10 Questions To... The Soulmate Project

The Soulmate Project Interview (10 Questions to…)

I recently found out that my interviews are becoming more and more popular and you are reading them with interest. I am incredibly happy about this, such news gives me even more energy to work, thank you! Today I have something special for you, because I have interviewed Roman Andor, producer, multi-instrumentalist, incredibly creative soul! You may know Roman from his musical projects The Soulmate Project, Masha Ray and ROMZN. Today he tells you a bit about the behind-the-scenes of his work, his passion for music and his plans for the future. The conversation was so interesting that I couldn’t resist and prepared an interview for you with not 10, but 11 questions. Okay, here we go! 😊

01. LadyDot: Hi Roman! Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions, it’s a pleasure! 😊 Please tell us how your adventure with music started?

The Soulmate Project: Hey Ania, thanks for your questions! Well, it might be a very typical story. My parents always loved listening to music and fell in love with each other over dancing lessons. I remember the presence of a huge collection of vinyl consisting of typical European dance music from the 70s and 80s at home, as well as classical music and rock’n’roll. Besides, my father played the tenor horn for most of his life and was undoubtedly musically talented. He was part of a traditional brass band I remember hearing him playing from an early age on.

02. LadyDot: You belong to a group of relatively few people in the world who can boast of being multi-instrumentalists. I know this, but maybe our readers don’t know yet, so please tell us: what instruments can you play? Did someone teach you to play these instruments, or did you pick up the knowledge yourself?

The Soulmate Project: Like many other kids before me, I started on the recorder at the age of 5 until I followed in my father’s footsteps and picked up the tenor horn myself as part of being in a school orchestra in 5th and 6th grade. It wasn’t until I fell in love with Rock music and the sound possibilities of the electric guitar that I genuinely started to get creative. There was a very intuitive side in me that just wanted to get out and write music. Later on, after having several band projects I knew I needed to deepen my musical knowledge and get classically trained. It wasn’t until when I realised I could then use my musical knowledge and benefit from my experiences on the instrument. After writing several string arrangements I figured I would need to learn the cello to get better at it. So I got a cello. I always loved the clarinet and after starting the Masha Ray project with Masha I started learning that too. The recorder experience did help me a lot with it. Generally learning a new instrument is not hard as hard as you might think especially if you have been through the process before. A lot of instruments share the same history or even technically the same finger positions and technique; once you know a couple of them you can definitely pick up many others quite easily. To me, it’s some sort of hobby that I can then implement in my music. Being self-taught or classically trained does not matter, it’s your motivation and the work you put in that counts.

03. LadyDot: Last year I wrote a whole article about your work (you can read it HERE). Apart from producing tracks in the Masha Ray project, you also do remixes as ROMZN, and recently you have been most active in The Soulmate Project (for some time now you have been releasing new tracks every month or every two months at most, wow!). Tell us, please, what does the production process of a track look like for you, from the idea to the final release? Did you happen to prepare several tracks almost simultaneously, at an express pace?

The Soulmate Project: I am constantly composing and need to be able to have stylistically different outlets. In theory, The Soulmate Project has been active for 10 years now, when I started remixing tracks on Indaba Music and winning several competitions there. It took me years though to find a reliable label partner for it and I am really happy now to have found Wolfgang Lohr and the Electro Swing Thing. There’s so much more planned for The Soulmate Project including an album in 2024. As for Masha Ray, Masha is busy with her solo project „Masha The Rich Man” and I focus more on my main channel / Roman Andor) with different arrangements, instruments, humour, and more. Lastly, ROMZN will from now on only be used for my cinematic composition and production insights. All Electro Swing-based productions will from now on be covered over The Soulmate Project.

04. LadyDot: Since we are on the subject of your artistic work, I have to ask: are you involved in any other musical projects besides those mentioned above? I’m guessing you do, so please tell me, how do you still find some time to live and develop your other passions?

The Soulmate Project: Part of my daily work is production work for other artists. I am a full-time musician with some exceptions (voice-over and other freelancing work). Since I graduated from Uni with two Master’s degrees in Composition and production of Popular Music I used to primarily write and produce a lot of pop and Western mainstream music. Over the years that changed drastically and by now it’s mainly experimental or independent artists that I choose to work with. A good example is Vero Nouk, who has been part of two The Soulmate Project songs (Laisse-Toi Tomber & La Femme Jolie) whose Chanson style-EP I produced recently almost completely with acoustic instruments.

05. LadyDot: At the beginning of November it was revealed that your Electro Swing Mix ‘The Addams Family’ had reached number 16 on the Dance US Charts iTunes chart. Many congratulations to you, this is a huge achievement! Did you expect such a huge success? How do you feel about it?

