One of the most interesting recent discoveries I’ve come across is the dark, ambient hip-hop from teenage producer, pty. His album, CALIGINOUS, was an under the radar standout in the February edition of Hip-Hop Highlights. Here he tells us a bit about himself and his recent projects.
There isn’t much of a bio online for you, what can you tell us about yourself – who are you/where you from? Or are you deliberately keeping a bit of mystery?
I’ve always preferred more anonymity when it comes to music, and the information that is already available about me online is about as much as I’m interested in sharing. That being said, there isn’t really one place where you can find it, so: my name is Ashden, I come from Northern Ireland and I’m 15.
Why the pty name?
The name pty has, unfortunately, never had an inherent meaning. It came from a very old (as in 4/5 years) name I went by – p4rty (don’t judge, I was like 10 when I thought of it).
You put out an album/tape last summer – MONOCHROME. Was that the first music you’d released?
MONOCHROME is actually my 5th project under the name pty. All of the rest are beat tapes that are, unless I get my old laptop fixed, unfortunately lost to time. The projects themselves were very rudimentary sounding, being more of a collection of randomly dispersed crude attempts at sounding like Alchemist/Madlib/Preemo/whatever other producer I was listening to at the time, rather than fully fledged projects.
Despite the name, MONOCHROME is a lot lighter than your recent stuff with a bit more of a traditional hip-hop sound. Did you deliberately set out to make something darker with CALIGINOUS?
Yes, 100%. MONOCHROME always was, even while making it, a first stepping-stone for me; by the time it was releasing I had already started planning out CALIGINOUS. I wanted to make something that felt more cohesive and less traditional, as well as being darker in sound, and putting much more emphasis on features as MONOCHROME opened up the ability to hit up rappers who would’ve charged me a lot more if I had bought a verse before (xhef, no god., Lil Figurative, etc.).
To me, CALIGINOUS very much sounds like you’re trying to create a landscape within the music – maybe something post-apocalyptic. How would you describe what you were aiming for?
I was aiming to create something that felt more hopeless than anything. I wanted it all to feel like, as you said, something post-apocalyptic; void of any chances of saviour or rehabilitation. I also wanted to do something that felt different compared to more recent compilation albums, in terms of tone and production; a project that felt akin to something more conceptual than just a collection of tracks (which are still cool of course, don’t get me wrong).
What about some of the key influences on CALIGINOUS? (I get a bit of a Portishead-style trip-hop vibe)
The influences for CALIGINOUS are hard for me to list, as there weren’t any pieces of music that fully inspired the album as a whole. However, a lot of the individual tracks themselves have some inspiration from other individual songs; WITNESS was somewhat inspired by unruly and klwn cat’s Panthera, FINALE was inspired by Jvly38! and Lil Figurative’s kneecap, GODSPEED was loosely inspired by tau’s valley fever. (Listening back, while it wasn’t intentional, I hear the Portishead thing too)
There’s a load of features on there, but it feels quite consistent, there’s a certain darkness to most of the verses. Did you suggest anything in particular or do you think they just understood the assignment once they heard the beats?
It was a half-and-half sort of thing, with a lot of the features being guided thematically and a lot being given free rein to do whatever they saw fit. The former is definitely more prominent in the later tracks, with practically every single verse on the last 2 songs being guided lightly or heavily with my ideas for the tone and theme. There was some of that on the earlier tracks too, but it was much less frequent and I more commonly gave the rapper’s the freedom to rap whatever they wanted over my beats. However, a few verses ended up being cut and replaced/re-done because of them not having a tone I felt fit the album enough.
What’s next for pty?
I have a lot of music virtually finished as of right now. I obviously don’t want to spoil too much, but I have music coming up with some of my favourite rappers in the whole scene (and one of my favourite rappers in general) as well as another solo album in the works. It’ll be more similar to MONOCHROME in terms of having more instrumental songs and having the features dotted around the album, although sonically it’s an entirely new and untouched avenue for me. It’s still being made, so will hopefully release late 2024/early 2025. Also, all being well, I should have the most experimental piece of music I’ve made coming out within the next few months.
You can stream pty’s music in the usual places:
And you can find them on social media via the links below.
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