Under 500 Interview & Premiere: Nyarly -

Today we are shining a spotlight on an an artist I have been biggin up for sometime, Nyarly! Nyarly is a project by Thomas Bowen from Columbus, Ohio. I first heard of Nyarly sometime in the past year by way of his absolutely bangin track Blazin(posted below). The song cemented my love for Nyarly’s hard-hitting productions. Thomas’s sound design is surprising and unique with it’s own flavor. Nyarly produces everything from bass house to heavy dubstep with fire results. A student of production for over a decade, Thomas’s tracks stand up with dub heavyweights and he is just getting started. Songs like Apeshit(posted below), Flutter and Swamped among others showcase Nyarly’s flavor, diversity and talent. The track we are releasing today “Consequences” is one of his heaviest tracks yet. The song starts off with a guitar solo before it drops right into a balls to the wall mid-tempo powerhouse. Thomas’s EP Heavy Things is due to release in just over a week! Citing his love for metal/alt rock as an influence for the EP, it will indeed be HEAVY!! Hit follow on the Cloud as Thomas is one rising artist to watch. Check out the new insane track below along with a few of my favorites. We linked up to chat about his musical upbringing(high school raves included), production nitty gritty, and the future.

We are stoked to be premiering your track Consequences. Can you talk about this song and how it came together?

Honestly I just wanted to make something really heavy haha. I got a bunch of Sullivan King drums and layered these blast beats in with one shots and other loops to make a heavy groove. Built the bass around that and kept it pretty simple overall! If I had to cite a single influence it would probably be Attila, believe it or not

Where are you from, and how did your musical journey begin?

I’m from Columbus, Ohio. I’ve been playing music since I was a kid, and ended up in everything from orchestra to metal bands. It sounds cheesy but everything kind of inspires me. A lot of the writing techniques I use are actually pulled from blues, though my sound design might not reflect that. I started producing towards the end of high school when my friend Guy started mentoring me. We had a club that threw raves at our school (still wild to me that we got that approved to be honest) and I kind of took the reigns when he graduated. On my 18th birthday I went to see a local witch house duo, roeVy, and that really cemented my path.

You produce tracks ranging from dubstep to electro house and everything in between with hard-hitting results. How long did it take for your sound to develop and how has the journey been? What advice would you give to producers looking to improve their sound design?

I honestly think I’m still developing my sound with every track, it’s kind of strange. I went to school for recording engineering but so much of what I actually use came in the past year or two, testing songs out on club and venue systems. I like to try new things with each new track, but I do hope there’s some kind of unifying element from track to track. My own particular flavor of weird I guess. My advice to all producers is to just have fun with it and take the time to figure out what gets results for you. A lot of people recommend keeping sound design and song writing separate, but things flow better for me when I’m tweaking it all as I go.

What DAW do you use and do you have a goto format when you create? Any tips for beginners?

I use Logic, because I started out in GarageBand when I was still getting my feet wet. There are sounds I still work into a lot of my tracks that are pulled directly from my old 2013 GarageBand settings. Usually when I’m starting a new project, I’ll lay down some basic drums and start messing around in serum until I come up with a sound that gives me a theme. Once I have the theme, everything else is built around that little by little. Serum is my go to synth, and I put Native Instruments Driver distortion on almost everything. I love the color it adds, and it’s the focal point of my processing. I like to do a loooooooot of layering though so most of my tracks will have 4 or so Serum patches going at any given moment, and sampled audio peppered in to add emphasis on certain parts of a riff. I wish I would’ve started using a spectrum analysis sooner. Voxengo SPAN is free, and can help you visualize what you’re actually doing to the sound while you mess around with sound design. Tutorials are a wonderful asset, but I wouldn’t focus on trying to recreate someone else’s sound. Focus on the techniques they’re using and build up a mental bank of tricks to impart specific character onto sounds (really short delays for metallic tone, layering in chorus to increase perceived depth, etc.). Then when you sit down to make a new sound, you can put those pieces together in totally new ways and make something unique to you.

How has COVID and the growing social movements impacted you? How do you stay inspired/creative?

I’ll be honest, it’s been hard. Not having shows and understanding that there’s a lot of important things being discussed in the world right now make it hard for me to feel like promoting my work. Columbus is pretty quiet for the most part (with bars and restaurants closing by 10) but I gives me an excuse to stay home and make/consume more art. Inspiration comes and goes, but I think if music is something you’d passionate about you’ll always end up back at it sooner or later. Sometimes I don’t write for a week, then the next week I end up spending all my free time in Logic and make stuff I’m really happy with. Don’t do it because you feel like you should, do it because you want to. Creating just for the love of creating is what it’s all about in my opinion.

What producers are pushing the boundaries at the moment/inspire you the most?

Ooooooooo this is a big question haha. Right now I’m obsessed with Apashe’s entire Renaissance album, it’s just so fun. The sound design might not be anything too crazy, but the songwriting and diversity puts it on a new level. In terms of technicality, Underscores has been consistently impressing me for the last few years. He can make just about anything and you can hear how much fun he’s having with each track. His mixing and sound design are so clean I usually can’t decide which is pulling more weight on any given track. And for me the GOAT will always be Space Laces, so every time he decides to release a track I have to rethink my entire approach to sound design.

Any fellow upcoming producers we should know about?

DEWMBA. Dude has been producing for just over a year and he can do shit I still can’t after 10. He’s diverse but makes a lot of chill deep dub, and his sound design is ridiculously clean.