Chiming in on the melodic side of electronic music is a rising producer out of Basel, Switzerland known as Zima. He is a true testament to the new generation songwriter by melding live classical instruments with electronic music creations. Zima takes to the studio with a guitar, piano, violin, DAW and stellar top-line vocalists to create powerful, uplifting music primed for summer festy vibes. A baby Matoma if you will. His warm sound started to gain serious recognition after he dropped melodic house remixes of James Arthur and The Chainsmokers records.
Today we present Zima’s sophomore original single, ‘Our Time’.
‘Our Time’ offers the scene a refreshing sound that combines an indie rock vibe with fist pumping electronic music builds. Giving us a song we can belt out loud and feel the organic rawness of while experimenting with new dance moves that the synthesized melody brings out of us. Following listening to ‘Our Time’, get to know Zima better through our exclusive interview and his discography thus far.
Listen to and download Zima’s ‘Our Time’:
So there you are, in front of a 3000 person crowd with the best sound system known to mankind, what is the first track you play?
The first track I’d play would be probably Aviciis “Without You”, but the orchestral version as an intro to my set. Or of course an epic intro version of one of my songs.
You have a strong track record for your previous releases, from your The Chainsmokers and James Arthur remixes mounting over 175k listens to your debut single ‘Fly With Me’ getting radio airtime and making the reputable Radio Berlin playlist. What are the 3 next milestones are you aiming to hit along your music career?
Well I have one main goal for my music career. When I play in a club or a festival and the crowd is singing the lyrics of my songs, then I can say I made it. I work hard to achieve this moment and I hope that I’ll get to experience that. In general, I want to get my music and my name out there and as I said, I want to create positive energy and a positive vibe. If “Our Time” would be featured in an official Spotify playlist, this would also be a dream come true. In future, I aim to play at the big stage like Tomorrowland or Ultra Music Festival, but that’s still far away so I go step by step.
Your new single ‘Our Time’ has a classic feel created with a warm guitar riff and lyrics accompanied by uplifting electronic music samplings. Can you please give us a little insight in your inspiration behind creating ‘Our Time’? What do you like about this single? What about this single displays Zima’s signature sound?
I love to include a lot of “real” instruments in my music, like guitars, pianos, violins, etc. Those combined with some great and “tasty” Synthesizers is my style of music. Being in the music studio and recording with the instruments is a great inspiration and this is also what I want to do in my life. And in general, we live in a very fast-paced world and there is not much space for dreams or for just being yourself. It’s all about financial success actually and times can be hard.
I want to encourage all the people with this song to follow their dreams and to give it a go. Let’s enjoy our time and do what we love and what we want to do – that’s what this song is all about. And that’s also my sound and the way I want to make music, I want to move people and I want them to feel good and to be hopeful and give them the inspiration to fulfil their dreams. I tried to express those feelings in “Our Time” and since I got a lot of positive feedback on the track, maybe I was successful with this in some parts.
Can we get a little insight of your creative process for ‘Our Time’? Where do you start a new single and how do you know when its complete?
I have some sort of a structure for the process of every song I make. I always start with the chords, actually I just play around on the piano until I find a great chord progression. After that I go for the lead melody. And then I just start building the song, I play the chords on the guitar, I add different layers and instruments and play with melody with different plugins and synths. That’s what I did for “Our Time” or my first song “Fly With Me”. I’m some sort of a perfectionist, only when I find everything sounding correctly and the mixing and mastering is 100% on point, I can say, the song is complete.
What do you love about creating music?
Playing with instruments and basically get the idea in your head to paper. That one moment when you have a lot of instruments and drums fixed and you press the play button and the music sounds awesome, this gives you a great feeling.
What is the electronic music scene like in Switzerland? What first drew you into the electronic music culture?
There are a lot of people who really like electronic music in Switzerland and there are some great electronic festivals here, but it’s not like very very popular actually. At the moment, most of the people listen to German or American hip hop music and also Latino music is very popular here. But EDM is still among the most liked genres of course. I discovered the electronic music culture and genre basically with Avicii. He was also a big inspiration and reason for me to start playing around with software and plugins, which eventually led to where I am now.
A “never have I ever”, what is what one thing you have never done that people may be surprised you have never done?
Well, related to music, even though I’m a music producer in the EDM section and I love this kind of music, I have never visited an EDM festival like Tomorrowland or Ultra. I was at one of David Guetta’s concerts of his world tour, but not at a festival. I definitely have to do that in the future.
Do you have anything else in the making our readers should know about?
I’m already working on two new tracks. I’ll fly to Vienna and/or Berlin soon to record the vocals for those two songs with two very talented artists/singers and I’m really looking forward to that. So stay tuned for new music.
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