity to get plugged in with the SMOG crew.” Today, Infuze evaluates his process noting that it was his decision to “go hard on bootlegs, remixes, and you know, anything I could put out that was quality” that would be the difference for him then and now. Infuze seems content with exactly where he is today and offers advice to up-and coming producers struggling to face the seemingly impossible task of actually “making it.”
“The original mission should always be making music because you love it, regardless whether it's going to come out or whether some label is going to put it out. I think there's a lot of pressure on younger up-and-coming artists to keep up and have content because the Internet moves so quickly and it's really easy to get lost in the shuffle, but I think it's important to always do what you feel is artistically correct. So if that means taking two months off from dance music and going to listen to indie rock for two months get some new inspiration, then that's what it is. I've definitely gone through periods like that and when I was younger, it used to stress me out, but now that I've had a little time to gain some perspective, I've definitely learned that I go through periods of like heavy duty inspiration and periods of less, but the key is always trying to work.” This particular attitude, approach, and appreciation has been essential for Leigh’s survival and is embodied in his thoughts on dubstep. “I would like to think that because all the stuff I make is super melodic, I think based on crowd reaction at parties and stuff like that, it always seems that stuff gets the biggest reaction. I personally think that dubstep moving forward will have a much more melodic element then dubstep when it got really big a few years back. I could just be partial to the melodic sound but I definitely think people react to that and y’know people react to hooks and I think that’s why Skrillex got so big. He made all these wild sounds but at the end of the day, his songs are super hooky and same for that’s why Flux Pavilion got big, too. I think the only way it’ll survive is if it maintains some kind of way that a track can be remembered three years later because there was a period coming out was just like the same sound over and over, and everybody got bored with it.”
Though these comments were specifically in reference to dubstep, it seems they could apply to all electronic music at this point and serve as a heeding call to all electronic musicians and DJs currently sitting on their loins and unwilling to push the envelope leading to a slack in novel electronic musical progression. Leigh’s thoughts on the future of drum & bass provides a sense of tempered optimism for the scene, noting that the sound has already begun waves but that it’s still taking time. “I love drum & bass and always have. I definitely feel like it has the potential to catch on, but just like dubstep coming over from the UK, dubstep originally was very UK music and it wasn’t until people figured out how to put an American spin on it that it became hot in America. I know that a lot of producers, myself included, are trying to figure out how to make 172 or 174 BPM music without it feeling totally frantic?” The seemingly impossible task of making high speed breakbeats digestible, though, hasn’t been impossible; Leigh adds that his hip-hop background has been part of the key. “It’s a little bit difficult, but I’ve got some stuff in the can that I’m pretty excited about that mixes drum & bass with hip-hop influences and trappier stuff that has been going off when I play it at shows, so I’m pretty confident that there will be some positive developments in that department coming up.” Outside of his own work, Leigh points to Evol Intent’s Gigantor as a guy really taking things to the next level. “I’ve been watching the last few months – his profile has been rising again. The Evol Intent thing is definitely making a come back right now. They were the biggest drum & bass act in America I’d say five or six years ago, so I think the fact they’re making kind of a resurgence lately is definitely an indicator that the sound is going to move in the limelight soon, I would think.” With such a positive attitude and the benefit of experience it seems that Infuze is confident in his mission and skills enough to make an impact this summer.
For more Infuze music, check out his DAD Mix, and be sure to lock into his SoundCloud page.
