Who The Hell Is Chime?

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Head in the clouds. Away with the fairies: Leeds-based 21-year-old Harvey Thompson has been chiselling a stark, pixelated, animated line of bass music for several years… First as Dec3mber and now as Chime.

Later this month – May 27 – he’ll be making his debut on Datsik’s Firepower with From Fairies To Fire: a four track adventure that delves deep into the melodic side of dubstep without losing any shade of the all-important weight and punch. Showcasing a clear nose for dramatic arrangements, storytelling sonics and fiery funk throughout, we copped the title track. It goes like this….

Serious KOAN vibes on that bassline. Here’s a little more about the fairy-flinging Firepower freshman….

Fairies and dubstep: An unlikely combination but it’s working for you. Run us through this concept please…

I feel like dubstep is one of the most powerful genres you can make and so juxtaposing it with light, floaty sections only increases the energy when it’s at its strongest. I think a big part of my signature style has become this combination of melodic and heavy and I really like the way they compare and contrast against each other in the context of dance music.

It was Skrillex’s infamous Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites that originally opened my eyes to this concept of putting the two styles together. As I began to write dubstep, it reminded me I didn’t have to settle for just one or the other.

From Fairies To Fire serves as a tribute to that track but it’s also a step in the direction of a heavier sound to what people know me for. This is because I love both ends of spectrum. And as a producer, I’d like to build an audience that’s ready to be thrown either way at any point!

Who’s your biggest light influence? Who’s your biggest dark influence?

I think Fox Stevenson might be my biggest influence on the light side. Both for his fun and inventive approach to writing dance music but also in the way he has informed a lot of my actions within the music industry. Seeing as he’s a producer from my hometown who makes a similar style of music to myself, I feel like I’ve been following in his footsteps a lot of the way. I owe a lot of my motivation to him and in fact, Catch Up from the EP is named in reference to this. Other producers informing my melodic style would be these folks: Virtual Riot, Xilent, Seven Lions, Au5, Fractal, Haywyre and Porter Robinson.

A lot of my influence on the darker side comes from artists like Zomboy, Eptic, MUST DIE!, Barely Alive and more recently HeRobust. These guys have been setting the bar for bass music for a long time and I have a huge respect for them. I have to give a shout out to my good friends QUEST and LoneMoon too who are both huge influences on my music – both light and dark!

Okay… A burglar has entered your studio. He’s not a very pleasant man, he wants to steal your secrets. You need to take action, you need to arm yourself and fight him with the nearest object on your right. What is it and how you going to use it against him?

Well I always have a plush of my favourite Pokemon Scraggy on my desk. He’d make for a damn soft weapon in reality but if he was a real Pokemon I’d be ordering him to headbutt the crap out of the guy!

If you could be trapped in any animation what would it be?

I think it would be either of two animated universes. The first would be Rick & Morty as I’d love to explore the possibilities of interdimensional travel explored in that show (as ridiculous as that sounds)

The other would be more of a world of beauty portrayed in a Studio Ghibli film like Ponyo.

Seriously, though; tell us how your Firepower hook-up came about and please tell us where you’re heading release-wise in the near future….

This EP is the first thing I sent over and they took it straight away! I was surprised really as I thought they’d be put off by the lighter, more melodic side of some of the tracks.

In terms of future releases, I think I’d like to follow up with another Firepower EP if possible. It’s been a long-time goal of mine to work with them so I’m excited to continue that. I have a few tracks that I’m finding places for but it’s likely a lot of my more melodic and experimental music will be released through the new collective / label I manage called Rushdown.

https://soundcloud.com/chimetunes/sets/chime-head-in-the-clouds