The Soulmate Project: It was a huge surprise for sure! It always feels good to be seen, especially in times when the algorithm often decides who’s going to get attention and who isn’t. It is very validating when hard work does finally pay off sometimes. I have been in the industry for a while so I do know the dynamics and importance of placements and Charts entries even though they don’t necessarily mean much to me. I have always wanted to bring The Soulmate Project to the stage, knowing a tour would be possible changes a lot.

06. LadyDot: You have proven to us on many occasions that you are fantastic at making music both alone and in duos and larger groups. Recently I was totally enthralled by the single ‘Stormy Night’ you composed with DanyloM, and you also recently released ‘Der Morgenmuffel’ with the duo Balduin. Is there any Electro Swing artist you would really like to produce a joint single with and have wanted to do so for a long time, only there hasn’t been the perfect opportunity?

The Soulmate Project: I think my fav group/artist of the genre has always been Caravan Palace due to their impressive arrangements and live performance. I am generally drawn to Ensembles/groups rather than solo producers with samples. Remixing a track in or outside of the genre might actually be the best to collaborate. I am also waiting for Wolfgang Lohr to release our collaboration which has been in the pipeline for pretty much a year now ;)

07. LadyDot: I love your creative, humorous videos you upload on TikTok! They are just wonderful, and I like the ones where you showcase new arrangements of different songs in different styles of music the most. I’ve noticed that you haven’t posted anything new for a few months now. Is this because preparing such a video is very time-consuming? We only see the final video which lasts a few tens of seconds, but I’m guessing it takes many hours to record and edit… Please tell me, where do you get your inspiration to create TikTok videos and what is the process of preparing them?

The Soulmate Project: Thank you! Let me say that I am still on a break but soon back to posting. There were lots of different reasons to take a hiatus but I can’t go into further detail here. I am just generally happy that in such little time, I could achieve so much. I come up with ideas and concepts quickly, the whole execution just takes way more time. I could probably be faster but then have to accept a loss of quality. That approach might be more efficient for the algorithm and growth but I mainly do those videos to show my abilities and not to get famous.

08. LadyDot: What do you prefer: touring and performing live, or producing songs in the studio or recording videos for TikTok at home? Which of these things do you enjoy more?

The Soulmate Project: I think an overall balance of them all is the ideal state, although my home and safe space will always be the studio. It’s my little cave with lots of carefully acquired toys, instruments and other amazing stuff. From my experience touring, as well as tiktok-ing require a lot of planning and time-consuming processes (I hate spending too much time on apps).

09. LadyDot: I think there is something to be found in every musical genre that delights us, enchants us and encourages us to explore further musically. I know you are very open to combining different musical genres (your metal remix of ‘Wabababa’ is excellent, it made me feel like a teenager at a heavy metal band concert again, haha!). And what artists does Roman Andor listen to on a daily basis? What are your favourite songs?

The Soulmate Project: Whilst progressive rock might be the genre I listen to the most nowadays, to me it often is about musical expression and ideas. So many genres share the same DNA or ideas and are just presented differently. Take the Wabababa remix, I stuck to pretty much all the original ideas, just added metal drums and guitars and so on and it became a completely different thing. I have a huge thing for a variety of genres often linked to a specific period in time. Classical Romantic music from Tschaikovsky and Shostakovich, Midcentury Pop and chanson music of the 50s to 70s, 60s-70s Motown, 70s Disco and funk, as well as 90s-2000s (Post-Grunge) and new Rock/Metal. I am generally drawn to real performances and imperfections and really don’t like most modern music productions (even Metal) which heavily rely on samples & autotune etc. I don’t stand opposed necessarily I have just realised most of it is not my cup of tea r doesn’t resonate with me.

10. LadyDot: You’ve produced two albums in 2021: the brilliant, gorgeous, sweet and danceable Masha Ray’s album, ‘Electro Swing’, and the fantastic, old-school vibe ‘Vintage Revisited’ as The Soulmate Project. Will you let us in on a secret, are you already working on your next full-length album? I personally can’t wait! 😊

The Soulmate Project: Oh, that’s so sweet of you! To be fair, the Masha Ray album was technically finished in 2019: it just took us two years to find a reliable partner to release it (the usual story). As for „Vintage Revisited” I would not consider it to be a full-length album, more of an EP I guess, which was released over a Production Music label. Immediately after, I started working with The Electro Swing Thing. So I can proudly say that there is going to be a proper full-length album (let’s say at least 12 tracks) in 2024!

11. LadyDot: Okay, and now my standard question at the end of the interview: what are your plans for the future? What else would you like to achieve? Maybe you’re working on a special music project? Or maybe you’d like to go on tour (by the way, you’re warmly invited to Poland! 😊)?

The Soulmate Project: I would love to tour with The Soulmate Project once the album and ensemble are ready! For anything else, well you will then have to watch my videos ;)

Interview by LadyDot (Ja, Wizeruk) Date: 2023-11-27